Jan Koukal Makes History By Playing His 25th PSA Event Of 2011
by Howard Harding
21 December 2011 - When Jan Koukal steps onto a court at Squash Club Praha this week in a bid to win the inaugural PSA Challenger 5 SynotTip Open in his home city Prague, the Czech champion will make squash history by competing in his 25th PSA World Tour event of the year.
The 28-year-old world No52 began his remarkable 2011 campaign in New York in the third week of January when he attempted to qualify for the JP Morgan Tournament of Champions, the first PSA World Series event of the year.
Koukal went on to play in five further Tour events in the USA over the next two months before moving on to Canada, Hong Kong, Brazil, Paraguay, Argentina, Colombia, Spain, Netherlands, Kuwait and Slovakia before returning home to round off the year in the city of his birth.
During the historic journey, Koukal picked up his 18th Tour title at the Regatas Resistencia Open in Argentina, and reached his 32nd final earlier this month at the Imet Open in Bratislava.
And the highest-ranked Czech player of all-time still found time to represent his country for the seventh year in the European Team Championships in Finland - and bring his haul of Czech Republic national titles to 12 in April.
What motivates the sport's most prolific competitor to maintain such a schedule? "It's pretty simple actually - I really enjoy playing squash and competing," Koukal responded.
"I don't really have much chance to train in Prague, so I'd rather play matches in tournaments. I pick tournaments in nice places - I enjoy going to most of them. And as squash is my job, thanks to my sponsors, I don't see a reason to play just one tournament a month or so - I would rather play every week, like tennis players, if that was possible!"
"In fact, I would have played a few more if I hadn't had to pull out of Malaysia and Australia due to injury!
"I had a pretty unlucky start to the year when I went to the US for bunch of tournaments and got bronchitis as soon as I got to New York for the ToC - and it took a while to get rid of it.
"But overall, my year was not too bad: I've managed to reach eight finals so far, even only winning one of them. I can't complain."
But can Koukal, who joined the Professional Squash Association in 2000 and reached a career-high 39 in 2005, keep up this arduous schedule?
"I'm definitely planning to keep it up next year and if 25 is the number for 2011, I'm sure I can beat that easily if i actually focus on it!
"I'm sure my body can handle it, even though it's tough some time. I just hope there are enough tournaments which I can connect without flying all around the world for one event at time."
Koukal, whilst proud of his 12 national titles, has his eyes on further domestic success in the sport: "It's pretty unique I guess, as I'm still only 28 and I believe I have plenty left in me still. First I just wanted to win the national title, then retain it. But once I got to three or four, I was hoping five ... and at seven, I started believing in 10!
"I lost once after that, but I'm back on track again now. The competition here in Czech is getting tougher every year, so I take it year by year - and I'm now just curious about how many more titles I can manage to add from now on."
When asked about his remaining ambitions in squash, Koukal replied: "I just enjoy playing this sport - I love the life-style, competing, travelling, meeting people and just getting to experience things and places I wouldn't even have dreamed of without squash.
"I'm not too focused on rankings, as playing this many tournaments kind of kills it. I just focus on tournaments.
"I think I play squash a little differently from the others - and I just treat the circuit and my life on the tour the same."
PSA CEO Alex Gough paid tribute to Koukal's achievement: "We are always talking about how many tournaments a player can play on the circuit as squash is such a tough sport. What Jan has achieved this year is remarkable and should be inspiring to his peers on the Tour.
"We wish him the best of luck for 2012 and hope that he can keep it up!" added the former world No5.
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