It has been a fascinating tournament, the Japan Masters, where Leong Jun Hao manages to pull off upset after upset on the tournament’s favourites. First it was Lakshya Sen, then Koki Watanabe, followed by Kodai Naraoka and finally, Jonathan Christie! And all these guys are top players with Koki Watanabe and Jonathan Christie being in form players! How did Leong Jun Hao manage to do that?

Leong Jun Hao has developed into a very smart player in this year. He has figured out how to play to his strengths. He is not a fast player, nor is he an attacking player. His overall play is unremarkable. He has a very decent smash and he has good pace to follow up after the smash. But he does not have a lot of weapons which can hurt the opponent. He does however have a very good defence.

But in this year, Leong Jun Hao has adopted a way of playing which works very well for him. He slows down the tempo of play down to a slow pace, and only speeds it up when he goes for his smash and follow up kill shot. This has worked very well for him this year.

Leong Jun Hao’s lobs are often slow looping lobs. When he lift, he usually does not attempt a flick. As much as possible, he will push his opponent to the back of the court. When he does drop shots, he goes for standard drop shots, or slow drop shots. He does not go for fast drops, and I have not seen him use a slice shot either. He keeps his game simple, and keep hitting these shots.

By hitting these basic shots all the time, he forces the opponent to run all the corners of the court. While it is not a fast pace, the opponent is still forced to move the full distance of the court. Leong Jun Hao is content to just keep doing that, and keep going at the slow steady pace. And this frustrates his opponents.

Players are trained to increase the pace when the opponent slows it down. When the opponent tries to increase the pace, Leong Jun Hao slows it down again with his returns. Whatever the opponent does, he will just slow it down. By slowing it down and sending the shuttle to the extremes of the court, it pins the opponents back and does not allow the opponent to play their usual game. This frustrates his opponents.

Leong Jun Hao has a very good defense mainly due to the position he takes when defending. He stays very deep towards the end of the court. He usually lifts net shots which come his way and do not attempt for net battles, so he is content to stay deep and defend. This makes his defence stronger than most players.

What makes his play effective is that he can inject pace mid rally to launch an attack when he sees an opportunity. He is patient and is willing to go on long rallies while waiting for the opportunity to attack. And when he does go on the attack, it usually catches his opponents off guard due to the sudden change in pace. There is no element of deception in Leong Jun Hao’s game which causes that, it is just that the opponent is programmed to think that he will be slowing it down as 9 times out of 10, he will slow it down. And when he finally speeds it up to attack, the opponent is sometimes surprised.

It is so interesting that a subtle change in approach such as this can have such a huge impact in his performance in matches. The Japan Masters is the one where he seems to have settled on this way of playing and it is showing excellent results, helping him defeat Lakshya Sen, Koki Watanabe, Kodai Naraoka and Jonathan Christie on his way to the final. That is a roster of top players, with Koki Watanabe being the only who has not held a top 10 position in the world rankings yet. Leong Jun Hao beat 4 opponents who were ranked higher than him on his way to the final. That is an amazing achievement!

That’s all for this entry.

Until the next update, eat well, get plenty of rest, and keep the badminton going!