by Simon Daish
Daniel Habesohn made the short trip from Austria to the German city of Düsseldorf for the World Championships and the 30-year-old player praised the tournament organisers for putting on a good show.
“It is always a pleasure to play in such a big event like the World Championships. The Germans did a great job and the 2017 World Championships were very well organised. The playing conditions were great as well!”, Daniel Habesohn.
The draw for the Men’s Singles competition presented 79th seed Habesohn with a difficult opening match, with the Austrian representative beginning his campaign with a daunting tie against Japan’s Kenta Matsudaira, who had been named as the 15th seeded player for the tournament.
However, a remarkable performance saw Habesohn recover from two games down before pulling off a tremendous victory over Matsudaira across seven games (7-11, 11-13, 11-6, 12-10, 13-11, 7-11, 11-8).
“In the Men’s Singles I think I performed very well, but I was a bit unlucky with the draw after I beat Matsudaira, because I got a good young Chinese player (Lin Gaoyuan) in the next round so the draw got even harder instead of getting easier…
… I was very happy with the victory against Matsudaira. He is a very good player and it is always nice to beat players like him. Especially for me, because I had in the last one and a half years a lot of injuries and sickness that handicapped me in practice. I played quite good in the German league, but internationally I had a bad time. I lost too many matches which I should have won. So the victory against Matsudaira gives me a lot of self-confidence to hopefully play better in the coming season than the last one”, Daniel Habesohn.
Alongside his international career Daniel Habesohn is also a key player at club level for German Bundesliga side Post SV Mühlhausen.
Recently Post SV Mühlhausen won the TT Intercup for the sixth consecutive year, which means that Austria’s Habesohn star has now won three of Europe’s most prestigious club trophies and is now hoping to climb up the ITTF World Rankings table in the year ahead.
“I have just won the Intercup with my club Mühlhausen and so I have completed my collection to collect all the club titles in Europe. In 2008 I won the Champions League with SVS Niederössterreich, the 2015-2016 season I won the ETTU Cup with Weinviertel Niederössterreich and yesterday the 2016-2017 Intercup to complete it… My goal for 2017-2018 is to climb up the World Rankings again and move into the top 50”, Daniel Habesohn.
