A season of change
The 2024-25 season will be full of changes on the World Tour. With the LA 2028 Olympic Games in sight, the PSA is refining its nomenclature including a new Diamond category. As far as the Paris Squash 2024 goes, it will be the first 2.0 Platinum event with 32-player draws instead of 48 and only 8 seeds. Here is a quick breakdown.
There has been a lot of good news for professional squash players lately. A little more than a year ago, the PSA announced the investment of billionaire Mark Walter, who contributed to record figures for the 2023-24 season: a total prize money over 10 million dollars while the 1000 tournament mark has been reached. Not to forget the historic date of October 27, 2023 when it was confirmed that squash will be one of the 5 additional sports at the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028, which is a massive step forward after several unsuccessful attempts. As a consequence, squash will enter the 2025-28 period as an Olympic sport and it will be crucial for its future, as this new status needs to be perpetuated.
The investment of billionaire Mark Walter (here with Nour El Sherbini, Ali Farag and his wife Kimbra) brought the World Tour to another level (Photo credit: PSA World Tour)
The changes made by the PSA to its nomenclature are probably not unrelated to the Olympics, and the Paris Squash 2024 will be one of the first tournaments of this new era. A few days before, a new Diamond category will be launched with the CIB Egyptian Open at the Pyramids from August 26 to September 6: its specifics include a $600,000 minimum prize money and 48-player draws with 4 spots awarded after qualifying - which previously existed at all PSA tournaments but had disappeared since the 2017-2018 season. There should be 4 Diamond events in the season, a bit like Grand Slams in tennis. “It would be ideal if they were spread geographically, with for example one in Asia and one in the United States,” confides Victor Crouin, while at the moment the second one in the calendar is the British Open in June 2025. “The PSA has long-term goals, for example with regard to increasing the prize money across the board,” adds the French number 1. “These changes are positive overall, especially when it comes to make the prize money the same for all Platinum tournaments, in the past some had made more effort than others in this department.” The Paris Squash 2024 will be one of the 6 Platinum tournaments of the season alongside Qatar, the US Open, Hong Kong, the Tournament of Champions and El Gouna.
Victor Crouin believes that overall the changes made by the PSA are a step in the right direction (Photo credit: PSA World Tour)
The first change is that they will feature 32-player draws against 48 previously. “That means more money for the players, and it’s also easier to organize,” underlines Crouin. Indeed, from the second round onwards all matches will take place on the glass showcourt, at the Cirque d'Hiver Bouglione as far as the Paris Squash 2024 goes. Another new feature is that there will only be 8 seeds, and therefore potential clashes between members of the world top 10 in the first round. “As a player, I would have preferred 16 seeds, and I'm not sure that for the crowd it's necessarily a good thing to have a very big match right from the start. Anyway, this new system will make us players look at the calendar closely to decide which events we’ll play. As far as I am concerned I am not sure I will play all the Platinums, especially if there is another World Tour event around the same time (editor's note: Victor is currently #11 in the world, only the top 8 are subject to mandatory appearance in Diamond and Platinum tournaments). This also means that players ranked below 30 will have opportunities to make the Platinum main draws, depending on the choices of those ranked ahead of them.”
A first round clash between Nouran Gohar and Amanda Sobhy is a possibility with the changes brought to the Platinum events (Photo credit: PSA World Tour)
Here are some quick maths to illustrate his words: you get 420 ranking points if you make the round of 16 in a Platinum tournament and 500 if you win a Copper, a new category in the World Tour with prize moneys ranging from $25,000 to $30,000. Are these Platinum events a taste of what squash events could look like at the 2028 Olympic Games? “I don’t know,” says Victor Crouin when asked the question, and more information on the matter should be unveiled in the upcoming months. However, World Squash Federation president Zena Wooldridge already told the website Francs Jeux that there will be 32 men and 32 women in Los Angeles. To be continued...
Here are the major events listed in the calendar as of today for the 2024-25 season
· August 26 – September 6: CIB Egyptian Open 2024 ($631,000) - Diamond
· September 15-21: Paris Squash 2024 ($406,000) – Platinum
· September 30 – October 5: Qatar Q-Terminals Classic 2024 ($380,000) – Platinum
· October 19-26: U.S. Open 2024 ($380,000– Platinum
· December 2-8 (to be confirmed): Hong Kong Squash Open 2024 ($380,000) – Platinum
· January 23-30: Tournament of Champions 2025 ($380,000)– Platinum
· April 11-18: El Gouna International 2025 ($380,000) – Platinum
· June 1-8: British Open 2025 ($560,000) - Diamond
The PSA World Championships should take place in Chicago in the spring of 2025, with a record $1.2 million prize money.
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