#9 – Paul Drinkhall: England’s No.1 (Part 2)

The Expert Table Tennis Podcast

For as long as I can remember Paul Drinkhall has been the table tennis player us English have put our hopes on for international success. Today, he joins me on The Expert Table Tennis Podcast to talk about life as a professional table tennis player.

Paul entered the senior game in 2009 and I think it’s fair to say he plateaued for a few years, hovering around the #100 world ranking level. In 2013, he had a serious hip injured but recovered quickly and by April 2014 won his first major event, the Spanish Open. Since then he has been on a hot streak, beating a number of highly ranked players and getting through to the final stages in a number of big competitions.

In this episode, the second part of my interview with Paul, we learn a bit more about the last seven years for Paul, his experiences playing at a number of different clubs in Europe, and how he got to where he is now – a world ranking of #41 and playing the best table tennis of his career so far.

In this episode you’ll learn:

• How Paul managed to beat the plateau by discovering his own game/style.
• About his recover from the hip injury in 2013.
• The problems with over practicing.
• His thought on his most recent performances and current level.
• What he thinks of the new plastic balls.
• How he is getting on after moving from Butterfly to Tibhar.
• Why he believes more players should give Evolution MX-P rubbers a try.
• Which team he is playing for next season.
• How he is planning to prepare for Rio 2016 and beyond.
• What his long-term goals are for his table tennis playing career.
• How he is doing as a new parent.
• Jo’s future plans for her table tennis career.
• Some of his ideas for life after retiring from international competition (which is a long way off).

Links from this episode:

• Spanish Open 2014 Results
• Werner Schlager
• Paul vs Ovtcharov at Russian Open
• Tibhar Evolution MX-P
• Bribar Table Tennis
• Rio 2016
• ACBB (Paul’s team for next season)
• Paul Drinkhall on Facebook
• Paul Drinkhall on Twitter

Thanks for listening!

Thank you so much for joining us. I really hope you enjoyed the show.

As we are a fairly new podcast it would really help us out if you could go and leave us an honest review on iTunes. It’s very simple to do and will help us to get noticed in the crowded world of podcasting.

A big thank you to Paul Drinkhall for joining me for the last two episodes. I’ll have a new guest on the show next week.

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