The British National Championships 2023 gets underway tomorrow from St Georges Hill in Surrey with Mohamed ElShorbagy looking to defend his title, whilst Georgina Kennedy is poised to claim her first Nationals title.
The qualifying draw starts on Tuesday August 15 at 12:15 (UK time) with both rounds of qualifying taking place across two courts. Four players from both the men’s and women’s qualifying draws will advance to the main draw with Wales’ Emyr Evans and Manchester born Saran Nghiem occupying the No.1 seeding positions.
In the main draw of the men’s event, Mohamed ElShorbagy will have strong competition in his title defence as 2021 National Champion Joel Makin will be looking to reach a fourth consecutive final and go one further than last year to claim a second title.
Merseyside’s Patrick Rooney is the No.3 seed for the event. The World No.24 produced some impressive performances throughout the previous PSA season and will be hoping to recreate those to upset the seedings in this year’s season-opening nationals. Rooney is seeded to face tough opposition in round two however as No.7 Charlie Lee features in his quarter. Lee has been working his way up the PSA rankings at a strong rate and has high ambitions for himself for this season.
Defending women’s champion Jasmine Hutton comes in as No.5 seed for this years Nationals and is in the same side of the draw as top seed Kennedy. Hutton is set to face No.4 seed Emily Whitlock in the quarter finals. Whitlock was forced to withdraw in last years semi-final clash between the two so will be determined to seek her revenge this time around.
Former champion Tesni Evans is the No.2 seed in this year’s event and will be looking to add a third title to her collection this week. The Welsh No.1 is in the same half of the draw as another former Champion Sarah Jane Perry. The Warwickshire -based No.3 seed won in 2020 and 2021 and due to not playing last year is on an eight match win streak heading into to round one.
You can watch the glass court action on SQUASHTV, whilst all side court action will be available to watch on the British Nationals website.
You can also find more updates as the tournament progresses on the England Squash Facebook, Twitter and Instagram channels.
