Tall tosses, short stature, three world titles: the Yamaguchi method
Many shuttlers challenged Chinese dominance in women’s singles. But nobody shattered the Chinese canon of what a badminton champion’s ideal frame ought to be quite like Akane Yamaguchi. Three World titles and still going strong on the circuit, she grew up in Katsuyama, a city of mere 25,000 in remote Fukui Prefecture, emerging on the Tour around the same time as PV Sindhu. Her lack of Olympic medals allows self-appointed legacy-auditors to question her achievements. But she punctured the China-propagated myth that you needed to be tall, rangy and consequently powerful to succeed in the sport. Height helps significantly, of course. But you can be 5-foot-1 and still combine consistency with longevity on the Tour in a way envied by the best of the Chinese and the rest of the world. An Se-young has her number, but at 29, Yamaguchi is the last from the golden generation still contesting Tour finals, as she has done these last three Sundays. The Chinese, right up to Xie Xingfang, Zhang Ning and Yihan Wang, believed in scouting tall …
