Source: EYEPRESS Images/F.L Wong
[Saba Sports News] The 2025 Japan Open Badminton Championships kicked off this week. Top seed An Se-young defeated Thai prodigy Ratchanok Intanon in just 38 minutes with a 2-0 victory. Although she advanced to the next round, head coach Park Joo-bong expressed concern over her performance, advising her to optimize her playing style and avoid being predictable to maintain dominance over rivals like Chen Yufei and Yamaguchi Akane. If An Se-young wins the upcoming Super 1000 China Open, she will achieve the rare feat of winning all four Super 1000 tournaments. This year, she has already won the Malaysia Open in January, the All England in March, and the Indonesia Open in June, showing her overwhelming dominance. Since June, An Se-young has been undergoing intense physical and technical training at the South Korean national team camp in Jinchuan under Coach Park’s guidance to address recent weaknesses exposed in major events. Emphasizing her defensive style, Coach Park stressed that she should display an offensive mindset from the start of the match. As a result, the intensity of her physical training has doubled, and the time spent on non-racket drills such as footwork and empty swings has also doubled. Due to the high workload, An Se-young admitted it was “really hard.”