John White can blame the combined forces of Team Egypt for his second round exit from the Virtual Spectator Bermuda Masters yesterday.

Just 25 hours after stepping off a 35-hour flight from New Zealand, the world number ten had to battle through a five-set 72-minute first round clash with Mohammed Abbas on Sunday.

Yesterday, compatriot ? and newly-ordained world number one ? Amr Shabana finished off the job.

Number one seed Shabana, in his first outing since being officially given top spot in the rankings, beat the entertaining and hard-hitting White 11-8, 9-11, 11-2, 11-6 in another contest going past the hour mark.

In a game featuring some quite incredible athleticism from both players, Shabana made the most of both White?s propensity for unforced errors and the older man?s fatigue, particularly in the fourth game, to become the first player to book his spot in tomorrow?s quarter-finals.

?John White is an amazing player and you always have to be happy getting past him,? said Shabana, who looked every inch the potential champion as he showed off his wide array of deft touch play and cut-throat winners.

?He is very different to other players, you have to be very sensible against him and play next to the wall. You don?t want to open the court up too much because he will punish you.

?I?m not sure how tired he was, he had a day to recover from his long game in the first round ? if anything I would have preferred it if he had had an easier game last time as this way he got more of a chance to get used to the court.?

White, who had his usual run-ins with the referee ? although perhaps a little more aggressively than usual due to his predicament in the match ? cut a tired and frustrated figure during long periods of the opening match of the day at BHS.

When asked if the long flight and the tough opener had played their part in his performance, he replied: ?Half and half?.

?I think the rest day helped me recover from the long game, but the jet-lag began to kick in as well. It can take a few days to get back right again and this guy isn?t the sort of player you want to be meeting.

?He?s a great player and probably one of the top four toughest opponents to play against.?

The opening game featured some punishingly-long rallies which both players cut off at various times with either improbable drops from the back (Shabana) or fierce low drives into the nick (White).

Shabana came back from 4-1 down to claim it 11-8 while White fought back from 5-1 to edge the second 11-9.

White, as he has been known to do, lost his head somewhat in the third, taking less than six minutes to go down 11-2 although made more of a fist of it in the fourth ? but only after going behind 5-0.

Shabana was forced to work hard to finish off White but eventually did so 11-6 to claim his spot in the final eight against James Willstrop.

The giant Englishman had to overcome a back problem as well as a dogged, if error-prone, Graham Ryding to book his place against the world champion.

Willstrop took 48 minutes to beat the diminutive Canadian 11-9, 11-7, 11-9 with his biggest problem coming from his own body rather than an opponent who mixed great agility with an uncanny knack of needlessly hitting the tin at least four of five times every game.

The 6ft 5ins favourite raced to a 10-4 lead but then began clutching his back and then was almost constantly grimacing as Ryding pulled it back to 10-9.

Willstrop looked delighted to prevail 11-9 and then rushed for a three-minute injury time-out.

He returned looking more comfortable and batted off the little Canadian without ever really looking in danger.

?It just seized up, it?s never really happened like that before,? said Willstrop afterwards.

?Sometimes I get that in the mornings but not after a really good warm-up. It wasn?t that I pulled it exactly, it was just a bit tight and was restricting my movement a little bit.

?It felt better as time went on and now I just have to get to the physio and make sure I look after it properly before the next game.

?I need to be right because I am going to have to step it up to have a chance against Shabana,? he added with somewhat of an understatement.