so here is the story of my highlight during the Sudirman Cup. the Cup was held in a really big sports hall. while i am sure during the earlier matches, the full hall was used for badminton, during the finals, only half the hall was used to hold the one single competition court. the other half of the gym has around 8 badminton courts plus one warmup court with Yonex mats. the regular courts usually have some badminton training going on. whereas the warmup court is for the players to warm up. Janet has some foresight and said that we should bring our rackets into the hall with us, may be we can get to hit some round during intermissions. (surely, the badminton bug will bite, as it always does...) so we went there a few times, the first time we Lee Dong Soo and Yoo Yong Sung hitting some drives in the warmup court, too bad, some kids were next to them playing. so we had to resort to the court next to them. which is still pretty cool, i played in the same hall as the Olympic silver medalists! the next time we went, Zhang Jun and Gao Ling. again, some other kids were next to them. and in just a few minutes, they were gone. during the MD match between Denmark and Korea, we again went off to hit a few shots. there we saw Rikke Olsen hitting around with Ann Lou Jorgensen. next to them was Kim Dong Moon practicing Lee Kyeung Won. i went up to them and asked if i can take some pictures of them. well, ok, more like sign language as i don't think they know what i was saying. so i did. during their practice, i saw them stopped a few times and stared at Rikke/Ann Lou's practice. since they will be Lee's potential opponent, they were probably looking at their forms. after may be 5-10 or so, Lee stopped practicing a shouted across the hall, then i noticed that Ra was sitting on the floor on the other side watching the match via a live video feed into a TV. despite Lee's call, Ra wasn't interested in doing any practice but instead she was interested in watching the MD match. Lee ran off to talk to Ra and she herself ended up watching the match too! So there was Kim Dong Moon, got left standing there alone in the practice court. I was about to leave when a ingenious idea came to Kwun’s mind….. how about… how about… asked if I can hit a few shots with him?!? So I took my racket (I was planning to go play, remember? So I have my rackets handy) and asked him and he kindly said yes. I played around 5 mins one-on-one with Kim Dong Moon! Throughout the play, Kim wasn’t even trying, after all, he didn’t need to and apparently looked a little bit bored. I don’t blame him as I wasn’t of much of a competition anyways... but FYI, i did managed to win a couple of rallies off him. so there i was, playing with the best mixed doubles player in the world. i can still feel the excitement up till today........
Genius It was a stroke of genius by Janet to suggest bringing the racquets along. How come she thought of that?
Surprised that you didn't watch that match considering that it was probably one of the better matches with Eriksen/Luungard scratching and crawling their way back to win the match. Anyhow, I am sure that is more than offset by the experience of hitting some rallies with KDM.
Single Rally or Something Else? What did you guys do? Did you guys just play single rally? I guess that KDM didn't even bother to smash .
yeah. just half court singles. honestly, i dont' think he was too interested, but then, hey, i don't mind..
Interesting Perhaps you can follow on with a request to come to Korea and pay KDM for private coaching. Wonder if he is interested .
here shows Kim and Lee practicing. they were plain staring at Rikke Olsen and Ann Lou Jorgensen next to them. Lee and Ra was scheduled to play against Rikke and Ann Lou.
wow.....closest i have come to a sports personality is 10 times national champion Darren Hall....gonan HAVE to get some photos taken at the worlds with Candra and Sigit!!
Kwun, Can't see ur hand and racket very clearly. Is that because ur hand was shaking as crazy at that time??? BTW, nice pic.
Could also have to do with Kwun playing a trick shot... look at the shuttle : it's flying quite fast!
Kwun wasn¡¯t paying attention to the shuttle or Kim. He is busy watching the player on the other half of the court. No wonder Kim was not too interested in playing with Kwun. Kwun what were you thinking.
I would rather won't be fully prepared in case I can meet with top elites. After pros like KDM kick my butt soooo badly, I can still find an excuse like, "hey, I could be better than this, just don't have my own racket, pants, shoes with me... "
Nice guy You are right, Kim Dong Moon can be a really nice guy. I briefly talked to him and he was very kind, although his English was not perfect. But then again, he had every reason to be, because he has just won the Sudirman Cup with Korea He is high favorit for me to win both the mix and men doubles with Ha Tae Kwon at the World Championships (unless Budiarto/Wijaya or Lee/Yoo put on a stunt).
Kim Dong Moon lived at my house for 6 months in Calgary where he now lives. We go golfing and he gave me a brand new pair of yonex shoes. He just had a kid when he was in calgary as well! The next top mixed doubles star!
