Amina Orfi remembers exactly how she felt the first time she played Nour El Sherbini, one of her biggest inspirations growing up.
Just 16 years old at the time and competing in front of an Egyptian home crowd, Orfi faced El Sherbini in the third round of the 2024 World Squash Championships in a highly anticipated showdown between a former and current teen prodigy.
“In the beginning, I was a bit star-struck, I guess. And I didn't play how I wanted to in the first game, but then I started to get it together,” Orfi told The National.
Orfi lost to her Egyptian compatriot that day, but walked away with valuable lessons she was quick to incorporate into her game.
“I just saw how she used her experience to make me feel that I wasn't gonna win that match. And it just showed me that if I want to beat her and other people at the top, then I have to change so many things,” said the Cairo native of her Alexandrian hero.
‘Picture perfect’
Fast-forward two years and Orfi found herself squaring off against El Sherbini in the final of the World Championships in Giza last Saturday.
The 18-year-old Orfi is a four-time junior world champion, and was going for her first world title at senior level. El Sherbini, 30, owns eight world titles and was gunning for a ninth to eclipse the all-time record she shares with the legendary Nicol David.
The pair split the first four games to force a deciding fifth. Orfi, the No 3 seed, leapt to a 9-4 lead but the second-ranked El Sherbini, buoyed by the crowd that was chanting her name, rallied back for 8-9 and saved a pair of match balls to level the decider 10-10.
Tuning out the noise, Orfi saved two championship balls and closed out the victory 6-11, 11-6, 11-9, 7-11, 14-12 after 106 minutes of thrilling squash to become the youngest woman in history to be crowned world champion – a record previously held by El Sherbini, of course.
Clinching the title and making history is one thing, but doing it against a player you looked up to your whole life is a whole different story. It made Saturday extra special for Orfi, who has been tipped for greatness ever since she turned pro at 15 and was described as the heir apparent for El Sherbini.
“It was a great show, I think. And to have it here in Egypt and play against her as well, I think it was just picture perfect,” said the Cairo teen.
“She's obviously a one-of-a-kind player, and she's accomplished so much. And any record that has been done, it's always like she was the youngest to do this, she won this many tournaments.
“I think she took squash to a different level. I've always looked up to her since I was young. And then I got the chance to share a room with her in the World Teams last year. So I got to know her more on a personal level, and she's really an exceptional person.”
Rising above the drama
Orfi was speaking two days after the final and she admits her run to the world title hadn't fully sunk in yet.
She knew she would be able to lift the trophy one day but didn’t expect it to come this soon. As the reigning world junior champion, she is the first to hold both the junior and senior world titles at the same time.
“Winning my last world juniors in Egypt in 2025 and then winning the seniors as well in Egypt in 2026 is probably like the highlight of my career,” she said.
Orfi is particularly proud of her week in Giza because it came after a period of turbulence for her on tour.
“The past few tournaments, they weren't my best and there was a lot of commotion around me and lots of noise and problems in general,” is how she puts it.
Two weeks before the World Championship, a top-seeded Orfi lost in the semi-finals of the Grasshopper Cup in Switzerland to Malaysia’s Sivasangari Subramaniam. Earlier in April, she fell to world No 1 Hania El Hammamy in a testy semi-final at El Gouna.
There has been drama between Orfi and El Hammamy, which started during a league match in Egypt. El Hammamy sustained a bloody injury that needed attending to off court. When the bandage fell off, causing another interruption, the Egyptian was handed a conduct game and lost the match. Orfi’s mother allegedly celebrated, which El Hammamy did not appreciate.
When they faced off in El Gouna, El Hammamy made a gesture (put her hand to her ear) after she beat Orfi, who then took to social media and branded the world No 1 “disrespectful”.
With this public spat and online war of words serving as the backdrop, Orfi played El Hammamy in the semi-finals of the World Championship last week, and avenged her recent loss to the world No 1 with a 3-1 victory.
Orfi says she felt like all the pressure was on El Hammamy as the top seed searching for a first world title and that she found a “flow state” with her game to pull off the win.
And the drama surrounding the matchup, which was even shared on the official website and social media platforms of the PSA Tour?
“I think it definitely fuels me,” Orfi admits.
“After the match in El Gouna, she did a couple of things and I didn't like it at all, but I really didn't speak about it because I know the reply is on court. I just didn't like how it was portrayed in the media.
“I just felt that, OK, she did this and it's something that bothered me, honestly, but I can't control people's celebrations on court. What I can control is the result. And so I just took it to heart and I knew it was going to … not bite her back, but just put extra pressure on her, that's really unnecessary in the World Championships.
“So I just tried to use it to help benefit me at least in the match, going into a match like this, obviously, you need every single ounce of help to push you.”
A teen in control
Another hot topic of conversation that followed Orfi at these World Championships was her abrupt split from her coach, former world No 3 Omar Mosaad, who was added to her team just a few months ago.
Pundits on Squash TV (the official PSA streaming platform) indicated Orfi had little control over her career decisions and that her parents were the ones to make that call.
She insists that is far from the truth.
“Squash TV definitely got the narrative a bit wrong here, or they didn't know what really happened behind the scenes. Ever since I was 11, I'm the one who chooses my coaches,” said Orfi.
She felt she was “not that happy with a few things in training, that I feel like I'm doing my best, but I'm not seeing the results I want” and added that Mosaad “didn't know what to say at the right time. It's not that he was a bad coach, he just didn't know what to say or how to bring out the best in me.”
For Orfi, following her gut feeling is key, and she says she refuses to do something just to appease the public or disprove a certain false narrative.
Orfi has two squash coaches, Abdelfattah Fahim and Hashem Samir, and also gets help from her father.
“I strongly believe that you don't need to change anything to appear a certain way or to fit the perspective of how an athlete's team should look like, or like parents shouldn't be involved. I don't believe in that,” she said.
“I believe each person can find what suits them. And so with me being very young in these situations, having a proper support system around you is something that I value a lot. And so I really like the set-up. And I think it's going to be the set-up moving forward.”
Feeling misunderstood
This unapologetic attitude is one Orfi applies to various aspects in her life.
She receives a fair bit of criticism online from fans who question her sportsmanship, and she does her best to not let it get to her.
She sometimes deletes social media apps from her phone during events to avoid the distraction but overall acknowledges she has to be OK with feeling misunderstood.
“I definitely feel misunderstood, because the comments I see, it's always like, ‘Oh, she's this kid with a bad attitude, she doesn't have respect for the older players’, and all that. This is like the most common one I get,” she said.
“Or like, ‘Oh, her handshakes are just not it, and she's being disrespectful', and 'Oh, she's cheating’. These are the comments that I usually get, and I see them, but I just tell myself, the person commenting this is sitting at home on their couch doing nothing while you're here doing all this, so at the end of the day, it doesn't matter.”
Many of the Egyptian players on tour are much older than Orfi and they have a much closer relationship with one another because they rose through the ranks together.
“I'm not forced to hug someone,” Orfi explained.
“I don't know why people or fans in general have this obsession of like having to go and hug my opponent and congratulate them. I just do what's required of me.
“I don't really like that much of physical contact in general, even with my close friends or my parents. So it just, they're [the fans are] looking at it from a very superficial way.
“And I think just the age gap kind of makes it even harder for me as a player, because when someone's older than you, and you beat them, for example, I don't know what to say or what to do. I just feel if I say something, it's even more disrespectful.”
Pressure, history and legacy
Orfi, who is pursuing a degree in Economics at the American University in Cairo, is juggling many responsibilities and confesses that sometimes it can “get too much”.
During the World Championships, she was logging in and doing live writing sessions for university on her off days, and she has finals coming up later this week.
While she has long been touted as the next big thing in squash, she believes the most pressure she feels is the one she applies on herself as she pursues her dream of becoming world No 1 and winning gold in LA 2028, where squash will be making its Olympic debut.
It helps her to think of the pressure her opponents are under when she takes to the court, realising she’s not the only one navigating such feelings.
“Being world champion, I think it just is going to motivate me even more. And I guess it kind of takes a bit of pressure off. Because being a world champion, you've got the most important tournament,” she added.
Orfi is driven by history and legacy but says at her core, the thrill of competing, of winning, of performing in front of a crowd, is what drives her the most.
While she has lofty targets, she also has a personal dream of one day facing her younger sister, Nazli, in a major final on tour.
Nazli, who is 13, joked with Amina after she won Worlds that she was making things harder for her in terms of expectations in her own budding squash career.
“As we're growing, I think she looks up to me a lot more,” said Orfi.
“But she's her own person and my parents and all the coaches, they don't compare because she's going to get there at her own pace. She loves the sport and I think that one day she's going to be a really great player.
“I just hope that we get to share a match together and a final of an important tournament like this. And I think we will because the difference is just five years.”
