Jakarta: The Indonesian-Malaysian pair of Hendra Setiawan and Tan Boon Heong admitted it would be difficult for them to qualify for the 2017 World Championships that will be held in Glasgow, Scotland from August 21st to August 27th.
However, they do not want to give up their World Championships dream too soon, and are working on an alternative plan to hopefully win the ticket to the prestigious tournament.
Hendra Setiawan has decided to partner Tan in the men’s doubles after he retired from the Badminton Association of Indonesia (PBSI) last September. The best result for the pair thus far was reaching the quarter-finals of the 2017 Syed Modi International Badminton Championships, but they have then lost in the second round of Thailand Masters, first round of German Open, and first round of All England.
Setiawan/Tan realized it’ll take time for them to get use to each other and to be competitive, they understood clearly that it’s not easy to qualify for the 2017 World Tournaments.
“I know it’s going to be difficult for us to qualify for the World Championships, but we will try our best because playing in World Championship is one of our major goals,” said Tan, as reported by the BWF.
“We only have few months left before the World Championships, we will participate in as many tournament as possible, and hopefully to receive some good draws as well,” added Tan.
One of the problems faced by the pair was lack of time to practice together since both Setiawan and Tan still live in their respective countries and couldn’t meet on a regular basis. However, but they claimed to be looking for solutions to these problems.
“For now, we do not have much time to practice together. We have been playing in a few tournaments to try to qualify for the World Championships,” said Setiawan.
“But whenever we have time, we’ll look at each other’s schedule to determine whether we would like to practice in Indonesia or Kuala Lumpur. After all, Indonesia and Malaysia are not too far away. It shouldn’t be any problem for us,” added Setiawan.
