Gav’s sweet 16
Rumgay hails best-ever finish on international tour
Gavin Rumgay Gavin Rumgay this week celebrated his best-ever finish on the International Table Tennis Federation tour.
That feat was achieved when the 32-year-old Perth professional played his way to the last 16 of the Nigeria Open before eventually losing to Omar Assar of Egypt.
“It’s always a great feeling when you win any match on the professional tour but it was a dream come true to reach the last 16,” Rumgay told the Perthshire Advertiser
“Omar is one of these hardened pros that is very tough to win against. He is the Egyptian number one and they have five players who do very well professionally.
“He had problems with my service and receive of serve, so I could attack first in the rallies so many times. He won a pivotal 13-11 game at one set all that relaxed him for sure.
“Top players play the big points so well. They up their game and I have to get used to that and respond. It finished 4/2, which was close, but I still have more to come this season I’m sure.
“I’m soon to be 33 but there is no sign of me slowing down. I used to hate the word experience but now I feel that is making me turn into a very ruthless professional.”
Further success is on Rumgay’s radar as the world ranking system prepares for a change at the turn of next year. He is up for the challenge.
Rumgay explained: “Table Tennis will move into a new world ranking format in January 2018 — very similar to tennis — where the ITTF will take your best seven results during the season. Provisionally on this new system, I am sitting at a career high of 177 in the world.
“I need to accumulate more points between now and in 2018 to jump up even higher. It’s not bad considering there are 223 countries worldwide that are playing table tennis.
“Being top 150 in the world would see me being ranked in the top eight individually for the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games next year.”
More imminently, Rumgay has been in action at the Asarel Bulgaria Open and his good form continued with a qualifying group stage win over Ukrainian Oleksandr Tymofieiev.
But he went on to be defeated 4-2 by French national team player Romain Lorentz.
Rumgay has also been playing in the doubles competition with England’s Paul Drinkhall. They lost out to Indian pair Harmeet Desai and Arjun Ghosh.