In existing methods, full-state feedback is required for the position tracking of single-rod Electro Hydrostatic Actuators (EHAs). Measuring a full state is not always possible because of cost and space limitations. Furthermore, measurement noise from pressure sensors may degrade the control performance. We propose an observer-based nonlinear position control with nonlinear coordinate transformation while only using position measurement to improve the position tracking of single-rod EHAs. The proposed method comprises a position controller and an observer. We propose a nonlinear coordinate transform for the controller design. The desired force is designed for the position tracking and boundedness of the internal state. The position controller is designed to track the desired state variables for the EHAs. Meanwhile, a nonlinear observer is proposed in order to estimate a full state using only the position measurement. The stability of the closed-loop system is investigated via an input-to-state stability property. The performance of the proposed method is validated via both simulations and experiments.