Badminton and the missed American opportunity

Dave Freeman, undefeated in a 14-year badminton career

The United States of America clinched the sole slots for the Pan-America Zone at the Thomas and Uber Cup Finals, overcoming Guatemala in the men’s and Canada in the women’s.

To many contemporary fans, the Americans might seem like interlopers to the elite group. Badminton hardly figures in the American discourse on sports, dominated as it is by basketball, baseball, tennis, and other multi-million dollar sporting events.

But cast your mind back, and look up the records. You will find that USA was among the game’s powers in the early years, but for reasons that are yet to be fully understood, the game slowly lost its popularity in that country. With that, badminton lost a golden opportunity to become a global sport early on, riding the back of American inventiveness and marketing – it’s a territory that the game is still struggling to recover.

In the first Thomas Cup of 1949, USA stretched a powerful Malaya 3-6 in the inter-zone tie; Malaya went on to beat Denmark 8-1 in the Finals. At the next Thomas Cup, USA even reached the Finals against Malaya by beating India in a tense tie, 5-4. The combined strength of Malaya, boasting the likes of Wong Peng Soon, Ooi Teck Hock and Ong Poh Lim was too much for the Americans, who went down fighting 2-7.

The story was even more impressive in the women’s. With players of the brilliance of Judy Devlin, Susan Devlin, Ethel Marshall and Margaret Varner, the USA won the first three Uber Cup titles, outclassing Denmark 6-1 (1957), Denmark again 5-2 (1960) and England 4-3 (1963). They reached the Finals for the fourth successive time, in 1966, but this time they fell to Japan 5-2.

One of America’s great contributions to badminton was Dave Freeman. Fans with short-term memories talk of Lin Dan or Rudy Hartono as the ‘greatest-ever’, but nobody before or since has matched the unique career of Dave Freeman. He was undefeated in a career spanning 14 years – and those were years that also featured legends like Wong Peng Soon and Oi Teck Hock. Freeman was a phenomenon. A junior national tennis champion, he was adept at several sports, such as golf and table tennis, and even built a successful professional career as a neurosurgeon.

On the badminton courts, he had no equal. He won the All England in 1949 in his only trip there. He won six successive US Open titles before reporting for his medical duties in the Second World War – and then he made a brief comeback in 1953 and won the title again – an incredible 11 years after he’d last competed!

It’s a mystery why, despite having such giants and prestigious title triumphs, badminton fell off America’s sporting consciousness. Perhaps the game failed to keep pace with the marketing of other sports, failing to discover opportunities during the post-War economic boom, but by the 1970s, the scene had become markedly different. Badminton today is seen as the preserve of South-East Asian immigrants, and a look at the American team will confirm this stereotype. Few homegrown Americans have taken to badminton as a competitive sport.

But perhaps there is yet an opportunity for the Badminton World Federation to make a strong pitch in the USA. They will have to learn from history and find out why badminton failed to take root in American soil, and will have to devise new ways of capturing the American mind. America’s homegrown heroes might be forgotten, but they can be revived, and an emotional connect rediscovered. If that happens, we might again welcome another power in badminton.