Victory in a final at the Emirates Arena having become something of a holy grail for Kirsty Gilmour, Sunday’s triumph in the Scottish Open Grand Prix final has boosted the British number one’s confidence that she can to take it to the best in the world.
The 24-year-old Glasgow-based European Championship and Commonwealth Games silver medallist was top seed going into this year’s Scottish Open Grand Prix, but had been unable to find her best form until it really mattered in the closing stages of the final against Denmark’s Mia Blichfeldt, the number three seed, but that only made her win at what she considers her sporting home all the more satisfying.
“This is the second Grand Prix win of my career, but it is a huge one for me because I’ve been playing in this since I was 15,” she pointed out.
“It’s always been a case of getting through a round and people saying ‘Oh, better luck next year,’ and then when I had progressed all the way to the final having put in all that work to have it snatched away, I couldn’t let that happen again.”
Gilmour’s first defeat in the final was at the hands of Carolina Marin, the Spaniard who was, at the time, on her way to the very top of the world rankings, going on to win back to back world championships and the Olympic title in Rio last year, while she was beaten by Canada’s Michelle Li in the Commonwealth Games final the following year. However her unexpected defeat in the final to Blichfeldt’s fellow Dane Line Kjaersfeldt two years ago when she had also gone into the event as top seed was her biggest disappointment and Gilmour was all the more determined to live up to her billing this time around.
“I’m not going to pretend that there was no doubt in my mind. I let the scenario play out that I went out there and couldn’t hit the shuttle. I have to have those thoughts, but then I have to have the belief that I would go on and say ‘this is mine.’ You have to be prepared both ways,” she said.
In the event, while she was never anything other than competitive, she took time to build into the final and also had a dip early in the second set before going on to wrap up the match 23-21, 21-12.
“This week has been another positive experience to build on and another piece of evidence that I can come through scraps to win, even when I’m not playing my best badminton and that I can produce the goods when it really matters by winning a Grand Prix event with two solid sets in a final,” she said.
“I struggled to get it to click all week and even in the first set of the final it was neck and neck, but I then worked out the tactics I wanted to apply. Mia mixed things up a bit. She’s a very tough opponent, but I’m happy with the way I stuck to my guns and what we’d spoken about.”
Gilmour was ranked 14th in the world just after making her Olympic debut, but dropped to 56th by February after a lengthy lay-off following knee surgery and she paid tribute to new Badminton Scotland head coach Tat Meng Wong, with whom she has struck up a close working relationship since his arrival from Malaysia just after she was able to get back on court.
“He’s always at the back of the court, keeping you calm, telling you to take a breath. He’s the Zen master and he has a lot to do with this whole last year,” she said.
“We started working together in February and this is a building block. It’s not the end of anything, it’s just the start of where I want to go next.”
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