Lee Looking To Push On Under Guidance Of Former World Champ David Palmer

England’s Charlie Lee hopes that the work he has been putting in with the legendary Aussie David Palmer during the off season will hold him in good stead for the upcoming season.

Lee enjoyed a fruitful 2022-23 campaign, rising to a career high of World No.46 after producing several quality performances to announce himself as a serious threat to the world’s top 30 players.

The 25-year-old captured back-to-back Challenger 10 titles earlier this year in Philadelphia and Toronto before impressively reaching the quarter finals of the Optasia Championships Gold event from a wildcard position, beating Raphael Kandra and former World No.1 Mohamed ElShorbagy en route.

Lee has recently started working with former World Champion and World No.1 David Palmer over at Cornell University in New York amongst other players such as Saurav Ghosal and Ramit Tandon. Palmer was renowned for his mental and physical toughness on court, traits that Lee is looking to translate to his own game.

We caught up with the Englishman to discuss last season, how working with Palmer is going and his ambitions for the upcoming season:

Q. How would you sum up your 22-23 season?

CL – “I had a really good second half of the season for sure. The first half started quite slowly. I had a few near misses, and a few performances where things weren’t quite coming together. After not playing much in the early part of 2023 in February and March, I picked up a couple of titles in a row and felt like I was really getting some momentum.

“Then obviously Optasia went really well after that, so I started to feel like I was pushing into the bigger events and into the top 50, which was a big goal of mine for a long time and that took quite a lot of energy to achieve.”

Q. It was a huge event for you at the Optasia Championships – what was that like for you and how much motivation has that given you to push on further?

CL – “Optasia was a massive event for me. I felt like it was a bit of a breakthrough, beating a couple of highly ranked players and I got the two biggest wins of my career in a row in the same tournament. I feel like those are performances that I knew I was capable of.

“I felt like I was dipping in and out of a few big events, like Hong Kong and New Zealand last year, and you’re sort of thrown in at the deep end and you don’t know when your next opportunity is going to be at an event like that, so there’s a lot of pressure on it. It was nice to convert that opportunity and get a feel for what it’s like to go deeper in a big event amongst big players, which hopefully I’m getting more used to and it can become a regular thing.”

Q. You’ve been working with former World Champion and World No.1 David Palmer – how much of an influence has he had on you already?

“I’ve really enjoyed the first bit of time working with David in the early part of this year. I think the way he played was extremely mentally tough and physically tough and those are areas of my game that he’s definitely had a big influence on, and a lot of that is tied into the technical side of things. It’s been great so far.

“This summer I was there for a large part of July and there are plenty of other good players there as well. So as a group, we were training very hard and he was certainly putting us through our paces. There were plenty of gruelling physical sessions alongside a lot of time spent on court working on my whole game and hopefully that will put me in good stead for the season ahead. Consistency is something that I’m really looking for and with backing up those physical sessions, that gives me a lot of confidence going into tournaments where I’m looking to go deep into them against high-quality opponents. So I’m really looking forward to learning more.”

Q. What does a successful 23/24 season look like for you?

“I’ve outlined some goals for myself and how they feed into my long-term goals. I don’t think that this season’s necessarily about putting too much pressure on in terms of getting to a certain ranking. I think now I’m in the Platinum events, I obviously want to take those opportunities to keep beating the players that are in front of me. I want to keep scoring wins in those events and win tournaments at a higher level than I have previously.

“The main thing as well is keeping that consistency. Last season, I managed to stay injury free and play every tournament I entered so for me, that was brilliant and I’m feeling great about doing that again as we go forward into the new season.”