Blog: At the net with Jenny Wallwork

Tuesday, March 9

Well I'm writing this just a day before the opening blows of the Yonex All England Open Championship which begin at the National Indoor Arena in Birmingha on Wednesday.

It's a brilliant tournament, one that every top player wants to win. I look forward to it every year as it is one of the higher priority tournaments in our calendar.

Coming off the nationals when I won titles with Gabby White and Nathan Robertson, the pressure is on this week to deliver a really big title.

Winning the nationals was a great feeling and it's nice to take confidence from those wins and take it into the next tournament.

Gabby and I have been dealt a really tough draw this year after being paired with a top Korean duo. It will be a difficult game, as all of them will be in this tournament.

Hopefully we will perform as well as we did last year and give everyone a surprise, but it will be hard to knock the defending champions, the Chinese pair of Zhang Yawen and Zhao Tingting, off their perch.

The All England is a very strong tournament when all the top pairs in the world will be there so it's a great challenge for us to get out there and chip away at some of the best there is.

And of course there's myself and Nathan Robertson battling for success in the mixed doubles. The further I progress in the tournament the more tiring the two competitions in one day will become but fingers crossed we can cause a few upsets this year.

I know Nathan has a great track record with the silver medal he won with his old mixed partner Gail Emms in Athens but that doesn't serve as a hindrance for me.

It's great having a partner with as much experience as Nathan, he has had a brilliant career so far and I just hope we can carry that on.

I'm just learning as much as I can from him at the moment.

Gail was a fantastic player. We definitely have some similar attributes in our game however there are also many things that are different and I think each individual has something different to offer,It's great to have Gail there if I need any advice.

So wish us all luck this week in Birmingham.

Speak to you next time, hopefully with another title to my name.

Friday, February 12

Well that weekend could not have gone any better - a first national title followed swiftly by a second national title.

All achieved after feeling a bit groggy in training the week before but fortunately for me it all came together in the tournament, which was the National Badminton Championships in Manchester, so quite a big one.

It was a great double, winning the ladies title with another Leeds girl Gabby White and then the mixed crown with Nathan Robertson.

My first final was the mixed and we played really well, moving fast and taking things early to win in two sets.

It was a great feeling winning with Nathan as things are starting to improve so much more now so it was nice that it paid off.

We won the women's in three sets. That was even more satisfying having come so close last year.

Winning the nationals was a brilliant feeling, the only thing that could have made it better would have been if my parents had been there.

Unfortunately they missed their first ever national tournament because they were celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary on a Caribbean cruise.

I'll let them off!

Sorry it's a short one this week, training has been hectic. I'll check in with you again soon.

Tuesday, January 26

Hi all, how is everyone?

Well I've had my birthday and played two tournaments in the Far East so I thought I'd bring you up to speed with how everything went.

Korea didn't go quite as we'd hoped, both Gabby White and I were jet-lagged the whole week so struggled getting ourselves going. We had a good draw and unfortunately lost in the first round to Korean girls so bit of a disappointing week for us.

It was -20 in Korea, absolutely freezing. Luckily we managed to get out of Korea and fly to Malaysia a day earlier than planned which was nice because I didn't have to travel on my birthday for the first time in more years than I can remember and also we got out of the freezing cold to nice warm weather. We went from -20 to 35 degrees.

Luckily Malaysia was a different story. Nathan Robertson flew out for the second week and he and I made it to the quarter-finals and eventually lost in two sets to the world champions Camilla Jhul and Thomas Laybourn from Denmark. We had a good match with them and had game point in the second set but unfortunately they beat us 23-21.

We had a Hong Kong pair in the first round in both the ladies and mixed doubles and Nathan and I managed to have a comfortable win in the mixed winning in two sets.

The women's doubles was slightly more tricky however, we managed to pull through in the end and won in three sets.

We had an all-English battle in the mixed in round two, but Nathan and I earned the bragging rights by beating Antony Clark and Heather Oliver in straight sets.

Unfortunately in the ladies, Gabby and I were up against the top seeds and world No 1 pair from China. Although we hung in there in the first set, they powered away from us in the second.

We got shown a thing or two to say the least! We managed to take a lot from it though - sometimes you can learn as much from games like that as you can from winning.

So overall Malaysia turned out to be a much better trip for us.

The only down-side was the nightmare 30-hour trip home, which finally ended on Sunday night. Then it was straight into training and off to Denmark for two days on Wednesday for a match-play tournament.

There's just no rest for the wicked, especially with the National Championships in Manchester coming up on February 5, 6 and 7.

It's good playing in England though...no travel.

Until next time, see you soon.

Thursday, January 7, 2010

Hello everyone and welcome to my new blog.

First things first, I was born in Bolton and now live in Milton Keynes. So what am I doing writing a blog for the Yorkshire Post you ask. Well in my defence, I lived for 21 of my near-23 years in Leeds, so do consider myself a Yorkshirewoman.

I moved to Milton Keynes for training purposes but still have plenty of connections in my old county.

We've had the snow just as bad as Yorkshire over the last few days so I'm not moaning like a southern softy. But if you think the weather is bad here, then apparently in Korea - where I'm headed on Saturday for the first leg of a very busy schedule in the run-up to March's Yonex All England Open Championships - they're suffering their worst weather for years as well.

Fingers crossed we can set off.

After the Korea Super Series it's off to the Malaysia Open for an event that attracts the top players in the world. I'll actually be in the air from Korea to Malaysia on my 23rd birthday, Sunday, January 17, travelling between the events.

Five years in a row now I've spent my birthday on a plane. Quaffing champagne in first class???? Yeah right - if only.

We've also got the National Championships coming up in Febuary in Manchester so it's a busy time for us all.

The doubles is my badminton art form. I play mixed doubles with Nathan Robertson - you may remember him from his Athens silver-medal winning days alongside Gail Emms - and ladies with Gabby White, another Leeds lass.

I had to make a decision early on in my career about whether I wanted to be a singles or a doubles player and to be honest as a singles player you only get one shot at the medals, whereas with doubles I get twice the opportunity.

London is the goal for myself, Gabby, Nathan and all British athletes really. I missed out on Beijing because I was not one of the top pairs in the country and our world ranking only allowed the top pairings to go to the Olympics.

I'm now in the top British pairings for both the women's and mixed doubles and I have no intention of letting that slide.

The road map in the first half of 2010 to help me achieve that takes me through this busy period in the Far East and then into the Yonex All England Open Championships in March which Gabby and I reached the quarter-finals of last year. Needless to say, we're hoping to go further this year.

Then in April its the Yonex European Badminton Championships in Manchester which I'm hoping to be involved in. If I am then that will be excellent, especially with it being on a court I'm familiar with.

In the mixed, Nathan and I don't get cracking tournament-wise until the Malaysia Open. We've been putting plenty of hours work in and hopefully the results will start to come off the back of that hard graft.

So that's me - removed from Yorkshire and jet-setting around the Far East.

I'll be checking in fortnightly to update on our progress and give you a few stories from behind the scenes in the world of badminton.

Until then, take care.

Jenny