by Simon Daish
Georgina Póta as of January 2017 is the highest ranked Hungarian female player in the ITTF World Rankings table, occupying position no.34 and heads into the first ITTF World Tour competition of 2017 as the no.6 seed for the Women’s Singles category.
There are three Hungarian players who have won ITTF World Tour Women’s Singles gold medals, one of whom is Georgina Póta who triumphed at the 2014 Belgium Open (Flanders Open) and 2016 Belgium Open (Flanders Open) following victories over Megumi Abe and Yui Hamamoto respectively.
However, the Hungarian Open is yet to witness a home player win a Women’s Singles title and Georgina Póta is heading into the event looking to give the home crowd plenty to cheer about at the tournament in Budapest.
“I would like to be in the quarter-finals because I’m seeded as sixth. I know it will be difficult because many good players will come and some of them will be from China… I hope I will get a good draw and play good matches. I would like to play as many matches as possible and make the Hungarian spectators happy. For the doubles with Matilda (Ekholm) the main goal is to reach the semi-finals and once there, of course it would be nice to win the tournament”, Georgina Póta.
2016 saw Póta endure a mixed international campaign, winning silverware on the ITTF World Tour circuit and representing Hungary at Rio 2016 but also missing out on her aim of achieving a Women’s Singles medal in front of her home fans at the Liebherr 2016 European Championships.
Póta now has her eyes firmly set on the year of Table Tennis ahead and has outlined her next set of targets to aim for in the near future.
“I was disappointed that I couldn’t make my biggest dream come true to win a medal in the singles event at the European Championships. Some tournaments I played pretty well, I won the 2016 Belgium Open singles and doubles events and won the doubles title at the 2016 Czech Open with Matilda (Ekholm). I was also very happy to play at the 2016 (Women’s) World Cup in the USA…
… I would like to improve my world ranking and I’m going to try to qualify for the Grand Finals in the doubles and singles events. My biggest goal is to win a medal in the singles event at the European Championships but this year only the team event will be held”, Georgina Póta.