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The start of 2024 will be a bad year for Jonathan Christie. The men's singles badminton player failed to win the title in three tournaments. What actually happened Jojo? / Photo: MPI
The start of 2024 will not be a good year for Jonathan Christie. The men's singles badminton player failed to win the title in three tournaments. What actually happened Jojo?
Jonathan's latest failure occurred at the Indonesia Masters 2024. In the first match he was defeated by Lu Guang Zu in a fierce rubber game 21-19, 19-21 and 19-21 at Istora Senayan, Wednesday (24/1/2024).
This minor result extended the world number six player's bad record at the start of this year. The reason is, in the two previous tournaments at the Malaysia Open and India Open 2024, he lost in the round of 32 and 16 respectively.
Moreover, the 2024 Indonesia Masters is being used as an event to collect points for the 2024 Paris Olympics. PBSI has actually sent Taufik Hidayat since early January as a mentor in the Ad Hoc Team which they formed to help him improve his performance ahead of the biggest sporting event in the world.
However, it turns out that until the end of January, Jonathan had not started to be mentored by Taufik. In fact, the qualifying round for the 2024 Paris Olympics will close in approximately three months, to be precise at the end of April.
“Honestly, I haven't met Aa Taufik after he was decided to be the men's singles mentor. There hasn't been a meeting session, maybe because there hasn't been time yet, yesterday I had a week off and then I trained for a week and immediately started competing again. Until now, there hasn't been the right time yet,” Jonathan said.
Nevertheless, Jonatan believes that after the 2024 Indonesia Masters, there will probably be a meeting with Taufik. He also hopes that, as a mentor, the 2004 Athens Olympic gold medalist can have a positive impact on the men's singles players who are projected to compete in Paris 2024.
“Maybe after this there will be meeting sessions with him. I hope he can also help me personally and my friends in the men's singles team,” explained the 26 year old player.
Regarding his defeat to Lu Guang Zu, Jojo said he was surprised by the changing condition of the shuttlecock in each game. As a result, he had difficulty implementing his strategy well, especially in the second and third games.
“In the first set, I was able to apply the strategy according to what was prepared and it went well too. Several times Guang Zu had quite difficulty with my strategy,” explained the player who graduated from PB Tangkas.
“But in the second set, I didn't think that the ball had changed quite a bit. Likewise in the third set, it changed again. I think that was quite influential. Earlier I also thought the condition of the second court was winning the wind, but it turned out that in the third set it was not the wind winning, but I don't know if the shuttlecock is from a different slope or what, but it looks like there is a difference,” he concluded.
(fly)