What the opening game of a squash match is really worth.
Results to 13 November 2026.
The two finals of the 2025 Tournament of Champions started the same way and ended opposite ways. In the men’s, Diego Elias, the world No.3 and third seed, took the first game 11-9 off Ali Farag, the No.1 and top seed. Farag won the next two in tie-breaks, 12-10 and 14-12, then the fourth 11-1. In the women’s, Nouran Gohar, also No.1 and top seed, won the first game 11-8 against the No.3, Hania El Hammamy. El Hammamy won in five, the last game 11-8.
In one final the favourite lost the first game and won the match; in the other the favourite won the first game and lost the match. Both went against the odds, but not by the same amount. A favourite who drops the first game between players of similar rank still wins 41% of men’s matches: Farag’s comeback was less likely than not, but far from rare. An underdog who loses the first game wins only 16% of women’s matches. El Hammamy’s title was the real upset.
So how much is the first game worth? A lot, but no more than any other. In 11,866 best-of-five matches since 2000 between players of similar rank in the main draws of PSA World Tour events, the first-game winner went on to win 74% of men’s matches and 75% of women’s. But that doesn’t make the first game special. Win the second game instead and the odds are about the same, and so are the odds after the third. What does count is how the first game was won. A first game won 11-3 is worth far more than one that goes to a tie-break, and if the underdog won it, the match is barely better than a coin flip.
What follows starts with the ranking, which settles most matches before a ball is hit, then works through the odds game by game, the favourite and the underdog, finals, the players and countries who start slowly or finish strongly, and what a home crowd is worth.
Key findings
- Between players close in rank the first game says far more than the ranking; in a mismatch the ranking decides.
- The first game is no more decisive than the second or third.
- How it is won matters: a tie-break first game is worth much less than an 11-3.
- Losing the first game leaves a favourite less likely than not to win, and an underdog in real trouble.
- In a final the first game counts slightly less than in the early rounds, not more.
- Egypt’s men beat their ranking by coming back: they start no faster than expected, but win more matches after losing the first game than any other country’s, at home or away. Egypt’s women both start faster and come back more often than anyone.
- At home, men beat their ranking mostly by coming back after losing the first game; women gain from the start too.
The First Game or the Ranking?
Before a ball is hit, the ranking has already had its say. When one player is ranked ten times lower than the other (No.3 against No.30, say, or No.10 against No.100), the favourite wins 96% of men’s matches and 98% of women’s, whoever takes the first game. An underdog who wins the opener in a match like that has usually just made the scoreline look respectable.
Close the gap and the picture turns round. Between players very close in rank (within a quarter of each other, such as No.8 against No.9 or No.20 against No.24), the favourite wins only 56% of men’s matches and 56% of women’s, barely better than a coin flip. The first-game winner wins 72% and 75%. The closer the ranking, the more the first game tells you.
Seedings, which follow the ranking, tell the same story. The higher seed wins 74% of men’s matches between two seeds (77% for the women), and a seed beats an unseeded player 83% of the time (83%). Even a seed who loses the first game to an unseeded player still wins 55% (men) and 50% (women).
So the rest of this article is about the matches the ranking doesn’t settle: players ranked within two times of each other (No.10 against No.20 at most), or within five places, so that No.1 against No.3 counts. That is 43% of all the matches, and from here on “similar rank” means these.
Take-away: Between players close in rank the first game says far more than the ranking; in a mismatch the ranking decides, whoever wins the first game.
Is the First Game Special?
With the ranking set aside, the question is whether the opening game has a power of its own: the nerves settled, the tone set, the opponent rattled. The numbers say no. The player who wins game 1 goes on to win 74% of men’s matches. Whoever wins game 2 wins 76%, and whoever wins game 3 wins 77%. For the women it is 75%, 76% and 77%. The chart stops at game 3 because only the first three games are played in every match: game 4 happens only at 2-1, and whoever wins game 5 wins the match by definition, so neither compares.
The first-game winner usually wins for a duller reason: the better player on the day wins most of the games, and the first is one of them.
Take-away: The first game is no more decisive than the second or third: the better player simply tends to win it.
The Odds From Every Score
If every game counts about the same, the score is what matters. One game up, a player wins 74% of the time (men) and 75% (women). Two games up it is 93% and 93%: the comebacks from 0-2 are rare enough to have their own story, The Comeback Kings and Queens.
At 2-1 the leader wins 80% (men) and 78% (women), a little more than after winning the first game. Both finals in the opening passed through 2-1. Farag led Elias 2-1 and closed it out 11-1. El Hammamy trailed Gohar 1-2 after losing the third game 3-11, and won the next two anyway.
Take-away: Every game won helps, but two games up is where a match is almost settled.
Does a Close First Game Matter Less?
At the 2023 Hong Kong Open, Ali Farag, the world No.1 and top seed, won the first game of the final 12-10 against Paul Coll, the No.4. Coll took the next two, 11-3 and 11-8, lost the fourth and won the fifth 11-9. A tie-break first game is a narrow lead, and it is worth less than it looks.
Since the move to scoring to 11 (PAR-11), a man who won the first game in a tie-break went on to win 68% of the time, against 82% after winning it 11-3 or wider. For the women it is 68% against 83%.
Part of that is who wins big first games: usually the better player. So the chart splits the first-game winners by ranking, and the gap holds for both:
- The favourite: 81% (men) and 80% (women) after a tie-break, 89% and 88% after 11-3 or wider. Farag was in the one match in five that a favourite loses after a tie-break.
- The underdog: 55% (men) and 52% (women) after a tie-break, little more than a coin flip. After a first game won 11-3 or wider, the underdog wins 69% (men) and 71% (women).
A tie-break says two players are level. A one-sided first game says the underdog is playing well enough to win. Which leaves the other side of the net: what happens to the player who loses the first game?
Take-away: How the first game is won matters: a tie-break is worth much less than an 11-3, and for an underdog a tie-break is little more than a coin flip.
Favourites From Behind
It depends on who they are. The higher-ranked player wins 67% of men’s matches and 67% of women’s. Lose the first game and a favourite’s chances drop below even: a higher-ranked man still wins 41% of the time (40% for the women). An underdog who loses it wins only 16% (men) and 16% (women).
Those are the odds from the opening: Farag needed to beat a 41% chance, El Hammamy a 16% one. Two games down, as the chart shows, even the favourite’s chances are slim.
Take-away: Losing the first game leaves a favourite less likely than not to win, but still in the match; an underdog who loses it is in real trouble.
Does It Count More in a Final?
A final is not just another match. The title is at stake and both players have won every match to get there. You might expect the first game to weigh more. It weighs a little less. In 597 men’s and 338 women’s World Tour finals between players of similar rank, the first-game winner took 72% and 72% of the titles, against 74% (men) and 76% (women) of matches before the quarter-finals.
The two positions from the opening hold up in finals too. A favourite who loses the first game of a final still wins 42% (men) and 41% (women), close to the 42% and 39% of the early rounds. Where finals differ is the underdog. A woman who loses the first game of a final as the underdog wins 19% of the time, against 15% earlier: El Hammamy’s title was rare, but less rare in a final than it would have been in a first round. For men the underdog’s chance barely moves, 15% in finals and 16% earlier.
The averages hide the people, though. Some players lose more first games than they should, and get away with it.
Take-away: In a final the first game counts slightly less than in the early rounds, and a women’s underdog who loses it comes back a little more often.
The Slow Starters
Every club has one: the player who looks half asleep for a game, then wakes up. For everyone with at least 60 World Tour matches of similar rank since 2000, we compared the first games they won with what their ranking said they should win, and did the same for matches. True slow starters are few: only 18 of 88 men and 6 of 51 women won fewer first games than expected but at least as many matches.
Zahed Salem is the clearest case. He won 26 of 64 first games, where the ranking expected 32, yet 38 matches, where it expected 33. Miguel Rodriguez won 75 of 177 first games (expected 89) and 93 matches (expected 89). Among the women, Sarah-Jane Perry won 54 of 132 first games (expected 67) and 69 matches (expected 68).
The most famous name on the list is Ali Farag. A former world No.1 who loses more first games than his ranking predicts sounds like a weakness, until you see what he does next: he won 37 of 74 matches after losing the first game. Of the men who lost it at least 40 times, only Ramy Ashour, another former No.1, came back more often, with 38 of 62. Among the women Nicol David, who was No.1 too, came back most often, with 39 of 73. A typical player 0-1 down wins 26% (men) and 25% (women).
Farag and Ashour have something else in common: both are Egyptian. So are 8 of the 18 men on the slow-starter list, more than any other country.
Take-away: True slow starters are few, but the best of them, like Farag, make up for it by winning from behind.
Fast Starters or Strong Finishers?
Egypt has more players in these matches than any other country, men and women, so it is fair to ask how they win. Do Egyptians race into the lead, or do they win from behind? For every country with at least 300 World Tour matches of similar rank since 2000 against players from other countries, we compared the first games won with what the ranking expected, and the matches won after losing the first game with what that position usually brings.
Egypt’s men are not fast starters: they win about as many first games as their ranking says they should. Where they pull ahead is after losing one. In 1,139 matches in which an Egyptian man dropped the first game, he won 7 more per 100 than a player in his position usually does, the most of the fifteen countries. Overall they win 5 more matches per 100 than the ranking expects, and most of that comes from behind. The two men best at coming back from 0-1, Ramy Ashour and Ali Farag, are both Egyptian.
Egypt’s women do both. They win 7 more first games per 100 than expected, the most of any country, and 6 more matches per 100 after losing the first game, also the most.
Is it the home crowd? Egypt hosts some of the biggest events, but only 13% of these matches for its men and 16% for its women were at home. Away from home the pattern holds: the men still win the first game no more often than expected, and come back 6 more per 100; the women still win 7 more first games per 100 than expected.
There is a catch. Players on the way up beat a ranking that lags behind them, and part of Egypt’s edge may be the ranking catching up with its rising players. But that would lift every match, not mostly the ones started from behind, and for the men it is the comebacks that stand out.
Take-away: Egypt’s men beat their ranking by finishing, not starting: they win the first game as often as expected, but come back from 0-1 more often than any other country’s players, at home and away.
Does Home Help?
Egypt’s record doesn’t depend on home, but home still counts for something. At the 2023 World Tour Finals in Cairo, Mostafa Asal, the No.4 and fourth seed, lost the first game of the final 9-11 to Diego Elias, the No.2 and top seed. He won the next three, 11-6, 11-3, 11-5.
A player at an event in their own country wins 6 more matches per 100 than the ranking expects (men) and 7 (women), over 1,358 and 945 matches against foreign players. For the men, home works the way Asal’s final did: they win only 2 more first games per 100, but 6 more matches after losing the first game. A home crowd seems to matter most when the player is behind. The women gain from the start, 6 more first games per 100, and about as much again after losing one (6 per 100).
Take-away: A home crowd is worth a few matches in every hundred, and for the men most of it comes after losing the first game.
Has the Scoring Changed It?
Players and countries change, and so have the rules. Squash has changed its scoring twice. In the old game to 9, only the server could win a point. The men moved to 15-point rally scoring, then both tours to 11-point rally scoring: the men from 2004, the women from 2008. Shorter games might make the first one matter more, or less. In fact it has moved little:
- Men: the first-game winner won 77% of matches to 15 and 73% to 11.
- Women: 74% to 9 and 75% to 11.
So is a good start half the battle? It is worth about as much as any other game won: a good sign, not a verdict. Win the first game 11-3 and the day may be yours; win it 12-10 and there is still a long way to go.
Take-away: The changes of scoring have moved the first game’s worth little.
About the Data
- Matches since 2000, results to 13 November 2026. Best-of-five matches in the main draws of World Tour events (the PSA, and the women’s WSA tour before the two merged), from Copper events up to the World Championship. Challenger and Satellite events are left out. Completed matches only: walkovers and retirements are left out.
- Game scores come in the order played. Matches whose games don’t add up to three wins for the winner (a handful of typos) are left out. There is no reliable match data before 2000, so earlier matches are left out.
- Rankings are the latest list at most 60 days before the event ended. 98% of all 27,667 matches have both players ranked.
- Matches of similar rank: the odds and the slow starters use matches between players ranked within two times or five places of each other: No.10 against No.20 at most, and No.1 against No.3 through the places (11,866 matches). The ranking section uses every match.
- Seeds are the event’s seedings; a seed band such as 5/8 counts as 5.
- First-game margins use matches scored to 11 only, so that 11-3 means the same in every match.
- Scoring systems: each match is placed by its game scores (a game won with 9 points, 15 or 11). Too few men’s matches to 9 have ranked players on both sides to report.
- Countries: a country’s matches are those of its players against other countries’ players (the players’ countries as they stand now), compared with the usual result for a favourite or underdog that far apart in the ranking (No.5 against No.10 counts as the same gap as No.20 against No.40); after losing the first game, with the usual result from 0-1 down.
- Home is an event in the player’s own country (the country they play for, as it stands now). Matches between two players of one country are left out of the home and country comparisons.
- Tiers and eras: the first-game winner’s share hardly changes with the event’s tier (Copper to World Championship) or the period since 2000, so neither has a section.
- Rounds: the final, semi-finals and quarter-finals by their place in the draw; every round before them counts as “earlier”. There are far fewer finals (597 men’s, 338 women’s) than earlier matches, so a gap of a few points in finals may be chance.
Over to You
When your favourite player loses the first game, do you still back them? And who always seems to need a game to get going? Tell us in the comments below.