Loh’s reign in Spain stirs memories of the great Wong Peng Soon
They are a distant 79 years apart in age. But on Sunday, Singapore’s No. 1 badminton player Loh Kean Yew drew a distinct parallel with our first shuttle sensation Wong Peng Soon by becoming a world champion.
When Loh executed “the Clear” – the trademark lob to the baseline which Wong proffers with black and white images on google – he left his World Badminton Federation Championships final opponent, India’s Kidambi Srikkanth, confused and stranded at mid-court, gaining the final point to etch his name in history as a global megastar.
After a frenetic 43 minutes during which he once trailed 9-3 in the first game, the unseeded Loh turned on a masterly, gritty showing and earn a major triumph (21-15, 22-20) that put him among a pantheon of world greats that has Wong – a pioneer from another era and from very different circumstances – the oldest on the list.
The late Wong won the unofficial world championships, the All-England event, in 1950 and repeated the feat in 1951, 1952 and 1955. Those were the days of the illegal wood shot (shuttle hitting the wooden frame), the Dunlop rackets, Bluebird shuttlecocks and a scoring system that takes in second serves and plays to 15 points.
Wong (born in Johor) – who like Loh (born in Penang) moved to Singapore in the teens – was noted for his excellent courtcraft and graceful footwork, with which he wore down his opponents and left them gasping.
And gasping was also how the athletic Loh left a spent Srikkanth in the historic Spanish city of Huelva on Sunday, with a vastly increased pace mixed with a repertoire of strokeplay, mixing the baseline lobs with crisp drop shots and powerful smashes hovering around the 350kph record and one rally tallying 49 shots.
Wong won his first big title, the Singapore Open at 21, and went on to capture every crown on offer then — the All-England, Malaysian Open, Indian Open, Denmark Open and Philippines Open – and was the spearhead for Malaya’s Thomas Cup triumph three times (1949, 1952 and 1955), playing up to the age of 37.
Like Wong, Loh, 24, too picked up the game as a kid, but his phenomenal rise up the ladder only came about after he spent a month in Dubai at the Viktor Axelson (Danish world No. 1) Training Camp last September.
And much of his astonishing play can be attributed to his understanding from the Dubai camp that fitness and stamina are crucial factors for improved play, the transformation from ordinary to extraordinary within four months from the July Olympics to a series of successes recently.
The ever-smiling Loh’s romance with badminton began when he was four, the gate outside his home was a net for his knockabouts. And at 13, he received a scholarship to study at the Singapore Sports School and served national service from 2016 to 2018.
He is the biggest name to come out of the Sports School whose facilities he has often credited for having taken his game to another level. With his distinguished victory, Loh has proven that NS need not be a stumbling block for athletes who aim high, for the corporal’s (first class) two-year stint gave him a focus and mental strength to push beyond boundaries.
No doubt, Wong did not have the benefits of modern technology and equipment, but he enjoyed running and sparring, mixed with his cycling from his Jalan Jarak home to some training sessions when he was with the Mayflower Badminton Party.
Once, when I visited him at his home with a colleague, Wong took us to a room and showed a video (in black and white) of some of his games from which victories were garnered by mere stroke play, pushing his opponents from baseline to net and vice-versa with pure skill and dexterity.
Wong was a proponent for fitness and stamina and he always studied his opponents and exploited their weaknesses. If Dave Freeman, Finn Kobbero and Ong Poh Lim were his nemeses, Wong counted Indian “great” Nandu Natekar as an icon known for his astute trickery and deceptive drop shots.
Natekar mastered the backhand shots from sparring sessions with Wong. And on Sunday, if Srikkanth – ranked eight places ahead of Loh -- needed one takeaway from the plucky Singaporean, it is the lesson that “no rally is won, no game is lost until the shuttle is dead”. For Loh’s returns and retrievals were stupendous, often indulging in overstretched reactions and gravity-defying leaps to find the “kill”.
Loh and Srikkanth belong to a generation of players where there is no clear-cut No. 1 unlike the days of Rudy Hartono, Han Jian, Liem Swie King, Morten Frost or Lin Dan.
Japan’s former world No. 1 Kento Momota is not the same player he was before the injury suffered in a serious motor accident in Kuala Lumpur almost two years ago. Axelson blows hot or cold, as do Le Zii Jia, Anders Antonsen and Jonatan Christie.
So it’s advantage Loh to keep his mantle of world champion if he continues to believe in himself. It should steel him into believing that his Olympic gold medal dream is within reach.
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