Angus Ng hopes training with world No 1 Viktor Axelsen leads him back to the top in Hong Kong
- Former Hong Kong No 1 looking to reclaim top spot in 2023 after gaining confidence booster by training with Olympic champ
- ‘I learned a lot from him – the way he trained, his attitude, his focus, not wasting a second, which has led to his success,’ Ng says
Angus Ng Ka-long received a timely confidence booster after training with world No 1 Viktor Axelsen in Dubai last week, with the goal of reclaiming the top spot in Hong Kong.
The 28-year-old Ng was invited to take part in a one-week training camp in Dubai run by Denmark’s Axelsen, who kicks off his BWF World Tour Finals campaign in Bangkok on Wednesday.
“Thanks for the fruitful training this week, intense but fun,” Ng wrote on Instagram recently.
The former world No 6 dropped out of the top 10 in March and is now No 19 in the global rankings. He has also lost his grip on Hong Kong’s No 1 spot, which is now held by world No 15 Lee Cheuk-yiu, who has improved his consistency and reached the Super 750 French Open semi-finals in October.
“Though it was only for a short time, I learned a lot from him [Axelsen], the way he trained, his attitude, his focus, not wasting a second, which has led to his success,” Ng said.
Head coach Tim He Yiming said that Ng training with such a high-level player was very encouraging for the team.
“We all know that progress comes from competition,” He said. “Ka-long has this opportunity to train with Viktor, whether it’s for speed or the technical side, and it helps.”
Ng is not the first player to be invited to the Dubai camp, which was set up by Axelsen at the Nad Al Sheba Sports Complex weeks after he won Olympic gold in Tokyo last August.
Hong Kong’s Lee, Singapore’s former world champion Loh Kean Yew, and India’s Lakshya Seng have also recently trained there, all by invitation.
Ng can now look forward to a busy January, when he will compete in three ranking tournaments in Southeast Asia, starting with Malaysia and followed by India and Indonesia.
He is then getting married in March, which means he will miss two major tournaments – the All England Open Championships, and the Swiss Open – but will hope to improve on his 2022 performance, for which he rates himself a “7 out of 10”, with a runner-up finish at the Super 500 Malaysia Open in July his best finish.
Meanwhile, the Badminton World Federation has crowned reigning world champions Axelsen and Japanese Akane Yamaguchi as the male and female Player of the Year, respectively.
China’s Zheng Siwei and Huang Yaqiong won the BWF Pair of the Year award.