Liam Pitchford

Career

In 2009, Liam won his first British Home Countries Championship while playing for the Aarhus BTK club in the Danish top-flight league. In 2010 he added two medals to his collection by winning the silver in the team’s category alongside a bronze medal in the doubles at the Commonwealth games.

By this time, he had moved to FC Tegernheim, a second-division German club from where he made the jump to Germany’s top division, the Bundesliga, as part of a move to the TTF Liebherr Ochsenhausen ping pong club in 2011.

In the same year, Pitchford showed the world he could beat the ninth-ranked player back then, Vladimir Samsonov. 2012 also saw Liam take the game to the World junior number three player Wu Jiaji, a feat which put him at the top of the English rankings. This was backed by the fact that he was the highest-ranking British player on the ITTF rankings at position 171.

At the time, 171 was also the third-highest ranking achieved by a British player. This was one of the reasons he made the Great Britain team for the 2012 Olympics hosted in his home country. While he didn’t take home any medals from the global event, he placed 9th alongside other countrymen in the team event.

Notably, while this was his first Olympics, it certainly wasn’t his last.

By July 2014, TTF Liebherr Ochsenhausen had seen enough quality in him to want to extend his contract and add three more years. In the same year, his participation in the British team allowed them to qualify for the World Team Championships in Japan.

He also represented his country at the 2014 Glasgow Commonwealth games, where he got silver in the team competition. His participation in the doubles event got him another silver medal, while he only managed a bronze in the men’s singles.

2014 also marks the first year Liam Pitchford broke into the world’s top 50 rankings earning a 44th-place position near the end of the year.

In 2015 he got up to the round of 32 in the World Table Tennis Championships in the event that saw him beat heavy hitters like Kalinikos Kreanga and Tiago Apolonia. By then, Kreanga had been a two-time World Cup runner-up, while Apolonia was ranked 20th worldwide.

In 2016 the England team consisted of Pitchford, Sam walker, and Paul Drinkhall and won bronze at the Malaysia World Team Championships, a feat that had proved impossible for the country since 1983. Liam Pitchford also participated in the Rio Olympics held later that year, reaching the round of 32 in the singles event.

He got as far as the quarterfinals in the team event alongside teammates Sam Walker and Paul Drinkhall. 2017 saw him win India’s Ultimate Table Tennis League.

As for 2018, he was part of the English squad that won bronze in the ITTF Team World Cup. He would also win the Australian Commonwealth games doubles segment, get silver in the mixed doubles, and bronze in the team competition.

2018 was also the year Liam beat Ma Long, widely considered one of the game’s greatest players of all time, with an 89%-win rate to date. That said, he didn’t make it past Long’s teammate Ma Te.

In the following year, Liam made it as far as the round of 16 in the Austrian open. He followed up in 2020 with quite a successful campaign at the Qatar open that saw him lose a final to the current highest-ranking player Fan Zhendong.

Pitchford and teammate Paul Drinkhall also made it to the doubles final before losing to the Chinese team’s Ma Long and Xu Xin duo.

As for the 2020 Olympics held in 2021, it was a bit of a disappointment, with Pitchford ending up 17th for the second such tournament in a row in the men’s singles. However, one reason this may have happened was an injury he picked up earlier in the year.

It’s also worth noting that he was struggling with his mental health at this time, something that he’d experienced on and off since 2016.

2022 has seen Pitchford Commonwealth doubles title with Paul Drinkhall. He’s also gotten silver, with the only person he had left to beat being India’s Sharath Kamal Achanta. Finally, with teammates Sam Walker, Drinkhall, and 23-year-old Tom Jarvis, he won the bronze medal at the event as well.

At the end of December 2022, he was ranked 24th in the world, although he got as high as 13th place at the beginning of the year. Also, his success on the court has translated into other areas of his life, with the athlete worth an estimated $5 million, which is pretty decent for a 29-year-old.

Career Achievements

Regarding career achievements, Liam has quite a few to his name, including his three qualifications for the Olympics. Notably, he hasn’t returned from any of these tournaments with a medal. However, given his age, he should have at least one more stab at the Olympics before he retires.

He’s also held the spot for the highest-ranked British player for a couple of years. The fact that he’s also been ranked 12th in the world at some point in 2019 is also proof of his pedigree as a ping-pong player.

There’s also the matter of the several medals he’s collected over the years in singles, doubles, and team events.

Medal Records

By the end of 2022, Liam Pitchford had 13 medals to his name. Six are bronze, five are silver, and two are gold, as listed below:

• Commonwealth Games Delhi – men’s doubles bronze – 2010
• Commonwealth Games Glasgow – men’s singles bronze – 2014
• World Championships Kuala Lumpur – team bronze – 2016
• Commonwealth Games Gold Coast – team bronze – 2018
• World Cup London – team bronze – 2018
• Commonwealth Games Birmingham – men’s team bronze – 2022
• Commonwealth Games Delhi – team silver – 2010
• Commonwealth Games Glasgow – team silver – 2014
• Commonwealth Games Glasgow – mixed doubles silver – 2014
• Commonwealth Games Gold Coast – mixed doubles silver – 2018
• Commonwealth Games Birmingham – men’s singles silver – 2022
• Commonwealth Games Gold Coast – men’s doubles gold – 2018
• Commonwealth Games Birmingham – men’s doubles gold – 2022

Social Websites

Pitchford’s socials include profiles on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, with a huge following in some of them. On Instagram, for instance, he has over 29,000 followers, and you can join them by following @liam_pitchford93. On Twitter, his profile is @liampitchford, while on Facebook, it’s Liam Pitchford with a verified check mark next to it.