The StarOnline : 2 December 2008
By RAJES PAUL

KUALA LUMPUR: Injury-prone Wong Mew Choo may be heading for a premature end to her badminton career.

And the Badminton Association of Malaysia (BAM) are bent on salvaging it and see a need for changes to her training programme.

The BAM’s general manager Kenny Goh, who is also the acting project manager of the national coaching and training programme, said that they would make recommendation to national singles coach Misbun Sidek.

In the Hong Kong Open last week, Mew Choo crashed to a tame 15-21, 11-21 defeat by China’s Zhu Lin in the first round. With the early round defeat in the 12th and final round of the Super Series, Mew Choo failed to qualify for the Masters Finals, which will be held in Kota Kinabalu from Dec 18-21.

Injury-prone: Wong Mew Choo tending to her knee with an ice pack during the Uber Cup Finals held in Jakarta in May
Kenny said that a series of injuries had bugged Mew Choo, who had done the country proud by scoring many breakthroughs for Malaysian women’s badminton over the last few years.

She became the first Malaysian woman to reach an Olympic quarter-final in Beijing last August.

And among her career highlight was a famous win in the China Open last year and becoming the first Malaysian woman in more than four decades to feature in the final of the “home” Open.

Mew Choo is now deeply troubled by a knee injury. She also suffers heel and elbow pains.

Kenny said that Mew Choo, who had been enduring the pains, should have a special training programme.

“Mew Choo has a few good years more in the game if she can recover fully from the injuries,” he said.

“But in her current condition, she should make a careful selection of the tournaments to compete in instead of going for one after another. This way, she will have time to give more attention to nursing the injuries.

“But she is now following what the others go through in training too. Probably, instead of going for weight training five times a week, Mew Choo can do it three times a week. These are the proposals that we will highlight to Misbun.”

Mew Choo is ranked 10th in the world. This year, her significant achievements in Super Series tournaments are reaching the semi-finals of the Open in Malaysia and Singapore.