“You have to make a sacrifice between studies and playing badminton …” — Ronald Susilo (Part 2)

Singapore’s household name in badminton, Ronald Susilo, has come out of retirement and teamed up with his Indonesian brother-in-law and 2000 Olympic Games champion Candra Wijaya at the 2010 Singapore Badminton Open taking place at the Singapore Indoor Stadium this week.

Despite their scratch partnership status, Susilo/Wijaya cruised into the main draw with straight sets victories over their opponents in the qualifying rounds. After ousting Vietnam’s Nguyen Ngoc Tung/Tran Duc Phong in straight sets of 21-16 21-10 in their first qualifying match, Susilo/Wijaya then took just 15 minutes to dispose off local pair Huang Chao/Ngo Yi Chye 21-9 21-7 in their second qualifying match.

The duo will be facing England’s Chris Adcock/Robert Blair in the first round on Wednesday, 6.20pm.

Red Sports caught up with Ronald just before the 2010 Singapore Badminton Open to find out more about his new school, the Ronald Susilo Badminton Academy, and his views on Singapore badminton. Here is part two of the interview.

Red Sports: What other areas of improvement needs to be made to Singapore badminton?
Ronald Susilo: Another thing would be the motivation and drive of the players — they have to train extra hard and do more if they want to be a world class player. From what I’ve seen so far, the drive and motivation is not enough within the players. Only one or two have the self motivation to go far, but the rest don’t really have it.

It has to come from within themselves. Their level is still not there, so by just simply training, it is definitely not enough. Going through the program isn’t sufficient — they got to do extra themselves and some players don’t do that.

Secondly, I would like to comment we don’t have our own roof. Badminton is a national sport and by right, we should have a place of our own. Other than that, the government really supports us. In terms of benefits and incentives, they are very good. Things like sports science, nutrition, sports physio are all more than enough.

Red Sports: Getting to the 2012 Thomas Cup was one of Singapore Badminton Association’s goals, but at this point of time, it seems rather unlikely. Your comments?
Ronald Susilo: It is still not impossible! Of course it is still possible but besides luck, we still need the quality players. 2012 is still two years away so anything can happen, but looking at the current players it is quite hard for us to qualify for the Thomas Cup finals.

Hopefully they can improve their standard within these two years. Looking at the current players, if we can go into finals that would be quite something!

Red Sports: What do we need to do to make this a reality?
I think we need more players as well. If we want to groom a world class player, we need to groom them from young. Players willing to play full time. But in Singapore it is unlikely. We definitely have to import players. We need more senior players to bring up the standard for the young ones.

Other than that, training programs are all okay. We are have the drive to do extra on their own.

Its still a long way looking if we were to achieve this at the current players. That’s why I said we have to train young ones who are willing to train full time. Go through step by step process. One day we might we able to do it, provide a pool of player talents.

Only hard part in Singapore, study comes first. Which I think is very hard. In order to play professionally you can’t do both. It’s either study or badminton — you have to choose one. If you really want to break into the world-class level, I don’t think these two can be mixed together.

But even if they do that, they spread it out. More relaxed on the studies, focus on badminton.

The successful countries like China and Indonesia, they don’t go school at all. They full time. You can see the difference between a really really good player and just a normal player. There’s a difference. You have to sacrifice one or the other. Maybe it is possible, maybe those one or two players that are really super talented maybe they can do it, but it is not easy. Right now the competition is so competitive and so tough, they are training two or three times a day. If you are only training one time a day, how are we able to compete with them? So that’s the logic.

The national team trains two times a day but some are still pursuing part-times studies and that affects them. After training they go for studies in the evening, then will go home tired. They don’t have enough rest, then the concentration is not there when they come back for training the next day.

Watch out for part three of the interview.

“It has always been my dream to set up an academy …” – Ronald Susilo (Part 1)
“We have to fork out money ourselves …” — Ronald Susilo (Part 3)