Doubles specialist coach Kim sees potential medallists in Indians

NAGPUR: 'Raise the bar', the message on Tan Kim Her's T-shirt says it all. After guiding players of several countries, the specialist doubles coach from Malaysia is in India to change the fortunes of India's doubles players.
The reputed coach has accepted a big challenge by signing a five-year contract with the Badminton Association of India (BAI) with a promise to live up to the expectations of all the Indians.He is quietly working with the bunch of players for the last three months at the Hyderabad-based Pullela Gopichand Academy.
In a short span of three months, he has managed to bring lot of positive changes and started a process which will yield results in the future. The doubles players, who were earlier felt quite neglected for lack of specialist foreign coach, are delighted to work with him.
Not only that he has managed to bring the players like Jwala Gutta, Ashwini Ponnappa and Prajakta Sawant to Gopichand Academy and train them together with the rest of the bunch.
"I accepted to sign the BAI contract after a long and deep thought. It is quite challenging and I am game for it. In India, there is more focus on the singles. Unlike Malaysia, Korea, Indonesia and China, doubles do not get equal importance in India. I have a big task to change that. I need time for this but I am sure by the time my contract expires after five years, India will be a force to reckon with in doubles too just like singles," said Kim.
The 44-year-old got down to business from the first day. He is a task master on the court but friendly off the court.
"I found lot of young talent in India particularly in the boys section. The present lot of seniors, I can train and improve them but I can't make them champions now. The younger unit is quite promising. I'm putting my money on them. In one or two years, these youngsters will definitely challenge the seniors. MR Arjun, Satwikraj Krishna, Chirag Shetty and Kuhoo Garg are some of the youngsters I'm very impressed with," said Kim, who had coaching stints in Malaysia, Korea and other top countries.
"If not this Rio Olympics, next Olympics in 2020, I'm sure our players will be in medal contention in all the three doubles events. Youngsters are willing to work hard and ready to go the distance. There are not many top mixed doubles pairs in India in the world rankings. Arun Vishnu and Aparna Balan are good and I will try to improve them," he said.
Players are enjoying training with the new coach. They believe he is the person who can change them and make them champions in future.
"Coach has brought certain changes in our programme. He gives lot of emphasis on short games of 9 points or 11 points so that the intensity is high. We are now adjusting to his different schedule. Hopefully in some time, we will start to get some results," said Shlok Ramchandran.
The Mumbai youngster, who with his partner K Nandagopal won the last two All India Senior Ranking badminton tournaments in India, was earlier playing with Sanyam Shukla.
"All the players welcomed him with an open mind. It is good that all are positive about training with him for a longer duration of time. His techniques and innovative methods are bound to produce results," added Shlok.
Chief national coach Gopichand is pleased to have Kim on board. "I am pretty confident that Kim will bring in a revolution. He is an experienced campaigner, having travelled all over the world. He is the right man to do the job for us. I have given him a free hand as far as coaching of doubles players is concerned. Soon he will operate independently at my new academy, which is a couple of kilometres from the present academy. All the Indian doubles players will train at the new academy under Kim," said Gopichand.
Although, Kim has a successful career as a player and coach, he surprisingly doesn't want his kids to take up badminton.
"I have two kids but I will not make them badminton players. They will play some other sport. There is a strong reason behind it. When I was playing, I faced too many hurdles. I went through lot of financial problems. All those bad things left a permanent memory in my mind. I do not want my kids to go through all those things again. Although, the system has changed for better now, I will prefer my kids to play other sport," said Kim.
KIM'S FUTURE PLAN OF ACTION
• Focus on Manu Attri-Sumeeth Reddy and Jwala Gutta-Ashwini Ponnappa for Rio Olympics
• Swapping of set partners for better results
• Have made age-wise batches of 16, 18 and 20 years
• Chalked out detailed programme for each batch
• To ask BAI to send maximum pairs for various tournaments
• International exposure must for talented junior players
• To target medals in 2020 Olympics