Jakarta: Three Indonesian men’s singles legends, Taufik Hidayat, Liem Swie King, and Alan Budikusuma have openly criticized the struggling Indonesian men’s singles department.
“Our men’s singles performance has been decreasing day by day. To a certain extent, we don’t even have a formal men’s singles head coach, even though there are many coaches to choose from,” said Hidayat to Indonesian media Detik last Thursday.
“In 2021, Anthony Ginting was not able to win any international titles, especially in the BWF World Tour Super 1000 level,” added Hidayat.
“This year, Indonesia only won one title through Jonatan Christie at the 2022 Swiss Open Super 300 tournament,” continued Hidayat who won the men’s singles gold medal at the 2004 Athens Olympics.
Hidayat did not deny that the men’s singles were one of Indonesia’s main contributors to winning the 2020 Thomas Cup. However, it didn’t guarantee that Indonesia’s men’s singles players’ achievement will be stable at the individual tournament.
Another Indonesian men’s singles legend, Lim Swie King a.k.a “King Smash”, as he was the first badminton player to use the jumping smash technique in badminton, also told Detik that even though Anthony Ginting is currently ranked World No. 5 and Jonatan Christie is ranked World No. 8, but for Lim, they still lack the quality of becoming top men’s singles players in the world.
“In my opinion, Jonathan has not yet reached the world level. He can only win at the lower level tournament,” said Lim.
“These players still lack the requirements of becoming a world champion. A world champion must have strong technical and physical capability,” said the 1978 and 1979 All England champion.
Indonesia’s 1992 Barcelona Olympics men’s singles gold medalist – Alan Budikusuma also chime in with his own opinion about the sharp decline in Indonesian men’s singles’ performance.
“Over the past 1 year, even though Jonatan won the 2022 Swiss Open, the result was not satisfactory at all. Jonatan should be able to do better than that. Ginting is even worst, he had slumped even more. Ginting’s performance is not good, not encouraging,” said the Olympic champ to Detik.
For the record, Ginting has not won any title since capturing the 2020 Indonesia Masters.
“Right now, a lot of young players from other countries have proved their capability to dominate the men’s singles category. All of the good ones are younger than Jonatan,” added Budikusuma.
“There were those from Thailand, India, who are under 25 years old. I mean, in other countries, young players have developed so well and quickly. This is what Jonatan and Ginting need to watch out for because their opponents are young players,” explained Budikusuma.
