PETALING JAYA: Will Hendrawan join Singapore as the former world champion Loh Kean Yew’s coach?
Indonesian Hendrawan is now in demand after ending his service in Malaysia. The former world champion had served under the Badminton Association of Malaysia (BAM) for 14 years.
Hendrawan, who hardly had substantial time to groom players as he was often moved around to coach different players in Malaysia due to the BAM’s constant structural changes, has been replaced with Kenneth Jonassen of Denmark.
It’s unsure whether Hendrawan will take that leap to the Lion City but it’s learnt that there is a vacant spot in Singapore’s national stable after Kean Yew’s former coach Kelvin Ho was promoted as the singles head coach.
Singapore, who are also on a hiring spree to firm up their 2028 Los Angeles Olympics campaign, just signed up South Korean Kim Ji-hyun as their women’s singles coach.
There were rumours earlier that Malaysia were also trying to get Ji-hyun to work with their depleted women’s singles side but Singapore probably would have offered him a better deal.
Ji-hyun was one of South Korea’s women’s singles mainstays in the 1990s. She was part of the team that won the Asian Games gold in 1994 and took part in the 1996 and 2000 Olympic Games in Atlanta and Sydney respectively.
She won the world junior title in 1989 but in 2019, she took a bold step to coach P. V. Sindhu, and eventually led the Indian player to become a world champion.
She has also mentored the women’s singles players in Thailand.
Singapore’s men’s doubles department is currently handled by Paulus Firman of Indonesia, who also had stints with Malaysia when he was in charge of the men’s doubles before moving to the mixed doubles department.
