No slowing down
PETALING JAYA: A more confident men doubles shuttlers Man Wei Chong-Tee Kai Wun are looking to build on their encouraging performances in the second half of the year by reaching the top five in the world.
The world No. 7 Wei Chong-Kai Wun already have two titles to their name so far this year – the World Tour Super 500 Indonesian Masters in January and Malaysian Masters last month.
The victories have raised the self-belief in them and showed they were no longer dogged by inconsistency as seen over the past few years.
'We are doing better than we had in the last few years. We need to build on our performances,' said Kai Wun.
Wei Chong-Kai Wun, who tend to slow down and suffer early round exits in the past after winning a title, did not let up this time following their triumph in the home Masters and went on to reach the quarter-finals in the Singapore Open and last four in the Indonesian Open earlier this month.
Now, the duo are eyeing for glory in the Japan Open from July 15-20 and China Open from July 22-27.
'We cannot afford to slow down again in Japan and China. We have one month to prepare for these two tournaments and we have been going through intense training.
'Our focus is on working on our weaknesses that we could see in our last few tournaments.'
Wei Chong-Kai Wun's growing confidence also stems from breakthrough wins over Japan's 2021 world champions Takuro Hoki-Yugo Kobayashi and India's 2022 Asian Games gold medallists Satwiksairaj Rankireddy-Chirag Shetty in the Malaysian Masters semi-finals and Indonesian Open second round respectively.
The Malaysians previously lost twice to Hoki-Kobayashi and four times to the Indians before coming up with the formula to finally defeat their opponents.
'Finding a way to beat these pairs is good for us as we lost to them many times before this,' said Kai Wun.
'We have showed that we have the quality to beat these pairs and now it's about being consistent.'
On their next targets, Kai Wun said: 'We are aiming to break into the top five in the world and win Super 750 and 1000 titles.
'We have never done these before, so we want to go all out to achieve these.'
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