[8] Mohamad Zakaria (EGY) 3-1 [15] Fares Dessouky (EGY) 11-13, 11-8, 11-7, 12-10 (83m)
A very tense all-Egyptian third round, with Fares up with numerous game balls in the 4th (10/5)… looking like we are going to a decider… but no… Zak thought that over 80m was enough for a four-setter…
Mohamad : “I feel amazing, very proud to be through such a tough match. Fares played very well, put me in tough situations, I didn’t play the best, but it was the best of Fares.
“I felt like the match had so many stoppages, but that’s how it’s going these days, and I can’t do anything about it except the fact and just keep going on.
“Yeah, I mean I can’t believe I was 10-5 down and it just, it wasn’t really good to be in that situation, but I’m very, very proud that I excelled in these kinds of situations and I made sure to just play point by point and I kind of believed that I was going to make it through and win that fourth.
On potentially facing Diego:
“Yeah, 100%. When I started with JP, he said that I should have been in the later rounds of the tournaments. At that point, when we started, I wasn’t.
“So in my subconscious, I started to believe, yeah, you need to be playing these finals and winning those tournaments and slowly it’s getting there and the last match against Diego was very, very tough because I played several tough matches before that one.
“I’ll watch it back and I’m sure last time I learned a lot. I played very well and as soon as I came out of that match, I remember I wrote down a couple of things I’m going to look at.”
