Simpson striving for consistency after World Champs exit

Channel
Guernsey
Chris Simpson
Squash
Tuesday 12 December 2017 at 1:08pm

Credit: PSA World Tour

Chris Simpson says he is still lacking consistency after going out of the World Championships in Manchester in round two.

The Guernsey squash star beat England’s Nathan Lake in straight games in the first round.

But he could not get past Egyptian sixth seed Marwan ElShorbagy as the world number five took their second round clash in four, 11-9, 11-7, 8-11, 11-6.

Simpson has dropped to 44 in the world, from a career high of 20, after missing much of 2017 following hip surgery.

He heads to New York next for the Tournament of Champions from 18-25 January 2018.

I felt like I was playing well enough to win the match, it’s just a few decisions here and there. It was nice to play well and get through the first round comfortably, and perform well yesterday. I don’t quite have the consistency yet post-surgery that I had beforehand. If I look at what I’ve been able to do training wise and my schedule that I’ve had since coming back there’s no surprise in that really. I’ve played far more than I would have liked to and haven’t had anywhere near the amount of training that I would have like to. I had to play as many tournaments as I could to stop my ranking from really dropping very suddenly through not having enough tournaments on. That was a little bit of a necessary evil and hopefully in the second half of the season I can plan better and try to peak for tournaments.