Mozart Men’s Open Preview: Herbert Adjusting To Being Top Seed

The men’s event at the Mozart Open takes place this week in Salzburg, and England’s Simon Herbert will be the top seed for the first time in his career.

The Challenger 5 level competition saw Englishwoman Torrie Malik win her fourth career crown last week. The men’s event takes place this week at the same venue, the Europark Shopping Centre in Salzburg, Austria.

England’s Herbert will be the top seed for the tournament, a position he has not been in before. However, he is going in with the same mindset, and he believes that it is about time he took some more silverware on Tour.

“This will be the first tournament I will top seed. I feel my preparation can’t change much. I just need to be prepared to have some tough matches. The pressure of being top seed is there but I believe I can handle it and push on,” he explained.

“I feel my form is up and down all the time over the last year. I have worked on becoming more consistent with results and I feel I am playing well. I would say I’m in the best shape I have ever been in.

“It is time for me to get another title definitely. I have a good feeling about the tournament. With it being on a glass court, you never know what can happen, but I believe if I get stuck in, I can win. I will definitely have some hard matches as the draw is full of quality players, so I will need to bring consistency to Austria.”

The Englishman reached a career-high of World No.77 earlier this month, and he is looking to keep that rise up the rankings going, to reach the next level in the near future.

“I am very pleased with the progression I have had with my ranking. I have very high expectations and I plan on hitting them; I hope to be in the World Tour events by the start of next season. These are the goals I have set with my coaches [Chris Ryder and Jon Tate]. They are definitely putting a lot of time in with me and I believe I’ll reach top 50 by the end of the year.”

Herbert will be the top seed this week, with Germany’s Yannik Omlor, Israeli No.1 Daniel Poleshchuk and Switzerland’s Yannick Wilhelmi as the other members of the world’s top 100 in action. The latter was the runner-up at this competition last year He will be aiming to go one better this time round in Salzburg.

Robin Gadola will be the second Swiss player in the top five seeds. Colombia’s Andres Herrera, German Valentin Rapp and Englishman Robert Downer making up the rest of the top eight seeds.

Austrian No.1 Aqeel Rehman will be the only home hope in the draw, while Italian Yuri Farneti, Finland’s Miko Aijanen, Spain’s Marc Lopez and New Zealand’s Elijah Thomas will all be their nation’s only representative in the tournament. Liechtenstein’s David Maier will be the wildcard this week in Salzburg.

The event takes place from Wednesday, March 29 to Saturday, April 1 at the Europark in Salzburg, Austria. England’s Simon Herbert will be the top seed for the tournament. Follow the PSA Challenger Tour on Twitter and Facebook for daily updates from the event. Live scores will be available on the PSA World Tour website here.

First Round Draw: Mozart Open (Men’s)
[1] Simon Herbert (ENG) v Ondrej Vorlicek (CZE)
[WC] David Maier (LIE) v [8] Robert Downer (ENG)
[6] Andres Herrera (COL) v Miko Aijanen (FIN)
Yuri Farneti (ITA) v [3] Daniel Poleshchuk (ISR)
[4] Yannick Wilhelmi (SUI) v Elijah Thomas (NZL)
Jakub Solnicky (CZE) v [7] Valentin Rapp (GER)
[5] Robin Gadola (SUI) v Nilo Vidal (ESP)
Aqeel Rehman (AUT) v [2] Yannik Omlor (GER)