The Shuttle Drop: Kento Momota - The King who reigned too short

A king’s reign can define history… even if it doesn’t last long.

This week, we look back at the rise and fall of Kento Momota. Like Alexander the Great, his dominance came fast, overwhelming and almost mythical.

Momota won gold at the World Junior Championships 14 years ago in 2012. Will we see a new superstar emerge when Egypt hosts later this year?

Meanwhile, the Thailand Open arrives with home stars looking to light up Bangkok.

Some athletes rule for decades. Others burn through the sport like an empire. Fast. Brilliant. Almost unstoppable.

Then suddenly gone.

Kento Momota was called King Kento for a reason. For a short, dazzling stretch, men’s singles badminton belonged to him. He dominated like a samurai blade. Calm. Patient. Precise. Relentless.

From Mino, Kagawa, a small Japanese town of fewer than 10,000 people, came a player who would sit above the entire badminton world.

His parents named him Kento after Clark Kent. Superman’s quiet disguise. Maybe that always suited him. Momota never looked like a conqueror at first glance. He did not roar like Marín. He did not tower like Axelsen. He did not overwhelm with obvious physical violence. He just made the court smaller for everyone else.

The boy from Mino began badminton at seven, inspired by his older sister. His parents were not badminton people, but his father studied the sport and even built a homemade practice court to help him improve.

Before the titles, before the rankings, before the empire, there was a boy in a small town and a family trying to build the conditions for something bigger.

By 2012, Momota had become world junior champion, the first Japanese male player to do it. By 2015, he was already making history as Japan’s first men’s singles Superseries winner and the first Japanese man to win a World Championship medal.

The first fall came in 2016, Momota was suspended after admitting he had visited an illegal casino. He missed the Rio Olympics, where he had been tipped as a medal contender. The punishment was public and severe. He was only 21.

For many careers, that would have been the wound that never healed.
For Momota, it became the beginning of the second act.

The return of the king
When he returned, he did not creep back into the sport. He conquered it.

In 2018, Momota won the Asian Championships, the World Championships, the Indonesia Open, the Japan Open, the Denmark Open and the Fuzhou China Open. He also became the first Japanese men’s singles player to reach world number one.

But the real symbolism was bigger than the titles.
In 2018 and 2019, Momota closed the door on the legendary generation. Lin Dan. Lee Chong Wei. Chen Long. The three giants who had defined men’s singles badminton.

Momota’s head-to-head record with Lin Dan finished 4–1. Their final meeting came at the China Open, where Momota won 21–14, 21–14.
Against Lee Chong Wei, it ended 2–2. Their final match was the Indonesia Open semifinal. he won 23–21, 21–12.
Against Chen Long, it finished 5–5. Their final match was the Denmark Open final. he won 21–14, 21–12.

🙏 With a smile and a bow, it was arigato to the men who came before him. A new chapter had started.

What made him beautiful
Momota was not just great. He was beautiful to watch. His game had a strange quietness to it. A rhythm that felt almost unfair. He moved with extreme efficiency. No wasted steps. No unnecessary drama. Just constant flow, balance and control.

His defence was absurd. Not just because he retrieved shuttles, but because his retrievals carried quality. He did not survive rallies. He reset them. Then slowly, almost invisibly, he took them over.

The shot quality was what separated him. Tight net shots. Perfect lifts. Half-smashes placed like needles. Clears that bought time and stole breath.

Momota did not need to rush. That was the terrifying part. He could wait longer than you. Think longer than you. Move less than you. And still arrive first.

2019: the empire
One of the greatest seasons badminton has ever seen.

Momota won 11 titles in a single year - the German Open, All England, Asian Championships, Singapore Open, Japan Open, World Championships, China Open, Korea Open, Denmark Open, Fuzhou China Open and World Tour Finals.

Guinness World Records later recognised it as the most men’s singles badminton titles won in one season. Eleven titles. World champion again. All England champion. World Tour Finals champion. BWF Male Player of the Year. It was the kind of season that turns a player into a reference point.

Like Alexander the Great, his reign was not long. But at its peak, it felt total. Alexander ruled for only 12 years, but conquered enough to echo through history. Momota’s true reign was even shorter, but in those two years, he seemed to stretch across the known badminton world.

Like Napoleon, the rise was fast, brilliant and overwhelming. And then came the fall.

The crash
In January 2020, after winning the Malaysia Masters, Momota was travelling to the airport when his vehicle crashed into a truck. The driver was killed. Momota survived, but suffered facial injuries, later double vision, and needed surgery for a fractured eye socket.

The timing was almost impossible to process. He had just opened the Olympic year by beating Viktor Axelsen in the Malaysia Masters final. He was world number one. Tokyo was coming. Japan was waiting.

And then, suddenly, everything changed. The pandemic followed. The tour stopped. The Olympics were delayed. The rhythm of the world broke. For Momota, it felt like the spell had broken too.

When he returned, he could still play. He could still win. But the old magic was no longer always there.

It was as if he was carrying something invisible with him, something he could not leave at the side of the court before stepping on.

Tokyo
The Tokyo Olympics should have been his coronation. Instead, it became one of badminton’s most painful shocks.

Top seed. Home Olympics. Years of expectation. A nation behind him.

Then Heo Kwang Hee beat him 21–15, 21–19 in the group stage. Momota was out before the knockout rounds. BWF described it as a crash-out; Reuters reported he looked visibly despondent after each lost point.

It felt like the moment the story refused to return to its original path. He kept trying. Of course he did.

He reached the Denmark Open final in 2021. He won the Indonesia Masters later that year, his first international title since the accident. But the old kingdom was gone.

By 2024, ranked far from the top and unable to qualify for Paris, Momota announced he would step away from international badminton. “I’ve realised I can no longer get back to the point where I’m aiming to be number one in the world again,” he said.

There is something quietly devastating about that sentence. Not bitter. Just honest.

So what do we do with Kento Momota?
Two-time world champion. Two-time Asian champion. All England champion. World number one for 121 weeks. Eleven titles in one season. But the numbers only explain part of it.

Momota’s legacy is not just that he won. It is how completely he seemed to understand badminton for one brief, golden period.

He was not the strongest. Not the loudest. Not the most explosive. He was the most certain. At his peak, he played like a man who had solved the game. Every rally under control. Every opponent slowly running out of answers.

That is why the fall felt so cruel. Because King Kento did not lose his throne in one match. The empire simply began to fade around him. The crash, the pandemic, Tokyo, the injuries, the pressure, piece by piece, the rhythm disappeared.

But for those who watched 2018 and 2019, the memory is still clear. Kento Momota’s reign was short. But so are many great reigns.

And some kings do not need forever to be remembered.

How to play like Kento Momota? What made him special? One of the many things was his push lifts. A common shot but he did it so effectively.

Here are the main steps to copy his lifts:

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