MUMBAI: IT’S been just a fortnight since PV Sindhu won an elusive gold in the BWF World Championships. The title came after she beat World No 3 Nozomi Okuhara 21-7, 21-7, in her fifth final of the world event.
The gold made her the first Indian player, male or female, to have been crowned badminton world champion, and with it came the same furore and celebration that had welcomed her when she won silver at the Rio 2016 Olympics.
The dust from her victory still hasn’t settled yet, but Sindhu has already started looking for ways to further evolve her game. “You need to come up with some new thing every time because you know that the other players know your game,” she says, at another felicitation in Mumbai. “It is very important to keep changing all the time.”
The 24-year-old’s game is modelled around an aggressive style, which centres on her domineering smash. But it’s in the more delicate net-play that her father PV Ramana asserts is the way forward for the World No 5.
“She now requires to play more near the net and get confident in her strokes,” says Ramana. “Her opponents don’t lift for Sindhu because they know she’s a hard smasher. So that’s where we want to improve, the net-dribble. If she gets that confidence, and if she’s injury free, she’ll have a good chance in the coming tournaments.”
At the same time, the introduction of 1994 Asian Games gold medallist Hyun Ji Kim to her coaching staff is paying dividends. Kim had joined the coaching team back in April, to work with Indian women’s badminton elite: Sindhu and Saina Nehwal. The move was made to cover gaps that started forming when national coach Pullela Gopichand had to divide his time between Sindhu and the other members of the Indian contingent.
The move though, has injected Sindhu’s game with a fresher approach and helped in her winning her first World Championship title.
“It definitely had a lot (of impact). She had a few changes in her mind and I think that really helped me,” Sindhu adds. “We worked on that, of course under the guidance of Gopi sir, and it went on very well. I have improved a lot of skills, and I have a lot more to improve. It’s important to keep changing all the time. So I think (Kim) has helped me one way because every coach has a different mind-set and each coach gives their inputs and that is a good advantage for me.”