Republica Dominica Squash 2025

Men’s $15k PSA Challenger, 11-15 Jun, Santo Domingo

Matias Knudsen ended his 2024/25 season on a high, winning his biggest PSA Squash Tour title to date at the Republica Dominicana Squash 2025.

The action was taking place on the spectacular all-glass show court inside the Agora Shopping Mall, one of two tournaments taking place inside a mall on the PSA Tour last week, alongside the Copper-level Santiago Open.

Colombia’s Knudsen entered the event as the No.4 seed, and was looking to cap what has been somewhat of a breakout campaign for the 25-year-old, who had won two previous tournaments this season and beaten top-25 player Greg Lobban at the PSA World Championships.

His draw was far from straightforward here, though, with Francesco Marcantonio his round-two opponent and the experienced Cesar Salazar up next, but he eased past both of them without dropping a game, before seeing off his close friend Alejandro Enriquez in the semi-finals, albeit being helped by an injury retirement from the Guatemalan.

Standing in his way on finals day was Spain’s Ivan Perez, who had beaten the in-form Sam Todd 3-0 in the semi-finals after upsetting No.2 seed Tom Walsh 3-2 in the last eight.

Knudsen is ranked almost 30 places higher than Perez and after the opening game of this final, it looked as though he was heading for a comfortably win, losing only a solitary point in a one-sided first game.

Perez, though, began to find his feet in game two, matching Knudsen stride-for-stride right up until 8-8, only to lose three points on the bounce from there to fall 2-0 behind.

He reversed that scoreline in game three to avoid a straight-games defeat, and then pushed the Colombian hard in game four, saving two match balls at 10-7 down.

But he would ultimately be unable to deny Knudsen glory, with the No.4 seed taking his third opportunity, raising his arms in celebration.