World No.10 Tinne Gilis defeated older sister Nele in four games to win the New Zealand Open title and win her first piece of silverware on the PSA Squash Tour since October 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Tinne, who entered the match with just one win from nine previous matches with Nele on the PSA Tour, moved through to lift the Silver-level title by an 11-6, 5-11, 12-10, 11-9 scoreline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Top seed Tinne started off the stronger of the sisters, taking an early 5-1 lead with some accurate, tight hitting on the all-glass court inside a packed-out Isaac Theatre Royal. The top seed moved through to take an 11-6 first game after 15 minutes of play. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Undeterred by the first-game defeat, No.3 seed Nele upped her intensity of hitting in the second, racing into a 10-1 lead in a flash. Tinne fired in a quick quartet of winners to pull the scores back to 10-5, but Nele held on to level proceedings at 1-1. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The two sisters were inseparable throughout the majority of a quality third game, with the scoreboard moving to 8-8 and later 10-10. After saving a game ball, it was Tinne who produced two quality rallies to win the monster 25-minute third game and move within a game of the title. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
As occurred at the start of the second, Nele responded well to falling 2-1 behind, coming out of the blocks quickly and moving into an early 4-1 advantage. However, Tinne reeled Nele back in and moved championship ball up later at 10-9 up. A contentious video referee followed, in which a stroke for Nele was overturned to a yes let, with Tinne making no mistake at the second time of asking, wrapping up the win after 78 minutes of enthralling squash.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI can\u2019t find my words right now,\u201d Gilis said after the match. \u201cI\u2019m just trying to let it sink in. I just wanted to fight through the whole match no matter what happened. Obviously, playing against Nele is always the biggest challenge on tour, especially when everyone is behind her as well.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Meanwhile, World No.2 Coll powered his way through to a third consecutive New Zealand Open title in emphatic style after defeating a physically fatigued Mohamad Zakaria in straight games.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Coll entered the final on the back of flawless wins over Eain Yow Ng and Iker Pajares, and the World No.2 picked up where he left off from those matches, motoring through to the title virtue of an 11-7, 11-2, 11-5 victory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Returning to court less than 24 hours after his 125-minute marathon match against Joel Makin, World No.9 Zakaria struggled to match the physical intensity of Coll.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After winning a lengthy 17-minute first game, there was no stopping Coll with the finish line in sight. Playing in front of his friends and family, the 33-year-old put the hammer down to secure his 31st PSA Tour title after just 38 minutes of play.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Yeah, it’s amazing,” Coll said after the match, “I was pretty excited, but also pretty nervous coming into this week. It’s one of the biggest ones for me to win, and when it’s a packed-out theatre in your hometown, there’s always a little bit of nerves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Especially those last couple of rounds, I got a lot of goosebumps just walking down [through the theatre], so I had to come on and control myself on court. It really is dreams come true for me.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Women’s Final: <\/strong>[1] Tinne Gilis (BEL) bt [3] Nele Gilis (BEL) 3-1: 11-6, 5-11, 12-10, 11-9 (78m)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Men’s Final: <\/strong>[1] Paul Coll (NZL) bt [3] Mohamad Zakaria (EGY) 3-0: 11-7, 11-2, 11-5 (38m)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" World No.10 Tinne Gilis defeated older sister Nele in four games to win the New Zealand Open title<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10318,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[37],"class_list":["post-10317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","tag-squash"],"aioseo_notices":[],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Gilis-sistes.jpg",2560,1967,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Gilis-sistes-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Gilis-sistes-300x231.jpg",300,231,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Gilis-sistes-768x590.jpg",640,492,true],"large":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Gilis-sistes-1024x787.jpg",640,492,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Gilis-sistes-1536x1180.jpg",1536,1180,true],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Gilis-sistes-2048x1574.jpg",2048,1574,true],"morenews-large":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Gilis-sistes-825x575.jpg",825,575,true],"morenews-medium":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Gilis-sistes-590x410.jpg",590,410,true]},"author_info":{"info":["admin"]},"category_info":"International<\/a>","tag_info":"International","comment_count":"0","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Gilis-sistes.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10317"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10317\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10321,"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10317\/revisions\/10321"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}