I was wondering why Japan has not had much success in international badminton events? Especially looking at the popularity of their player who reached the semis in the recent Yonex Open and crowd interest in general. Yonex, the best known badminton sponsor in the world, is also a Japanese company! Should Japan hisre Chinese, Malaysian and Indonesian coaches?

AM

They already do have Indonesian, Korean and Chinese coaches but that doesn`t seem to make a great difference. To be fair though the Japanese players have made great improvements over the last few years but I wonder sometimes if the system is to blame. All the national squad players are members of company teams which play in a professional league, and although the standard is high it doesn`t compare to international tournament standard I think. More exposure to different players from other countries would help. The style of Japanese players could also be at fault. In the commentary on the recent Japan Open, one of the commentators ( an Olympic badminton player ) said that in general the Japanese players have a style where they come out blasting at the start of a match, but they can`t continue that pace throughout and so their performance falls off towards the end.
It`s interesting that Keita Masuda ( the guy that got to the semi`s of the Japan Open) has Park Sung Woo for a coach - the former World champs Silver medallist. Masuda is only 23 so he still has a long way to go!