Can badminton ever go the tennis ‘pro’ way?
It wasn’t just the second-round loss to young Chinese Li Shi Feng, after being 11-8 and 15-13 up in the decider at Delhi’s India Open last month. Malaysian big hope Lee Zii Jia was feeling the pressure to perform as an independent professional shuttler. It’s not a new phenomenon – setting off on your own and charting your own training course – though it’s rare in badminton.
But with Viktor Axelsen moving to Dubai and setting up a training base, rather successfully cutting the umbilical cord from the national training centre, there is a start of that imminent question — can badminton go the tennis way of individualised, pro training? Or is government/federation funding not yet indispensable?
Moving out worked for Axelsen just as well as being at the national centre did: he won his Olympi...