It was a moment that might have ended his career but both literally and metaphorically may have given Kieran Merrilees’ badminton career a shot in the arm.
Scotland’s top men’s singles player got a major shock when the freak accident that happened last year, but he reckons it has helped him understand the nature of the opportunity his talent has given him and he is now that bit more determined to take it.
“This year I’ve been pretty focused ever since my nightmare injury that I suffered when I was washing the dishes and a glass smashed in my hand,” said the 27-year-old Glaswegian who has competed at two Commonwealth Games.
“It was half an inch away from taking away my main tendon and that would have been it. After that I got a bit of a fright and I just want to try to make the most of my badminton now.”
He acknowledges that until then he was in danger of failing to fulfil his potential but yesterday’s weekly update of the official Badminton World Federation rankings showed him as having reached an all-time high at 64, edging just ahead of the mark he reached as a 20-year-old and Merrilees believes he is better equipped now to build on that.
“A lot was expected of me at that stage that I probably haven’t really lived up to, so hopefully now I can start pushing forward and showing the people who believed in me when I was younger that I do have something special,” he said.
“I think I maybe took it for granted and often went to tournaments without being 100 per cent motivated. I maybe expected myself to get to a high level without putting in as much effort.”
It is all the more impressive because that hand injury was not the only setback he had suffered since he had opted to leave the GB Badminton base in Milton Keynes last year, following the route to success that brought Commonwealth Games medals for Kirsty Gilmour, Imogen Bankier and Robert Blair, in order to work with Yvette Yun Luo, the Scotland head coach, only for her to leave Badminton Scotland soon after.
“It probably looked like a strange decision to leave what is the world class GB programme. I came back to work with Yvette, but I’m now working with Andy Bowman and Robert Blair and it’s working really well,” he said.
He has heard good things, too, about Badminton Scotland’s new recruit as Luo’s replacement Tat Meng Wong, a Malaysian who will join their set-up in the New Year and Merrilees is going the right way about impressing him by living up to having gone into his home event as the 13th seed.
He did so by beating a dangerous Asian second round opponent in Chinese Taipei’s Ching-Hung Kuo 21-13, 21-13.
“It didn’t feel comfortable but the scoreline was,” Merrilees said of that encounter.
“I got a really good start. I was really conscious yesterday when I saw the guy play, I didn’t really know who he was, but I’d seen some of his results and I knew he’d taken some world class players very close and actually beaten some. So I was very anxious about playing this game because as a seed on paper I was expected to win this game, but I still felt like I was the underdog.”
Merrilees is the only Scot left in singles contention, Matthew Carder having gone out by an identical scoreline, 21-13, 21-13, while in the women’s event the two teenage Scots who made it into the main draw were beaten by Danes, Holly Newall losing 21-18, 21-15 to fifth seed Mia Blichfeldt and Ciara Torrance to eighth seed Julie Finne-Ipsen 21-10, 21-15.
It was an excellent day, however, for another teenage Scottish girl Eleanor O’Donnell, however, as she and Adam Hall reached the last 16 of the mixed doubles by beating Adrian Liu of Canada and Leanne Choo of Australia 23-21, 21-14, before she and Julie MacPherson got through to the same stage of the women’s doubles, beating English pair Molly Chapman and Freya Patel-Redfern.
In that women’s doubles their more experienced compatriots Rebekka Findlay and Caitlin Pringle took full advantage of the opportunity presented to them by the withdrawal of Dutch top seeds Eefke Muskens and Selena Piek from their part of the draw, when they beat another English pair Rosemary Allen and Sophie Males, 21-11, 21-12 in their first round match and consequently got a bye to the quarter-finals.
Scottish interest was meanwhile maintained in the men’s doubles when Adam Hall and his English partner Peter Mills shocked third seeds Raphael Beck and Peter Kaesbauer 21-14, 21-15, a result that was all the sweeter because the Germans had knocked Hall and Robert Blair out of this event last year.
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