Adam Calls Time On Mixed Doubles Career

By RJ Mitchell

ADAM HALL has revealed he has decided to end his Mixed Doubles badminton career.

For six years Adam has partnered Julie MacPherson in what has been the dominant partnership in Scottish badminton with the duo winning four national titles with the first coming in 2019 and also claiming an impressive fourth placed finish in the Commonwealth Games.

However after a testing year which has seen Adam have to undergo a wrist injection, which sidelined him from the Scottish National Championships, the 28 year-old has decided to focus solely on Men’s Doubles.

Six Of The Best:

At last week’s European Championship the partnership notched an impressive win over England’s No.8 seeded Gregory and Jenny Mairs and Adam was keen to pay tribute to Julie.

He shared: “We’ve had a good six years now and it was always going to be hard when we stopped but it’s the right decision for us to part and just be happy we’ve had the times we have enjoyed together.

“We came together in strange circumstances as a scratch pair against Malaysia in the Commonwealth Games in 2018 and we almost took out the Olympic silver medallists and then we got paired and it was a bit of a shock for both of us to be honest!

“But it has been really enjoyable playing with Julie over the last while, we’ve had some really good results and beat the world champions Seo Seung-jae and Chae Yu-jung last year and got a fourth place at the Commonwealth Games.

“That was maybe a little bitter sweet as we didn’t get a medal but we played some great badminton that week and Julie has really come on as a mixed player in the period we have played together.

“It wasn’t really either of our focus back then but we have worked well together as a pair and now I look forward to seeing Julie continuing with whoever she partners up with in the future and thank her for all these good times together while wishing her the very best going forward.”

Demands Of Playing Two Disciplines Draining:

Explaining just why he has made the decision to cut down on his playing commitments Adam revealed: “Physically and mentally it has not been the easiest for me in playing two events and it has been quite challenging both on my body but also mentally to be on all the time.

“So for me it is now the time to focus on the one event and see if I can maybe change some things on and off the court.

“Mixed Doubles nowadays is just so hard physically and especially for the guy. Obviously it is tough for Julie as well for different reasons but for me it was a lot of work that I don’t think I can give as much as I would like to anymore.

“Obviously I’m not getting any younger and over the last couple of years trying to play two games in one day has become increasingly tough.”

Frustrating Finale:

With the duo’s final match being a second round defeat at the Europeans to the German pairing of Jansen and Nguyen (L: 16-21, 17-21) Adam admits it was frustrating not to go out on a high note.

He admitted: “Obviously we would like to have gone a couple of rounds further. We had a really good win against Greg (Mairs) and Jenny (Mairs, no.8 seeds) in the first round and it is always quite tough playing people you know so well.

“Obviously I had coached them in recent months and that all made it difficult but although it was a bitty game we played quite well.

“The goal this week was just to enjoy what happened, I didn’t want to go out in my last game in the Mixed being angry, tense or upset and that maybe helped us in the first match.

“We were disappointed with our last match against the Germans and we just didn’t bring the level we wanted to produce and that was a disappointment but credit to our opponents they played very well on the day.”

Men’s Doubles:

In the Men’s Doubles last week Adam and Alex Dunn defeated Norwegian and Polish opposition before falling in the quarter-finals to No.1 seeds and eventual winners Astrup and Rasmussen (L:11-21, 13-21).

Reflecting on this defeat Adam admitted there were some frustrations about the circumstances of the defeat and he explained: “So, I think we actually played very well, particularly in the first-half of both sets when we were really challenging them and making life hard for them.

“Coming into this Alex and I haven’t been playing particularly well and we were really happy to be in there competing with a really top pair again.

“After the break in both sets they got a run of serves and got away from us but we also got some terrible decisions from the umpire and line judge in that one.

“Normally calls work out both ways but that didn’t happen and every 50/50 decision went against us. It wasn’t the reason we lost but if we had Hawk-Eye the score could have been closer.

“So happy overall but these little things didn’t help us.”

Next Up:

Going forward Adam is looking forward to a period of consolidation as he shared: “We are going into a quieter period now, it has been such a busy last 12-months with Olympic qualifying and our tournament schedule, so we have a little break now which is a plus.

“It is good to get some positive vibes back again as neither of us has been feeling that positive in our own abilities with injuries and niggles.

“So it is good to be back feeling positive again and with a training block behind us we can hopefully use that to build to our next set of tournaments.”

2024 Europeans:

Taking stock of the 2024 European Championships as a whole Adam has no doubt it was a positive tournament for Team Scotland and he said: “I have no doubt it’s been a good event and it has been nice to go away with different people with Rachel Sugden, Rachel Andrew and Adam Pringle all making their debut at these Europeans. I think that was great for them and shows they are all really developing well.

“It was really tough for Rachel (Sugden) to draw Carolina Marin in the opening round but hopefully she can take plenty from that experience.

“Adam and Rachel (Andrew) have worked really hard in training and it was nice for them to get the reward of playing at a major event and they are now going to be our highest ranked Mixed Doubles pair and I hope they really take that on.

“But Kirsty (Gilmour) winning another silver medal is incredible and her consistency over the last few years is just ridiculous and this is her fourth European Championship silver medal to go with her Commonwealth Games and European Games silvers which is tremendous.

“On top of that the doubles guys all performed well against tough opposition and we can all be fairly happy with our performances, so it’s been a positive week overall I’d say.”