Tom Jarvis: New national table tennis champion targets Commonwealth Games success
- Published
Tom Jarvis helped England win a bronze at the 2018 Team World Cup
Tom Jarvis is targeting Commonwealth Games success in Birmingham after becoming national table tennis singles champion for the first time.
The 22-year-old from Skegness beat Sam Walker 4-2 at the University of Nottingham to take the title.
And Jarvis completed a double by teaming up with Walker for victory in the men's doubles final.
"The next big thing for us is the Commonwealths in the summer," he told BBC Radio Lincolnshire.
"I've got to speak to the national coach to see what's best to do to prepare for that.
"It's in England so it'll be a special one for the team, so fingers crossed we can get some more gold medals there."
His triumph ended a decade-long run in which the title was won by Liam Pitchford or Paul Drinkhall, neither of whom took part in the singles this year.
Jarvis has been playing since childhood but moved to Sweden when he was 16 to further his career.
He was a Great Britain reserve at the 2016 Rio Olympics, and also missed out on the 2018 Commonwealth Games despite helping England to a bronze medal at the Team World Cup earlier that year.
Jarvis was coached during the championships by his father, David, and said: "The funny thing is he doesn't even try and talk to me about table tennis (during matches), we just have a chat in the corner and it calms me down."
He added: "We train five or six hours every day so a lot of hard work has gone into it over the last 15 years - since I was about eight years old, every day has been table tennis and table tennis. There haven't been many days off."
David Jarvis believes his son reached "another level" in taking the title and can now go forward with confidence as he looks to improve his world singles ranking, currently 177, and compete in Birmingham.
"The team have got to come together and perform - it'll be great and because it's in the UK, it's a car ride and hotel (for us) rather than a flight. It's going to be good for the UK to have the Commonwealths here," he said.