America's Best Squash Player Just Won't Quit

"Everybody loves a good comeback story," Amanda Sobhy, America's No. 1 squash player and the first American to be ranked among the top five internationally, tells Newsweek with a smile while resting on her sofa in New York, having just had surgery for her second Achilles injury in six years.

"I'm very stubborn," she adds. "I want to prove to myself that I'm going to come back and hopefully be an inspiration for a lot of people to do that. You know, you can get knocked down more than once—and you can come back."

Sobhy's story is one of not just coming to terms with adversity, but outpacing it. She ruptured her Achilles tendon on her left leg during a tournament in 2017, when she was 23 years old and ranked the sixth-best player in the world, before working her way back into competitions and becoming world No. 3 in the sport.

But during a crucial final at the Hong Kong Open at the start of December, the now 30-year-old injured her other Achilles, having to forfeit the match and, potentially, the largest share of the $190,000 prize money up for grabs.

"I am playing the best squash of my life that week," Sobhy says with a hint of incredulity. "Best squash in my career, healthiest I've ever been, feeling great, so pumped. [In the] semifinals, I just beat the world No. 1, 3-0—played unbelievable."

Then 10 minutes into the final, with the score 5-5 in the first game, her opponent Hania El Hammamy, the current world No. 3, "hits a drop shot to the left glass—so it's a complete mirror opposite side—and I stepped back to push off my right leg and I just go down."

However, Sobhy remains unperturbed by the setback and is already in rehabilitation with hopes of coming back again, even stronger this time. In her first interview since the injury, she reveals she is still eyeing the world No. 1 spot, and to be "flying" by the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, California.

'Colombia Wasn't Far Enough'

It's March 2017, and Sobhy had been a professional squash player for a few years after leaving Harvard University. Already, she was the top seed in the Professional Squash Association's (PSA) W70 tournament in Floridablanca, Colombia, and had made it through to the semifinals where she was facing America's No. 2, Olivia Blatchford.

"It's a beautiful setting," she recalls. "They set up this glass court on top of this mountain with this Santísimo statue overlooking the city."

It was match ball and "I basically needed one point to win and go into the finals," Sobhy says. "And she hit a shot into the front right of the court, and I stepped back with my left to push off, and I just fell flat on my face. It felt like I got kicked in the back of the leg."

Having never felt her Achilles rupture before, she first thought Blatchford had hit her, before realizing what had happened. The squash pro remembers "hysterically crying" as it dawned on her that she would be out for at least the next nine months, before having to travel in the back down the mountain in an ambulance with the CEO of PSA, as she was on her own, which took an hour as rain had made the dirt road difficult to traverse.

Ten months later, though, having undergone surgery and intensive physical training, Sobhy was back playing in professional tours. But, she explains, her other leg was compensating for the weakness in her left ankle, which even with successful surgery does not take the full weight it used to.

As well as having to train her brain to continue pushing off on the weaker leg, as "I ruptured it in a movement that I do all the time in squash, I had to get over that psychological barrier as well."

Then comes the final in Hong Kong in 2023, and the right Achilles comes back to bite. Even as she is falling, Sobhy recollects, she knew what had happened. She says she was instantly "devastated," but also "freaked out" because she was, again, on her own.

"I did the first one in Colombia; Colombia wasn't far enough, so I had to one-up it and do the other one in Hong Kong," she jokes. "The CEO of PSA was still there as well ... he's like, 'at least we don't have to go down a mountain this time.'"

'I Learned a Lot From My Left'

When she ruptured her Achilles the first time, after undergoing surgery back in the U.S., and having not had an extended break from the sport since age 16, Sobhy "took full advantage" of the time away from the court.

"I basically just partied for like four months straight," she says. "I was fully maximizing my time off of squash—and I loved it. It was perfect for that time of my life and I got it all out of my system."

But this was an "unsustainable lifestyle" and "in hindsight, wasn't the best thing to do," Sobhy admits, something which "totally caught up with me about five months in" when she attempted to return to playing squash.

"I realized I was so bad," she says. "I was very out of shape—and then the season started [at the] beginning of September, so I was seeing all my peers compete. And I was nowhere near where I thought I was going to be at this point. I was very weak, and I didn't really have the guidance to help me on a professional squash level."

Sobhy notes that this was also the lowest point in terms of her mental health, when she was feeling "hopeless" and had a lot of anxiety—questioning whether she would ever be able to come back. At this personal nadir, she moved to Philadelphia to take up a five-week intensive rehabilitation course under the stewardship of Joe Zarett, who specializes in physical therapy for athletes.

"He saw me and he was like, 'What have you been doing?' And I broke down in tears. I was like, 'I have no idea; I need help,'" she says.

As soon as Sobhy started training again in earnest, with a clear plan and trusted guidance, her mood picked up. "It was like a massive weight lifted off my shoulders," she says. "The anxiety went away, I was so much happier, I was way more motivated—I was like, 'OK, I actually feel like I'm going to come back now.'"

This time around, though, the top-flight squash player is doing things very differently. She has already started a more "aggressive" recovery process and is back in physical training. Instead of being in a cast for over five weeks, four days after having surgery Sobhy is already in a boot that is partially weight-bearing. "I learned a lot from my left," she notes.

"When I did my left, I was like, if I had to do it again, I would probably do a lot of things differently," Sobhy says, adding cheerfully: "Now I get the chance, I can get the opportunity to do that."

She also says that until her recent injury, she was enjoying competing, and so "I don't really want this time off."

When her right Achilles tendon rupture first occurred, she recalls thinking: "Why me? Why is this happening to me? I'm healthy, I'm fit; what did I do to deserve this?" But she argues that "those negative thoughts are easy to come by" and is taking a positive approach to it.

"Thankfully, I'm able to take any sort of s****y situation and find the positives in it," Sobhy says. The "support and love" she has received from the squash community has left her "truly blown away," and "they're all rooting for me too, which gives me a lot of motivation to want to come back stronger."

'I'm Always Aiming for World No. 1'

Sobhy was raised in a veritable squash dynasty: her Egyptian father, Khaled, played for his nation's junior team before going on to coach it and the Belgian team; her mother, Jodie, played and managed tours in the 1980s in New York; and her older brother, Omar, is a five-time national tournament champion.

She says that she started out playing a mix of soccer, tennis and softball—and only picked up squash at age 11. But after being taken to her older brother's matches and performing well in a tournament her father entered her into, it quickly became her passion.

Yet it was not an entirely straightforward start to her sporting career. Sobhy grew up in Sea Cliff, New York, where she says there is "no squash," while "nobody even knew what squash was" at her public school, so she would train on the courts at a country club that her father taught at a few towns over.

Her decision to become a professional squash player came in 2010, the year she won the World Junior Championships—the first American to do so—on her 17th birthday.

Sobhy says that squash is "very, very highly competitive at the top," but her peers are "a tight-knit group," having often played each other since a young age.

"It is a very fast-paced, dynamic sport that kind of encompasses all physical aspects—you've got the endurance, the speed, the strength, the power," she says. "I think a lot of people don't realize how difficult the sport is, just given the fact that we kind of make it look easy." Sobhy notes that she often urges others to see matches live to get a real sense of the exertion it requires.

Despite this intensiveness, she still wants to come back stronger from her current injury as she did before, but remains stoic about the future.

"I'm always aiming for world No. 1," she says, with the caveat: "My life's purpose has never been to become world No. 1. Obviously, it's a goal I want to set—become world No. 1—but my purpose has always been [that] I always want to help and inspire people based on the things that I've overcome and achieved in my life."

Sobhy adds that she is "at peace" if she doesn't become the best squash player in the world. "I feel like a champion already, even without hitting that No. 1 spot."