(1) Aamir Atlas Khan - PAK bt (2) Farhan Mehboob - PAK     [12-10, 11-7, 11-7]  (44)

Khan earns Gold...

The individual gold medal final was highly anticipated as Farhan Mehboob took on Aamir Atlas Khan at the 11th South Asian Games in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Lets just call Khan 'The Finisher' as he was looking for every opportunity to put the ball away and was succeeding.  Attacking even on the serve, Khan continued his high risk variety of shots and backed them with great defense if they were off the mark.  Attempting his crosscourt nicks from both sides of the court, in addition to backcourt kills and precise drops, Khan was playing much tighter than his game against Sandeep Jangra in the previous round.

Mehboob never appeared to be under pressure from such shots, but he didn't have an answer.  His graceful court movement and continual digs kept him in the rallies and he countered on several occasions, but costly errors kept him a point behind.  A couple of calls that could have gone the other way sealed a highly competitive first game.

The second game saw Khan turn up the pace and now Mehboob was appearing a step behind.  Mehboob was never in control of the game and was simply defending against the onslaught of attempts at nicks and kills with lobs, pushing Kahn to the back of the court.  Kahn would return the same, cross-court lobbing, giving himself the needed time to step up and pursue the volley drop or cross court nick again, often with great success.  A more convincing win in the second for Kahn.

The Finisher has a complete game and is very aggressive - the kind of squash everyone loves to watch.  So we were all anxious to see how Mehboob would respond, but he continued with more of the same, pushing the game to the back of the court and slowing the pace down.  Kahn wouldn't have any of it and continued his assault on the front corners.  When he didn't have the angle, he would look to create it; it was just a matter of time before his readily prepared racket would smash the ball into a nick.  Mehboob was becoming more unraveled and just couldn't deny the accuracy of Kahn on this night.  Match to Kahn.