World Badminton Championships: Hong Kong’s Angus Ng and Lee Cheuk-yiu eye breakthrough
- Under coach Wong Tat Meng, two of the city’s top shuttlers have found extra confidence ahead of the championships in Tokyo
- Angus Ng will take on South Korea’s Heo Kwang-hee, who he has beaten twice, in the opening round, while Lee Cheuk-yiu will face New Zealander Abhinav Manota
Nearly two months of working with a new coach have given Hong Kong’s Angus Ng Ka-long and Lee Cheuk-yiu cause for optimism ahead of the World Badminton Championships in Tokyo next week.
The pair have targeted the tournament in Japan as their breakthrough moment, and are focused on improving on their previous best showings of each reaching the last 16.
And the influence of former Malaysia player Wong Tat Meng already seems to be showing, with Ng reaching his first final in 18 months at the Malaysian Masters in July – a performance he put down to Tat Meng’s on-court coaching.
“Tat Meng has a different approach to coaching,” the world No 11 said. “He focuses on quality rather than quantity, and his advantage is that he’s coached in different countries.
“He knows a lot about most of our opponents, which helps us a lot, particularly his on-court guidance.”
Tat Meng, who has signed a two-year contract as coach to take him through the Paris Olympics, has plenty of experience at international level. He coached Malaysia in two stints, from 2003 to 2011 and between 2013 and 2016.
He has also worked with players from Indonesia and Scotland, and joined South Korea in 2019, where he led the women’s team, including world No 3 An Se-young, to their first Uber Cup title in 12 years in May.
Lee, who is ranked four spots below Ng, said Tat Meng’s approach had brought a “freshness” to the team, which helped him improve.
“He has a variety of training approaches that make me feel insufficient, since there are so many different places to improve,” Lee said.
The 25-year-old spent two weeks world No 1 Viktor Axelsen’s training group in Dubai earlier this year, something he said was “the most high-quality training” he had ever attended.
“The person practising with you is an Olympic gold medallist,” Lee said. “I felt pressure even working with him, but the quality is really good. But now that Tat Meng is guiding us, I will not be going back to Dubai in a hurry.”
This year’s championships, which are being held at Tokyo Metropolitan Gymnasium, start on Monday and run until August 28.
Ng will take on South Korea’s Heo Kwang-hee, who he has beaten twice, in the opening round, while Lee will face New Zealander Abhinav Manota.
Hong Kong have won only four medals at the World Championships: one silver medal in women’s singles for Wang Cheng in 2007, and three bronze medals in mixed doubles, two of which were won by Tang Chun-man and Tse Ying-suet, in 2018 and 2021.
The city is sending a squad of 11 players to Tokyo on Friday to compete in four events, namely the men’s and women’s singles, mixed doubles and women’s doubles.
