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PSA PLAYER BIOGRAPHY Name: Thierry Lincou Country: France Date of Birth: 2 April 1976 Height: 1.81m Place of Birth: Reunion Island Place of Residence: Paris/Marseilles Current World Ranking (Jan 05): 1 Highest World Ranking (Jan 05): 1 National Ranking: 1 PSA Titles: 13 PSA Final Appearances: 25 |
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Thierry Lincou, the 28-year-old from Marseille, enjoyed a breakthrough year in 2003. With a consistency which left his rivals in the shade, Lincou reached the semi-finals in nine successive events on the PSA Tour – and went on to contest five finals. His appearance in the 2003 World Open final in Lahore, Pakistan, in December ensured his position as No1 in the first Dunlop PSA World Rankings published in 2004. When Lincou first burst into the world top ten in April 2000, he overtook his illustrious predecessor Julien Bonetat as the highest-ranked Frenchman of all time. Now he is the country’s first ever world No1. Lincou joined the PSA in 1994 after reaching the semi-finals of the World Junior Championships in New Zealand in August. He claimed his first PSA Tour title, the International Tirolean Championships in Austria, in October 96. In 2000, Thierry led France to their first appearance in the men’s European Team Championships’ final, where they lost out to defending champions England. For the next four years, Lincou steered France to the finals, against England, but each time came away as runners-up. The breakthrough came in October 2003, when the Lincou-led French squad achieved a historic first-ever win over England in the semi-finals of the World Team Championships in Austria to reach the finals for the first time. Disaster struck in 2001 when he fell backwards off a weights machine in a gym in April and fractured his right hand trying to break his fall. The injury to his racket hand enforced a four-month lay-off – “but the time off-court gave me a chance to look at my game again and build up my basic fitness,” Lincou said later. Thierry reached his first Super Series final in August 2001 when he stunned the world by beating Peter Nicol, the world No1 and world champion, in the first round of the Cathay Pacific Hong Kong Open. Unseeded, Lincou went on to meet British Open champion David Palmer in the final, losing in straight games to the in-form Australian. Meanwhile, Thierry had endeared himself to the hosts after revealing that his mother Luk Lan-sun was Chinese. Her parents fled China during last century’s Communist revolution and set up home in the Reunion Islands in the Pacific, where she and later Thierry himself were born. “I would love to go back,” Lincou told the South China Morning Post at the time. “I’ve got Chinese roots and blood. My mother does not know any Chinese. I don’t know any either – but I hope to learn some.” Despite being No1 in the world, Lincou’s 2004 campaign got off to an unsettling start, with an ankle injury preventing him from competing in the Dayton Open in the USA. First round losses in the Kuwait Open and Bermuda Open led to the first Super Series event of the year in Qatar where Thierry avenged his loss to Amr Shabana in December’s World Open final in Pakistan. After beating the Egyptian in the PSA Masters quarter-finals, Lincou lost to the eventual champion Peter Nicol in the semis. But his long-awaited PSA title success was to come in the Super Series Finals in London in May. After scoring qualifying victories over Joe Kneipp and Lee Beachill, Lincou went on to beat England’s surprise semi-finalist Nick Matthew, then again Joe Kneipp 10-11 11-9 11-2 11-1 in the final of the first event to use the PSA’s new PAR-to-11 scoring system. Lincou maintained this momentum on the next event on the PSA Tour, the Hong Kong Open, where he upset second seed Lee Beachill to reach the final where he beat another Englishman Nick Matthew. Remarkable, despite winning the Super Series Finals event earlier, this was Thierry's first Super Series ranking event triumph. Already making up for his poor start in the year, Lincou was now in overdrive and added a further PSA title to his collection by winning the Canadian Classic in Toronto (beating home hero Jonathon Power in the final). Seeded to reach the World Open final in Qatar in December, Lincou did just that – but went one better by beating top seed Lee Beachill to become world champion for the first time. He was justly rewarded by a return to number one in the January 2005 Dunlop PSA world rankings. After attending to domestic duties in France with an eight win in the French National Championships, Thierry returned to PSA matters in February's Tournament of Championships in New York. He duly reached the final – marking the 25th of his career – but he faced an in-form Anthony Ricketts who ultimately clinched the title in his first win over the Frenchman in more than two years. |
THIERRY LINCOU TOURNAMENT SUCCESSES: Feb 05 Runner-up *Tournament of Champions
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