Commendable show: Chen Tang Jie -Toh Ee Wei reached the semi-finals in the Malaysian Open and Indian Open and the last eight in the Indonesian Masters last month.
PETALING JAYA: Criticism from fans do not bring down mixed doubles shuttler Chen Tang Jie but instead pushes him to do better with Toh Ee Wei.
Just like other national shuttlers, Tang Jie-Ee Wei have received their fair share of criticism from fans on social media.
Tang Jie accepts that comments from supporters are part and parcel of an athlete’s life and vows to take it all in his stride and strive to improve.
“If I say, I never read comments from fans in social media, I will be lying. Some comments are negative while others are positive, so I just accept all these and try to do better,” said Tang Jie after a training session at the Academy Badminton Malaysia (ABM) in Bukit Kiara yesterday.
“When fans criticise us when we lose a match, it shows that they have higher expectations on us and believe that we have the ability to win, so we appreciate this.
“We also never want to lose but I cannot promise that we will definitely always win. I can only promise that we will always go all out in every match.
“I have also made mistakes but I always try to come back (in the next tournaments),” added Tang Jie.
Tang Jie has been reasonably consistent with Ee Wei so far this year after making it into the semi-finals in the Malaysian Open and Indian Open and reaching the last eight in the Indonesian Masters last month.
The 27-year-old though is far from satisfied as a title has eluded him and Ee Wei so far this year.
The pair last won a title in the Korean Open last September and dropped one rung to No. 4 in the latest world rankings.
Fellow Malaysians Goh Soon Huat-Shevon Lai Jemie overtook Tang Jie-Ee Wei to the third spot after competing in the Asia Mixed Team Championships in Qingdao, China recently.
“We are not satisfied with our start to the season as we felt we had chances to reach the final or win a title in every tournament but we kept losing in the semis or quarters,” said Tang Jie.
“We also came close to winning the World Tour Finals (last December) but lost in the final. We have been working on a few aspects of our game in training and we hope we can improve after this.
“One of the lessons we learned in our recent losses is that we need to adapt quicker to different situations on court.
The shuttle speed differs in tournaments and our opponents can also read our game sometimes, so we need to be adapt better and adjust our strategy accordingly.
Tang Jie-Ee Wei will next compete in the back-to-back Orleans Masters (March 4-9) in France and All-England (March 11-16) in Birmingham.
