by Simon Daish
Stefan Fegerl made his World Championships debut at Zagreb 2007 and has since made appearances at the event at Yokohama 2009, Rotterdam 2011, Paris 2013 and Suzhou 2015.
Arguably Stefan Fegerl’s strongest campaign at the World Championships came in 2015 where he secured a top 32 finish, but holding 21st position in the ITTF World Rankings table for April 2017 the Austrian competitor will be aiming to reach a new personal best finish at the 2017 competition in Düsseldorf.
With the upcoming World Championships to be hosted in the German city of Düsseldorf, Stefan Fegerl could well expect to see a large fan base turnout in his favour and that is not just down to the fact that Austria is one of the host nation’s neighbouring countries.
For the past season Stefan Fegerl has been assisting Borussia Düsseldorf in their 2016-2017 Bundesliga campaign, and it has proven to be a fairly strong season so far with the team through to the end of season play offs at the time of writing.
The other Austrian male competitor heading to the upcoming Liebherr 2017 World Championships who plays his club table tennis in Germany is Daniel Habesohn and the Post SV Mühlhausen player will be joined by fellow compatriots Robert Gardos, Chen Weixing and Andreas Levenko on the world stage in Düsseldorf.
Austrian table tennis has been prospering in recent years and 2015 in particular proved to be a wonderful year for the country as the men’s team not only managed a bronze medal finish at the 2015 European Games in Baku but also went on to lift the trophy at the Liebherr 2015 European Championships in Ekaterinburg.
Now the question moving into the Liebherr 2017 World Championships is whether an Austrian contestant can progress to the latter stages of the individuals events or not.
While he may not be considered as one of the favourites to claim the Men’s Singles crown in Düsseldorf, Stefan Fegerl has proven throughout his career that he most certainly holds enough talent to compete with the world’s best players and with the backing of the Düsseldorf crowd there is a decent possibility that the 28-year-old could well put in a strong outing at the tournament.
