Nour El Sherbini

Nour Atef Ahmed Zaki El Sherbini is an Egyptian professional squash player, born in Alexandria on 1 November 1995. She holds the record, jointly with Malaysia's Nicol David, for the most women's world individual titles, with eight: 2015, 2016, 2018-19, 2019-20, 2020-21, 2022, 2023 and 2025. She has been ranked world No. 1 in women's singles by the Women's Squash Association on several occasions, has won the British Open four times, and as of May 2025 held 45 PSA titles. ^{1 2}

She was born and raised in Alexandria, Egypt. She started playing squash when she was six years old and was already participating in tournaments before she was eight, training at the Alexandria Sporting Club. Her brother Omar El Sherbini kept her interested in the game, as she spent time watching him and learning from his sessions. She has said that sport runs in her family: "My father used to be a football player and a good swimmer. Also my mum was a good athlete." The Arabic article adds that she graduated from the Arab Academy for Science, Technology and Maritime Transport. ^{1 3}

She won the British Junior Open Under-13 category in 2007 and 2008. A few months after her thirteenth birthday she joined WISPA in early 2009, and on 28 November 2009 she was awarded the 2009 Young WISPA Player of the Year. On 2 August 2009, at 13, she became the youngest world champion in the history of the sport when she won the women's title at the World Junior Championships (U-19) in Chennai, India, and added the World Junior Team title with Egypt. ¹

The Arabic article dates her British Junior Open under-13 title to 2009, beating her compatriot Nouran Gohar; this article follows the English article's dating (2007 and 2008), and the difference is recorded in the Arabic source entity's reliability note. The following January she won the British Junior Under-19 Open at the age of 14. ^{1 3}

Her first professional competition came at the Heliopolis Open as a qualifier; in 2010 she returned to Heliopolis to claim her first WSA title, and in 2011 she won the Alexandria International Open as fifth seed. In 2012 she rose 208 places in the rankings to world No. 7 at the age of 16 — the youngest player ever to enter the world's top ten — and on 19 May 2012 reached the British Open final, the youngest-ever and first Egyptian finalist in the event, losing to Nicol David. ¹

World No. 1 and world titles

She won her first world title at the 2015 Women's World Open in Kuala Lumpur, defeating England's Laura Massaro in the final after coming back from two games down. By April 2016 she had reached world No. 1, won her first British Open, and won a second world title at the 2016 Women's World Open in El Gouna. Five consecutive world titles followed in 2018-19, 2019-20, 2020-21, 2022 and 2023; the 2023 title was her seventh, taking her to second in the all-time list behind Nicol David, and that year she also won her fourth British Open. ^{1 3}

In October 2022 she became the youngest woman ever to reach 400 professional matches on the tour, at 26 years and 11 months, younger than Nicol David had been (27 years and two months); she had won 319 of those 400 matches. ⁴

The record-equalling title

At the 2025 Women's World Squash Championship in Chicago she won her eighth world title, defeating Hania El Hammamy in the final, equalling the all-time record set by Nicol David between 2005 and 2014 and putting her on the verge of being classed as the greatest women's player of all time. She then won her 45th PSA title at the Hong Kong Open during the 2025-26 season. In 2026 she lost her world title to Amina Orfi in the 2026 World Championship final, as the English article records. ¹

She won the WSF World Junior Team title with Egypt in 2009 and again in 2011, and the Women's World Team Championships in 2012, 2016, 2018 and 2022, with a bronze in 2014; in December 2024 she helped Egypt win its fourth consecutive World Team title. ¹

This section states what the sources do and do not record. It is not a verdict by the museum.

Neither the English nor the Arabic article says anything about her religion, and her Wikidata item carries no religion statement at all; the museum therefore records no religious or school description for her, and infers nothing from her name, family or country. Her public record in the sources is a sequence of sporting firsts: the youngest world junior champion, the youngest and first Egyptian British Open finalist, the youngest woman to 400 professional matches, and the joint record-holder for women's world titles. ^{1 3 2 4}

She was PSA Player of the Year for 2017/18, and by May 2025 her 45 tour titles were a dated total as reported then. Her prominence rests on a decade and a half at the top of the women's world game from Alexandria. ¹

• The defined source entities cited above, recorded in data/source/.
• No Urdu Wikipedia article exists for her; this was checked via the Arabic article's language links.