Farag and Gilis to Headline 2024 Optasia Championships

Men’s World No.1 Ali Farag and Women’s World No.4 Nele Gilis will headline the 2024 Optasia Championships when The Wimbledon Club plays host to a range of the world’s top professional squash players between March 12-17.

Farag will return to the PSA World Tour Gold tournament after winning the event in 2022. The 31-year-old features alongside New Zealand’s World No.3 Paul Coll – who won the 2016 event – Egypt’s World No.4 Mostafa Asal and England’s World No.5 Mohamed ElShorbagy, who captured the 2017 trophy.

Karim Abdel Gawad returns to defend the title he won last year, while Welshman Joel Makin, ElShorbagy’s younger brother Marwan and France’s Baptiste Masotti take up the other top eight seeded positions.

The men’s wildcard will be World No.62 Charlie Lee. The 25-year-old from London upset Mohamed ElShorbagy in the second round of last year’s tournament as he reached the quarter-finals.

A women’s PSA World Tour Bronze event has been added to the schedule for the first time and Gilis will look to win her third PSA title of the season. England’s World No.14 Sarah-Jane Perry will also be going for glory, while Egypt’s World No.18 Nada Abbas and Japan’s World No.21 Satomi Watanabe are also amongst the title favourites.

Further British interest comes in the form of Wales’ Tesni Murphy and British National Champion Jasmine Hutton – the No.5 and No.6 seeds, respectively – while France’s World No.25 Melissa Alves and Egypt’s World No.34 Hana Moataz are also in contention.

Scotland’s World No.89 Alison Thomson takes the wildcard spot for the inaugural women’s event.