Never meet your heroes runs the old saw, but barring withdrawal from the only opportunity he would have to play in a World Championship in his home city, Kieran Merrilees had no choice but to do so once the first round draw for the men’s singles was made.
With 63 possible first round opponents to find himself up against the 27-year-old Glaswegian was man enough to admit that he had been rocked to his core when he found himself up against the greatest player of the modern era, perhaps of all time, in five time World and double Olympic champion Lin Dan.
The 33-year-old may not be an immediately recognisable figure around Scotland, but his has been as much of a household name in the Merrilees domicile as in his native China for the past dozen years and more. For the long time Scottish number one, then, an instant a lifetime ambition and a sense of dread consequently followed the revelation that they were set to meet.
“I’ve probably looked up to him since I was 15 or 16, so it’s difficult just standing there preparing for the match and he’s there. It’s difficult to get your head around and during the game I was really struggling with nerves,” said Merrilees following his 21-15, 21-10 defeat. “It’s definitely an ambition fulfilled, but it’s sort of a Catch 22 because going into this tournament I felt I was playing well and really would have fancied it against a lot of other players, just not this guy.”
There were only two others he had been fearful of facing.
“Him, (former world number one) Lee Chong Wei or (Olympic champion) Chen Long you’re thinking it’s hard to see yourself ever beating these guys,” Merrilees admitted. “These are the players you watch and you try to aspire to be like. To see Lin Dan as an opponent rather than an idol is what I think I let get to me. Even if I’d played my best I think it would still have been impossible.”
Clearly he had no chance of getting into the necessary mindset to be truly competitive.
“Usually as an athlete you try to think about winning but it was difficult to see myself winning that match. Ahead of the game I thought I was going to throw up,” said Merrilees.
“I was so nervous I could hardly play. My legs were like jelly. I’d been training so hard before these championships and then when I saw the draw I think my head went down a bit and I think I’ve let it get to me and he just punished me for it.”
Merrilees did manage to claim the fourth point of the match early on, but when his opponent raced to the midway break without conceding another to lead 11-1 it looked as if he might be set to suffer the sort of embarrassment he had dreaded he might in front of family, friends and Scotland team-mates.
Such is his respect for an opponent who floats and dances around the court, bouncing back off it without missing a beat, or any semblance of control on the rare occasions he was extended yesterday, that Merrilees did not even give himself much in the way of credit for the way he rallied to make something of a game of it from that point, helped initially by a slightly fortuitous flick of the net, with the shuttle deemed to have landed in after he took advantage of using the ‘Hawkeye’ review system for the first time in his career.
“I was just lucky that he tried messing around a little bit in the first set to let me get back into it,” was his assessment of how he managed to get it back to a highly respectable 21-15 scoreline in that opening game.
That was exceedingly harsh self-analysis since he seemed to be moving better, but that, too, can be put down to his state of mind.
“It’s a bit of a blur,” he admitted. “I could feel my legs a little bit so I could move a little bit. I think he took his foot off the gas and then I saw my opportunity to try to build a little bit of confidence going into the second set, which I actually felt I played better in, but he was just ruthless.”
In the end the match lasted 39 minutes, nowhere close to being the shortest encounter of the opening day, but Merrillees reckoned that in a long career playing in high class tournaments he has never encountered anything similar.
“At the right moments these players just don’t make any mistakes. There were some long rallies and I made some bad mistakes after them, whereas he gave me no cheap points apart from in the first set,”was his summation of the difference from the norm.
However he believes he will benefit from the experience in the longer term.
“I’ll definitely take things from it,” he said. “I learned a lot and my coaches will probably give me a lot of feedback on that game. The main thing they said to me was ‘you’re playing the name rather than the court.’”
As Merrilees now looks forward to a brief holiday before resuming training, Lin Dan now faces Emil Holst from the European badminton powerhouse that is Denmark after he saw off Sweden’s Felix Burestedt 21-13, 21-8.
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