Kuala Lumpur: After his Singapore Open second round defeat on Thursday, Malaysia’s World No. 23 Lee Zii Jia has opened up on some of the hardships he has been experiencing which led to his subpar performance in recent tournaments.
Lee shared his feelings with badminton fans on his social media page with the following message:
“First of all, I would to apologize to my friends, fans and family who have always supported and cared about me. My performance has been very poor recently. Yes, I am facing some problems. I believe these are challenges that every athlete has to go through.
Actually, I am having some financial and performance breakthrough problems. After many ups and downs in the last two years, I finally established my present status in the badminton world. I cherish every opportunity, and I want to continue to climb higher. Frankly, I don’t want to stop here, but the better I get, more troubles seem to be following me around, including seeing a lot of unfair matters in a wide variety of contexts.
I started to push back, but it has slowly affected my focus and my training. I really didn’t think that would be so complicated.
To everyone, the badminton world is not as perfect and as simple as it looks. If you don’t understand the details, please stop criticizing others. We are people too, sometimes, we need a little time and room to solve these problems.
Thanks to those who have been sending messages to support me, I am very sorry. But I promise you, I will make myself more mature and more stable. I will work harder for the next three weeks, hope to show you a more mature and more stable Lee Zii Jia at the next tournaments.”
Frankly, Lee Zii Jia and his coaches need to stay positive and know that a loss is not a bad thing, especially if they learned something in the process. Look at it as a way of exploring their mistakes and finding ways to learn how to avoid repeating them.
To avoid crushing an athlete with unrealistic goals, his coaches should use small milestones to gauge their progress and help Lee to work through the difficult periods he may experience.
Lastly, a coach who continually criticizes an athlete can destroy their motivation and take the fun out of the sport. Lee’s coaches should provide constructive criticism so that Lee can learn from the experience without feeling bad or upset about the mistake.
Badmintonplanet.com would like to wish Lee Zii Jia best of luck in his future tournaments.
