West Coaster Paul Coll has added a third British Open squash title to his record, beating world number one Mostafa Asal of Egypt in the final in Birmingham to claim the sport’s oldest and most prestigious crown for the first time in four years.
The Greymouth-born 34-year-old came through the men’s final 3-1, losing a tight opening game 11-9 before turning the contest his way with a pair of clinical games, 11-3 and 11-6. Asal, the reigning world champion, retired at the start of the fourth game, conceding the title to the New Zealander after running himself into the ground a day earlier. The win, sealed in just under an hour at the diamond-level event, is Coll’s 33rd title on the Professional Squash Association tour.
Asal had arrived in the final on empty. The Egyptian had survived a brutal 115-minute semifinal against Peru’s Diego Elias the previous day, and the effort showed. He took the first game but was visibly drained as Coll lifted the pace, and after falling two games to one behind he was unable to continue. It was a flat finish to a tournament that had built towards a heavyweight showdown, but Coll, seeded second, made sure he was in front when it mattered.
Speaking after the match, Coll acknowledged his opponent’s earlier marathon while making clear he had to earn the result. “Mostafa had a brutal one yesterday, but I still had to get him today, make him hurt, pick up as much as possible and I’m very happy with that performance,” he said.
The title caps a deliberate rebuild for Coll, who has spoken about the mental side of his game as much as the physical this season. “I put in a lot of work since the world champs to flip the script, very happy with my mentality and squash this week,” he said. “The confidence was always there, it was just about execution.” It is his first British Open since back-to-back wins in 2021 and 2022, a gap that makes the latest victory feel less like a continuation and more like a return.
Coll remains one of the most decorated athletes New Zealand has produced in any individual sport, and certainly the most successful the country has had in squash. In March 2022 he became the first New Zealand man to reach world number one, a milestone in a sport long dominated by Egypt and, before that, Australia and Pakistan. A few months later he won Commonwealth gold in the men’s singles at the 2022 Games, also held in Birmingham, beating Wales’ Joel Makin in a five-game final. The British Open has been a happy hunting ground ever since.
His climb has never relied on a national academy system or a deep pool of domestic rivals. Coll left the West Coast as a teenager to chase a professional career on the European and Egyptian-dominated circuit, training relentlessly and building a reputation as one of the fittest players on tour, a retriever who wears opponents down and turns long rallies into a test of stamina. The nickname that follows him around, “superman”, was earned through full-stretch dives and a willingness to chase every ball to the front wall.
That style was on show again through the week in Birmingham, where he ground his way past a strong field to reach the final. The British Open dates back to 1930 and sits alongside the World Championship as the title every professional wants on their record. Winning it three times places Coll in rare company and adds weight to a career that already includes a world title and a Commonwealth crown.
The women’s final delivered a piece of history of its own. Egypt’s Amina Orfi, just 19, beat compatriot Nour ElSherbini 3-1 to become the youngest British Open women’s champion, surpassing a record that had stood since 1932. The match, at 64 minutes, was the longest women’s final in the tournament’s history, a marker of how deep the Egyptian production line now runs.
For Coll, the focus now shifts to holding his form through the back half of the season and pushing back towards the top of the world rankings. He has spent time at number one and number two over the past four years and has shown again that, on his day, he can beat anyone in the game. Reports from Birmingham noted that his run to the title was built on exactly the patient, relentless squash that first carried him up the rankings, a reminder that at 34 he is far from finished.
A third British Open, four years on from his last, is the kind of result that defines a career rather than merely extends one. For a player from Greymouth who had to leave home to find a sport that barely registers on most New Zealand back pages, it is another quiet entry in one of the country’s most remarkable individual sporting stories.
Did you watch Paul Coll’s run to the British Open title, or do you follow New Zealand squash? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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