BADMINTON: Julian Drew
HE might not have had quite the same impact on his chosen sport as Paul Adams did when wreaking havoc on the English batsmen in Kimberley, but Michael Adams (no relation) is certainly making plenty of waves of his own in the badminton world. Adams is also 18-years- old and hails from Western Province like the teenage bowling sensation but, even though he is showing the same precocious talent, badminton is so far from the public eye that few have heard his name.
Adams burst into the spotlight last year when he became the youngest player ever to win the Western Province Open and then won the national under-18 doubles title. That brought him to the attention of NOCSA which put him on its development programme.
In July he was invited by the International Badminton Federation to its “international academy” which was held in Paris. Around 40 promising players from all over the world spent two weeks with IBF coaches learning new methods and techniques in the game. “At first when I played against some of the better players I just didn’t compare but after about 10 days I was beginning to hold my own,” says Adams. “It really helped my game a lot. I learnt to play a more attacking game involving more speed and I learnt a lot of new strokes which I could never have learnt by myself. It’s not that I couldn’t do them but I’d never seen them before and nobody had ever taught them to me,” he claims.
The trip paid immediate dividends when he won the national under-18 titles for the singles and men’s doubles. This year he also claimed the scalp of Alan Phillips, who played for South Africa at last year’s Commonwealth Games, during the Cape Open where he reached the final before losing to England’s Manfred Tripp.
Adams’ involvement in badminton stems from St Joseph’s, the private school he attended in Cape Town, where he began playing five years ago and claimed a place in the first team while still in
dard five. “I just enjoyed the quickness of the sport and the skills it demands. I guess if I didn’t play badminton I would have played table tennis,” reveals Adams.
So serious is he about the sport that he has now placed further studies or fulltime employment on hold to concentrate on badminton until the year 2000 which is when he hopes he will achieve his dream of playing in the Olympic Games. “Obviously 2000 is a long way off and I’ll probably have to get some part time jobs, but if you want to reach your goal you must be prepared to sacrifice and suffer. Eventually I guess I’ll have to go and live and play overseas to reach international standard,” says Adams.
At present NOCSA’s support is crucial to his continuing in the sport but in the not too distant future he is going to have to start looking for sponsors if he wants to gain the necessary international exposure to improve sufficiently to make it in world badminton. Even now he doesn’t get enough court time because his local sports centres charge R8 an hour for the privilege, but his local church in Lansdowne is currently painting a court in its hall so that he can practise whenever he needs to.
“I don’t necessarily need top class opponents to play with but rather people who can help me with shadow rallies, footwork routines and point to corner exercises. During the season I play club matches every week and I’m in the Western Province squad which practises three or four days a week. It’s only now during the off season when most players take a break that I have a problem finding opportunities to play,” he declares.
Last week he got the chance to gain some valuable experience when the Africa Zone VI charnpionships took place in Pretoria and he played for the South African invitation side. He reached the quarter-finals but didn’t perform as well as he would have liked because since the national charnpionships he has been concentrating on his physical preparation with a lot of gym and road work at the expense of court skills.
South Africa dominated the championships which featured six teams from the Southern African region. It provided both finalists in all five finals contested after walking away with the team event earlier in the week. But South Africa’s dominance was more a reflection of the low standards in Africa than world class potential, and although we sent two players to the Barcelona Olympics, there won’t be any going to Atlanta. Previously the IBF allowed two representatives from each continent, irrespective of standards, and as South Africa swept the board clean at the 1992 African championships in Mauritius it got the two places.
Next year the IBF’s world ranking lists as of the end of March will determine who goes to the Olympics in July. Only South Africa’s men’s champion, Johan Kleingeld, was ranked at the beginning of the year (124th) but he is no longer featured as he hasn’t played any international tournaments this year. With countries like China and Indonesia having to leave players out of their teams who are ranked fifth or sixth in the world there will be no place for local players at the Games.
The real hope for South African badminton must lie in the future with players like Adams and others who have yet to even play the game. To these ends the South African Badminton Union (SABU) and the IBF are not standing idly by. At last week’s tournament in Pretoria the IBF’s technical advisor, Gunter Huber from Germany, was giving daily coaching clinics to the coaches and players of all the countries as well as conducting clinics with children and teachers in Soshanguve and Bronkhorstspruit.
“I work for the IBF as a development project manager and I’m leading a six year project for the Africa Zone VI which started this year and will go through until 2000,” says Huber. The initiative began at the African junior championships in Durban in August which was followed by a two-day coaching course for participants and then two one-day clinics in Soweto and Soshanguve.
According to Huber, about 100 new players joined clubs in Soweto as a result of their visit there. “Our main aim is to develop the sport in Africa to enable African countries to take part in international tournaments. That means not only coaching players and coaches but helping with equipment,” states Huber. The IBF has negotiated special deals with manufacturers to give equipment at reduced prices to Africa and it has also launched a “Donate a Racket for Africa” campaign which aims to hand over 2 500 rackets by the time of the Atlanta Olympics.
“Development for the IBF means broadening the whole badminton family, not just in Africa, but in Eastern Europe and other parts of the developing world too. We try to tell the black African players that badminton is not only a sport for Europeans or Asians but also for them. A very good role model for them is Christine Magnusson who is ranked number five in the world. She was born in Uganda but now plays for Sweden,” says Huber. Magnusson left Uganda when she was very young after her father died and her mother married a Swede, but in June she returned to Uganda and other African countries to promote badminton which sparked a lot of interest in the game.
Besides the low profile of the game in South Africa, SABU president Chaka Croucamp says it lost R30 000 on the Zone VI championships after failing to attract a single sponsor, the main hurdle facing the development of the game here is our geographic location. “The biggest disadvantage for South Africa is to be so far away from the places where international badminton is played. In Europe it is no problem to find tournaments every weekend the whole year round. What South Africa needs to do is work with the latest international badminton information on coaching, new exercises and courtwork for the players like we have been doing this week, and also try and invite top international players to come here for training camps.
“SABU should also get all the best players together at least once a year to train and play together. When you have done this you should try to go to Europe and combine playing in some big tournaments with training camps with some of the teams from other top badminton playing countries. It’s no use complaining about lack of sponsors because that won’t change until you have developed good players. Then you can attract people to the sport,” says Huber.