Lee Chong Wei will miss Taufik Hidayat’s exit from competitive badminton – Badminton news
The World Number One Malaysian shuttler, Lee Chong Wei, who has recently won the Indonesia Open Premier Super Series title for the fifth time, says he will miss Indonesia’s Taufik Hidayat who has announced his retirement last week.
The former Olympic and World Champion, Taufik, has served Indonesia for almost two decades and won all major titles except All England Open. Chong Wei was quite close to Taufik and both were good friends off court.
With the retirement of Denmark’s Peter Gade and Taufik, the best five group including China’s Lin Dan and Korea’s Lee Hyun Il will not be around for a longer period of time.
While talking about his matches with Taufik, Chong Wei said, “I miss all those days when all these players use to bring out the best in me. I will not forget the 2007 Japan Open final. Taufik was the favourite then but I managed to beat him. It was so close.
Both of us played all out and it was one of my best matches against Taufik.”
He further added, “On court, Taufik is ruthless. Off it, he is one of my good buddies. I also share the same relationship with Peter. Although they are not around, I still do my best to take every tournament seriously.”
Chong Wei is feeling somewhat lonely as his Chinese rival Lin did took a long break after winning his second consecutive title at Olympic Games and Lee Hyun also left the national squad of Korea. Now the Malaysian man is the only consistent shuttler in Men’s
Singles category who has no batch fellow with him in the top ten positions.
Motivation is most important factor for a player and in the absence of so many top shuttlers; it will be a challenging task to keep himself motivated for the upcoming Badminton World Championships which will be held in August, 2013.
The Malaysian hero has been the most consistent players over many years. He has won all major titles except World Championships and Olympic Games. However, he is determined to live up to the expectations this time and win the first ever title in World Championships
for Malaysia.
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