Tom Richards Happy With Consistency Over 2018-2019 Season

As we reach the end of another season, the PSA’s Matt Coles has been talking to the stars of the PSA World Tour about their 2018/19 campaigns. Here he catches up with England’s Tom Richards.
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This season, Tom Richards improved his ranking by 10 places, and moved into the top 20 at one point, for the first time since August 2013.

The Englishman admitted that has been happy with his consistency throughout the season, and that he is already looking forward to 2019-20.

“Overall I’ve been happy with my performances this season, being consistent and beating some highly ranked players along the way,’ he said.

“Staying injury free has played a big part in this and looking ahead I feel I’ve created a good platform to push on further next season.”

Along with the consistency came some highlights, including reaching the quarter finals of both the Canada Cup and the Channel VAS Championships.

Richards says that the latter of those was his best performance of the season, not just for on-court effort.

“Making the quarter finals at the Channel VAS was a highlight for me,” Richards explained.

“Being at my home club meant that I had friends and family there to support me, which is rare when touring the world, but also to beat two quality opponents in Borja Golan and Omar Mosaad was very pleasing.”

Going into the off-season, Richards took some time off to relax before getting into his pre-season training routine.

He knows that it is the slight changes that are needed to push himself even higher in the game.

“After a few weeks I get back in to training and then continue to work hard at several aspects of my game to try and push the top players,” the Englishman explained.

“At this level it’s more about making small improvements to many areas of your game rather than making drastic changes.”

Despite knowing what he wants, and needs to do, the Englishman explained what his main goals were, and that if they came off, his ranking would improve even more.

“I don’t set ranking targets as I believe if you beat higher ranked players then the rest will take care of itself,” he explained.

“So my main goals are to beat top eight ranked players, win at least one PSA title and most importantly to stay healthy.”

“If I achieve that then I believe I will challenge the top players consistently.”

Keep a look out for the next player’s review of the 2018-19 season in the coming days, as Malaysia’s Low Wee Wern reviews her campaign.