Abhay Singh loses to former world No 1 Gawad in Zurich thriller

India’s Abhay Singh lost to Egyptian former world number 1 and world champion Karim Gawad in a thriller in the men’s quarterfinals of the Grasshopper Cup squash, a PSA Gold-level event, in Zurich.

World number 24 Singh recovered from 6-0 down to force the opening game into a tie-break, and went toe-to-toe with world number 4 Gawad in the second, before the Egyptian second seed clinched the contest 12-10, 11-9.

“The pace was really fast. We’ve only played twice, but I feel like we’ve played more than that. In Qatar (2025), he (Singh) beat me in four, and today I got on court and thought I didn’t want to lose again,” Gawad said in a release. “In best of three with one of the smartest and most talented players on Tour, you can never see what he’s thinking with the next shot or the next rally.

“He can come back with crazy points as you saw in the first game when I was 7-0 up and he came back out of nowhere (and) in less than three minutes we were tied,” the Egyptian added.

In the tournament earlier, Singh had registered a win over Egyptian world number 13 Aly Abou Eleinen to enter his maiden PSA Gold-level event quarterfinals.