Kingston upon Hull, UK: World number one Mohamed Elshorbagy, who headed Egypt’s historic clean sweep of all four finalists at last year’s British Open, is aiming for a different kind of achievement at the 2017 tournament which starts today.
The 27-year-old Bristol-based Alexandrian will complete a hat-trick of titles at the world’s oldest event if he triumphs again, which would be the best unbeaten British Open sequence by a male player for two decades.
The last man to win this tournament three times in a row was Jansher Khan, the legendary six-time champion from Pakistan.
While Elshorbagy may find it hard to equal Jansher, it would nevertheless be an outstanding achievement to win a trio of titles in the faster, more prosperous, and much more unpredictable modern game. Elshorbagy’s results have been modest this year by his exceptional standards, and include a loss to his younger brother Marwan in his last tournament, at Chicago three weeks ago.
Sign
This may however be a misleading sign. That is because Elshorbagy’s concern is to avoid arriving in Hull in a similar state of near exhaustion to that with which he struggled last year.
He has competed less and embarked on better balanced preparations at Millfield school with the help of British Open legend Jonah Barrington.