Taken from Today's paper, Sports Section, June 9, 2009, Page 30 By Tan Yo-Hinn HE IS the current world No 1, with two wins so far on the prestigious Badminton World Federation (BWF) Super Series tour. But Malaysian star Lee Chong Wei did not appear to exude the confidence of the world’s top-ranked player yesterday, ahead of the US$200,000 ($291,860) Aviva Open Singapore 2009. The defending champion will take on unseeded Englishman Andrew Smith in the first round tomorrow at the Singapore Indoor Stadium, but he says he is not in peak form. “I didn’t prepare very well for this tournament,” said Lee, at the pre-tournament press conference at Swissotel the Stamford yesterday. Aviva Open Singapore 2009 “I was training the last two weeks after the Sudirman Cup and decided to come to this tournament to target some world ranking points, and to prepare for the World Championship. “It’s too short for me to prepare for the Singapore Open. It’s very difficult for me to do very well.” Lee, usually one of the more affable players on the circuit, left the press conference hurriedly minutes later. A call to his hotel room later was also fruitless. “Could you call back later, a lot later. He’s gone out,” said the person who answered the call, claiming to be a team-mate rooming with him. The Penang-born Lee, conferred the title of “Datuk” by Malaysia after winning a silver at last August’s Beijing Olympics, is the top draw for the Singapore tournament, where 246 shuttlers from 28 countries will compete across five events — the men’s and women’s singles and doubles, and the mixed doubles. It is the fifth-leg of the 12-stop BWF Super Series 2009 with ranking points on offer. Lee, who beat Indonesia’s Simon Santoso 21-13, 21-5 in last year’s final, has already won the Swiss and Malaysian Opens this year, and was second at the Korean Open and All-England Championships. At last month’s Sudirman Cup in Guangzhou, the 26-year-old was powerless as Malaysia were swept 3-0 by eventual champions China in the semi-finals. Despite the absence of world No 3 Lin Dan from China and Indonesian hero Taufik Hidayat — the world No 5 — Lee played down his chances this week. “The draw is very tough. The quarter-final could be against China’s (world No 16) Bao Chunlai and the semi-final against his countryman (world No 6) Chen Jing,” said Lee, who replaced Lin as the world No 1 last November. “But as defending champion I will give it my best.” Singapore’s best hopes rest on world No 26 Xing Aiying in the women’s singles and world No 14 women’s doubles pair Shinta Mulia Sari and Yao Lei, quarter-finalists at the Yonex-Sunrise India Open in March. “We’ve set a quarter-final target Aiying and the women’s pair,” said team manager and Singapore Badminton Association’s high performance manager, Jim Hui. “With many of the top names here, it will be good if they can reach the last eight.”
Yes, he has been non stop playing since after Sudirman Cup....Pahang Open,....no time for quality training............
LCW is just playing it safe. But i do agree that he was not in his best condition. Can see it during his training. Bit slow.. feeling fatigued.
To day, at 8.00pm, LCW will meet Tien Minh - VIE. Thats first difficulty. If he win, in the next machs, he will vs Mr Bao at QF, ... thats big difficulty. Good luck, LCW!
pls dont blame LCW if he kena tapau-ed early in this tournament, since he's already said he's not in top shape.
guess LCW was around on this forum for a while and seen too many blames on disappointments on him, so said something before..
no gun is pointing at LCW forcing him to enter so many competitions, just his own choice on whether he would like to stage quality performance by arranging his schedule for training and playing, as world #1, he should have the intelligence to do so... ...unless he is too obsessed in maintaining the #1 paper ranking by entering whatever competition he could in order to earn whatever points... that would be sad...
Theory wise, by maintaining the #1 paper ranked player do have its advantages. Firstly, all the draws for any competitions will be to his advantage by being the #1 seed; and secondly, the monetory bonuses the sponsors can give him by being the #1 paper ranked player is much better off than the #2 or #3 player. Look at LCW being the #1 paper rank player in the world, he is the #1 spokeman for Yonex now and you can imagine all the fringes benefits he is getting from Yonex alone... maybe in the future, even specialize Yonex racket tailored to his own preferances.
Are you sure about that? I never saw LCW promoting anything for Yonex and most of Yonex poster are still images of Lin dan and Taufik
Soon will be all LCW and TH on YY posters......because LD is under LN now and LYD is with Victor now........ Actually,.....LCW have to take part in most of the tournaments is because he needed the matches against world class players as part of his quality training as no good training partner in Mas's camp so its a win-win situation for him.... 1. He can accumulate a lot of WR points, provided with his consistency... 2. He can have good quality sparring with world class opponents 3. The sponsor likes his high appearance rate in international tourny 4. Better earnings from prizes money, consistency is a must here...
apart from those ......he will also suffered fatigue from non stop competing...., over travalling,.....and less systematic based training at home.......
Other than the reasons already given : 1) Being WR#1 on paper have advantages for BAM players, for LCW is RM45,000 richer every 3 months . Recently also LCW received a new Proton Perdana from sponsor Proton for his consistency in maintaining top ranking. Imagine what else the other sponsors will /promised to give if he maintains WR#1 for 1 year. 2) LCW had to participate in Pahang Open, it's sponsored by Proton, Proton is BAM players main sponsor. 3) Msia singles dept needs to show results to the big bosses, the back up MS arent any good (young or older), so ...... This was mentioned by Misbun in an interview in the malay press last year. 4) The quality sparring thingy..........Rexy said same thing as the reason for sending KKK/TBH to 4 consecutive tourneys (1 more than LCW )
that's what I called sad things... he has to choose non-stop playing for competitions due to non-badminton reasons... but if he did choose to do so, don't complain of lack of system training then... this is what he have chosen to do...
