Greg Lobban targets lift into world top 20 as squash resumes in 2021
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'Hard financially' to survive as squash partners
Scotland number one Greg Lobban says breaking into the world squash top 20 is his target in what will be "a big year".
The sport was suspended 12 months ago because of Covid-19 and the 28-year-old only played a handful of tournaments towards the end of 2020.
This month's CIB Black Ball Squash Open in Egypt will be the PSA World Tour's first event of 2021.
"I got very close by getting to 21st before the tour froze," Lobban said.
"Reaching the top 20 is something I wanted to do last year, so this is a good year for me to grab a bit of momentum. Hopefully things start to ease around the world and we will be able to compete as normal."
Invernessian Lobban lives in an all-squash household - with his Australian wife, Donna, ranked 22nd in the women's world rankings - and he admits the financial impact of the lack of tournaments has been "particularly hard".
"Neither of us are earning through tournaments, which is a large part of our incomes, so that has been tough," he told 大象传媒 Scotland.
"But we have been lucky that we are both ranked high enough to enter these tournaments when a lot of professional squash players haven't had the luxury to do that.
"As squash players, we are used to not having tonnes of money, so we get very good at getting by with what we have got and making the best of that."
Donna, who is also competing in Egypt, added: "We are lucky that we have an elite sportsperson exemption to be able to train and we are probably getting on court half as much as we usually would be while having to do the rest of our training in the living-room or outside.
"Usually we would always have a tournament just around the corner, but we have been having month after month where we actually don't know when the next one is. That uncertainty is the hard part."