Mumbai: One of Anahat Singh’s major goals from this year was to play a lot more of the big PSA tournaments, and start making bigger dents in them. Two tournaments of doing that two months into the year, India’s teen squash talent has captured the biggest PSA title of her bright young career so far.

The 17-year-old won the Squash on Fire Open 2026, a bronze level event on the PSA tour, stunning top seed and world No.10 Georgina Kennedy of England 12-10, 11-5, 11-7 in the final in Washington on Sunday.

The victory not only gave Anahat the biggest title of her career yet and her first in a PSA World event, but also propelled her to world No.19 in the latest rankings, a leap of 12 places.

That, a day after the qualification path to the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics was announced by World Squash in which 8 spots per gender would be reserved through the world ranking route, is also significant.

After competing in the Sprott Tournament of Champions, a top-tier Platinum level event, Anahat went past a number of higher-ranked opponents in Washington.

The seventh seeded Indian beat Egyptian world No.17 and second seed Sana Ibrahim 8-11, 8-11, 11-7, 11-8, 11-7 in the quarters and American world No. 23 Sabrina Sobhy 11-9, 11-3, 9-11, 11-5 in the semis.

Kennedy had beaten Anahat 3-0 in their previous meeting at the Canadian Women’s Open last year. Anahat turned the tables spectacularly against the top seed in Washington, saving two game balls at 10-8 in the first game before clinically getting the job done in three.

“I’m extremely happy,” Anahat was quoted as saying by PSA. “Coming into this event, I played the British Junior Open a few weeks back and I didn’t play too well. I knew in between these events – ToC (Tournament of Champions) as well – I had some time to train, and I did as much as I possibly could to get the best out of my game.

“I knew I wanted to do well in these events, get my ranking up and also put on a performance. And I’m glad I was able to do that this time.”

This was Anahat’s 15th title overall on the PSA tour from just 26 events. The fast-rising teen, though, said she wanted to scale down playing (and largely dominating) the Challenger events while testing herself more in the bigger tournaments against the top players this year. Her mindset has also changed.

“Last year my aim was just to get into the (bigger) tournaments and play a few matches,” she told HT before departing for the US swing. “But now that I’ve been able to do that for the past couple of months, it’s changed into trying to win matches.”

And, perhaps, trying to win tournaments too now.