High pressure, hard-hitting opponent, a match that had slipped his grasp in a flash. What was HS Prannoy going to come up with?
Into the third game of his third round match of the TotalEnergies BWF World Championships 2023 against Loh Kean Yew, having seen a comfortable seven-point lead disappear, and Loh still sending those thunderbolts, Prannoy had to dredge up something. In the crucible of a high-pressure match, with a World Championships quarterfinal at stake, it needed nerve to execute.
At 19-all, he took the gamble.
There was a slight feint on the service return; Loh followed that movement, but the shuttle was driven the other way, right on the line. Match point.
And then yet another high-risk clear, into the deep backhand corner, leaving Loh with a moment of indecision. The match was won; the hunt for a first World Championships medal still on.
“I wasn’t brave enough in a lot of areas, but towards the end I convinced myself that it was okay to lose, but not okay to not try, so that’s why towards the end I played some shots that I usually don’t play, and that was probably the only difference,” said Prannoy.
“There’s a lot of talking with the coaches. They were asking me to do certain things but I wasn’t able to do those things. I was wondering what to do, because whatever I did he was able to counter with huge shots so I wasn’t able to play what they were asking me to play, and I was getting frustrated because I wasn’t able to play the way they wanted me to play, and they were getting frustrated because I wasn’t able to execute those kinds of shots.
“It’s difficult out there to play those shots in a pressure match. But that’s where the coaches come into play, they give you the confidence to play, that it’s okay to lose.
“Eventually I played that at 19-all, the shot I wasn’t confident about but executed.”
The emotions had tumbled out after Loh got six points in a row, pulling abreast after trailing 11-4 in the third.
“It was intense, it was emotional,” said Prannoy. “Until 11-4 it was cool, then suddenly you could see Loh injecting a new gear and hitting those hard smashes, and it was really coming hard. Especially towards the end of the third game to hit those kind of smashes, you don’t expect that. But that has been his strength always, he moves quick and always out there on top of the shuttle.
“Emotionally it was important to let go; I was holding back for sometime and it wasn’t helping me, so that’s why I had to shout it out, and somehow get ride of the pressure that was mounting in my head. Probably that’s why it was emotional at the end.
“I was getting nervous, to be honest. Had to let it go somewhere, that’s why there were so many emotions. That’s how it is in some games.”