New
Zealand’s World No.4 Joelle King is looking forward to competing in her
first ever ATCO PSA Dubai World Series Finals when the tournament
takes place at Dubai’s Emirates Golf Club from June 5-9.
The
Kiwi has enjoyed her best season to date on the PSA World Tour,
recapturing her career-high World No.4 ranking after suffering from a
career-threatening
achilles injury in 2014.
The
2018 Cleveland Classic winner also reached her maiden World Series
final at the Windy City Open in February - where she narrowly lost out
to Egypt’s Nour El Tayeb in a five-game thriller - and is relishing the
opportunity to compete in Dubai.
“I’m excited, I’ve never really been to Dubai before let alone play in a World Series Finals,” said the 29-year-old.
“It
was one of my aims at the start of the season to make Dubai and I was
definitely happy that after Chicago I was guaranteed a place there.
I guess you can sort of relax a little knowing you are going to be
there but every match I play, I just want to play the best I can. Win or
lose I just want to come off knowing that I have left everything out
there.
“I
have a lot of people from back home that are living there and working
there so it will be nice to enjoy Dubai and catch up with some old
faces.”
The
World Series Finals features a unique best of three format in the group
stage before reverting to the traditional best of five for the
semi-finals and final and King is excited to play the different format
after seeing the high-quality squash at last year’s tournament held at
Dubai Opera.
“I’m
interested to see what the best of three format is like, I’ve never
played it before and obviously in the earlier rounds that’s how it
is.
“It’s
a different game and I’m excited to just give that a go and also, the
squash I watched last year, men’s and women’s, was quality and
great viewing. I’m just excited to be a part of that.”
King
has been drawn in Group A and is the only non-Egyptian in her group as
she gets set to compete with World No.1 Nour El Sherbini, World
No.3 Nour El Tayeb and World No.5 Nouran Gohar.
“It’s
been a long season and I think it will be a nice way to finish.
Obviously, it’s the top eight players in the world, it’s literally
straight
into a quarter-final but I’m not going to change anything about the way
I’ve approached the entire season.
“It’s
basically been me trying to play the best squash that I can play and
enjoying every moment so I’m not going to change that now, I’m just
going to try and enjoy it even more.”
World No.4 King will face World No.1 El Sherbini on day one at 20:00. All times are local GMT +4.
The semi-finals are due to take place from 20:00 on June 8, while the finals will commence at 20:00 on June 9.
Every
fixture will be shown live on SQUASHTV (Rest of World) and Eurosport
Player (Europe only), while the semi-finals and final will be broadcast
on live mainstream channels across the globe, including BT sport, beIN
Sports, Fox Sports Australia and Astro.
Tickets for the World Series Finals can be purchased here: https://dubai.
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