Loh Kean Yew and teammates seeking form boost at KFF Singapore Badminton Open

SINGAPORE – Having slid down the rankings owing to lacklustre form, the Republic’s top badminton players Loh Kean Yew, Jason Teh and Yeo Jia Min are aiming to kick-start their season on home court this week.

They will play at the US$1 million (S$1.28 million) KFF Singapore Badminton Open, which starts on May 26 at the Singapore Indoor Stadium.

Of the trio, Yeo’s decline has been the most pronounced as she had to cope with an Achilles injury and a torn hamstring in her right leg before undergoing a knee procedure in April.

Before her injury woes, she won the German Open and also reached three quarter-finals in seven other events before the 2025 Singapore Open, reaching a career-high women’s singles ranking of 11th.

However, in 2026, the 27-year-old played in just six tournaments and did not progress past the second round in any of them, slumping to 37th.

Yeo will meet in-form Japanese world No. 3 Akane Yamaguchi in the first round on May 27, hoping to improve on a 2-4 head-to-head record.

She said: “Trying to get back my condition has been tougher than I expected. But I’m just trying to embrace every challenge and still believe that I have more in myself.

“I’ll just take every day and every competition as a chance to prove I can still do it and this week is another chance.

“The Singapore Open is always one of my favourite tournaments to play at. The energy from the crowd is always very high and we want to perform for all our fans at home. So, regardless of what condition I’m in, I will give my best.”

Loh, meanwhile, has also been blighted by injury woes.

He has been struggling with inflammation in his right foot following a bright start to 2026, when he made two semi-final appearances in January and reached the Asian championships quarter-finals in April.

The foot issue restricted his movement in his opening loss at the Thailand Open on May 13 against India’s 27th-ranked Srikanth Kidambi, who will be his first-round opponent again on May 27.

His results also pale in comparison to those over the same period in 2025, when he won the Taipei Open and reached another final, two semi-finals and two quarter-finals. The 28-year-old has since fallen out of the top 10 to 14th.

Loh, who skipped the May 19-24 Malaysia Masters to recover, said: “All the events are very competitive now and I think especially so in the men’s singles. Anyone can lose to another player from the top 50 if he is not at his best.

“Winning and losing are part of our sport, especially with so many tournaments a year, and there’s always going to be spells of good and bad form. It’s all about how we adapt, find our way back and climb again.”

His teammate Teh has a clean bill of health, but is still seeking consistency at the highest level.

Heading into the 2025 Singapore Open, he won the Thailand Masters and reached two other quarter-finals as he rose to a career-high world No. 19 that year. But he has since slid to 31st after just one quarter-final appearance in seven Badminton World Federation World Tour events in 2026.

In a bid to arrest the slide, he took part in the Polish Open, a lower-tier International Challenge tournament in March, and won.

The 25-year-old, who will face 19th-ranked Chi Yu-jen of Chinese Taipei on May 27, said: “There is the pressure to maintain the points earned from doing well in the previous year and I’m still learning to be consistent in my performances.”

Meanwhile, 42nd-ranked men’s doubles duo Wesley Koh and Junsuke Kubo have made strides to break into the top 50.

They are looking to claim a major scalp after respectable performances in 2026, against South Korea’s top-ranked Kim Won-ho and Seo Seung-jae at the Asian championships and India’s former world No. 1 Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty at the Swiss Open.

At the Malaysia Masters on May 19, they took a game off the home favourites, 2022 world champions and second-ranked Aaron Chia and Soh Wooi Yik, before losing.

Ahead of their Singapore Open first-round clash against Indonesia’s seventh-ranked Sabar Gutama and Reza Isfahani, 23-year-old Koh said: “Against these top pairs, we were able to match them point for point and in some cases we had a big lead.

“But they are more experienced and know how to handle such situations better than us, so when they start to catch up, we start to doubt ourselves.

“Maintaining belief and confidence is still something we are trying to figure out together.”

Kubo, 24, added: “We dwell too much on our mistakes. We need to learn how to restart after losing a series of points or even a game and focus on the next point instead of the past.”