DOHA (Qatar): Qatar’s Syed Azlan Amjad is aiming to make rapid strides in the Professional Squash Association (PSA) rankings by the end of this year while looking for yet another good showing at the upcoming PSA World Tour event that starts here on November 1.
Amjad along world No.27 Abdulla Al Tamimi are the two Qatari players who will be in action at the week-long Qatar Classic tournament which begins at the Khalifa International Tennis and Squash Complex.
The event is contested by a host of former world champions and former world No.1’s and also the current top rank player on the PSA computer.
Amjad, who made history last year by advancing to the PSA World Championship second round, is hoping for a good show at the home event which is played under the ‘bio bubble’ conditions.
The 24-year-old, a product of the prestigious Aspire Academy Qatar sounded optimistic ahead of the
tournament.
“Hopefully, I can perform to my best and get the results that I want,” Amjad told www.KhelUpdates.com
“The tournament is one of the biggest as all the top players are coming from the world champion to from top one ranked to the top 48. It’ll be a challenging tournament,” he added.
Last year, history was made at the Khalifa Tennis and Squash Centre when two Qataris made it into the second round of the 2019 Men’s World Championships in the Qatari capital.
Tamimi overturned the seedings to topple Frenchman Gregoire Marche, while wild card Amjad also made it to the next round after Iker Pajares was forced to concede the match for opponent inflicted injury.
Amjad has inched his way to top
Having picked up a few PSA ranking points from the few international events held this year Amjad has inched his way to the top and is in the process of moving into double digit rank.
“Hopefully I will reach under-100 by end of the year since I’ve played two tournaments in Qatar and one of this is one of the bigger tournaments so I’ll gain a lot of points from this tournament (Qatar Classic) and there’s another one coming in December, in which I will also be able to get some points from there and I think I’ll reach by the end of this year I’ll be below 100,” said Amjad.
Amjad said in 2022 he should be having double digit rank against his name.
“My goal for this yearis to be to be under-100 in the world, so I’m trying to achieve that for this year and hopefully next year when we have more events around the world and we can travel and get back to pre-Covid times and play in more tournaments I will be able to move ahead in the rankings.”
Amjad is happy that he could train and maintain his fitness levels during the last few months when there were restrictions imposed on playing or practicing sports in Qatar on account of corona virus pandemic.
For that he said he is grateful to his coaches and officials at Aspire Academy for drawing out a home plan for him.
“We had equipment delivered to us from Aspire Academy equipment where you could do sessions on it like a cardio session and then we had different plans.”
“We’d have live sessions on zoom with our coaches on our fitness. It was more fitness-based training to keep fit doing cardio workouts. I was doing bikes then the second day I was running outside my house. I used to do some circuit training with my fitness coach so we had a variety of fitness program going on when coronavirus first hit Qatar because everybody was in a lockdown and you were not allowed to go and train at any facilities so we had to do it at our home and Aspire Academy played fa big role in providing us with the equipment that we needed and the plan that was really good,” he added.
‘Bio bubble won’t have much effect‘
Amjad said the ‘bio bubble’ method followed during the Qatar Classic tournament will not have much effect on the players mental state as they have been following a strict discipline in terms of diet, sleep and the people they met during events.
“There’s not much of a difference for professional players even before Covid came into the picture. We’ve been very strict and discipline throughout the tournament. So, this restriction will help us to be even more disciplined and it will help us to be more focused. We have been more focused even without corona situation. We eat proper food and stayed in the room and we did not go out late night. It’s not much of a big difference for professional players that’s what they usually do on tour,” said Amjad.
