ELITE sport has a knack of delivering a knock-out blow just when you think things couldn’t be better. Something Greg Lobban knows only too well.

Last year, the 25-year-old squash player from Inverness won the World Doubles Championships alongside his compatriot Alan Clyne which was not only the best result of his career but also an historic moment for Scottish squash.

However, within the space of a couple of months, Lobban had torn his hamstring, leaving him facing surgery and a considerable period out of the game.

“I was told I was going to be out for six or seven months so that was tough to hear,” he said. “It was the hardest thing I’ve had to deal with in my career and getting through it was, psychologically, very difficult.”

However, the Scot knuckled down and slogged his way through his rehab, getting back on the court earlier this year. Return to competitive action from injury can often be tricky but for Lobban things could not have gone smoother; he won the first three tournaments he played, including back-to-back PSA World Tour titles in New Zealand, before adding another two tournament victories in recent months.

His form has been rewarded in the best possible way with Lobban and his men’s doubles partner, Clyne, becoming the first two squash players to be named in Team Scotland last week for the 2018 Commonwealth Games, which will take place in Australia’s Gold Coast next April. It will be Lobban’s second Commonwealth Games appearance after making his debut at Glasgow 2014.

He admits his early selection makes the next few months a touch less stressful.

“It’s really nice to be selected nice and early – it allows me to be able to plan out the next few months so that I’m peaking for the Games,” he said. “I’ve already sat down with my coaches and mapped out a plan so that’s been great to be able to do that and not have to stress about getting qualifying points.”

It may have been a hard road to get to this point but Lobban says he would not have wanted things to be any different.

“Strangely enough, I wouldn’t change the fact that I got injured,” he said. “I learnt a lot about myself that I would never have known and I learnt to appreciate the human body in a way that I’d never done before.

“I appreciate squash a lot more now too and since getting back playing, if I’m having a bad day on court or things aren’t going well, I think back to that time and tell myself that things could be so much worse.”

Lobban and Clyne head towards next year’s Commonwealth Games with high hopes. Their World Doubles Championships gold last year, which they backed-up with silver this year, illustrates their potential and Lobban says they are fully focused on winning Scotland’s first squash medal since 1998.

“A medal is the big goal,” he said. “We’re definitely serious contenders. Alan and I really believe we can come away with gold and if not gold then definitely a medal. We’re feeling really good about it.”

It could be quite a few weeks for Lobban in Gold Coast. He is engaged to Australian squash player Donna Urquhart with their wedding taking place on an Australian beach the week after the Games. Although Lobban is conscious not to get ahead of himself, he admits the pair have contemplated the perfect scenario: getting married as Commonwealth Games medallists.

“We’ve talked about what it would be like for us both to do well and then have the wedding at the end of it – that would be a dream few weeks.”