Eyeing a comeback at Macau open following an injury lay-off, shuttler K Srikanth says the initial tournaments would be crucial to get the confidence back as he aims to regain his place in the top 10.
A former World No. 3, Srikanth slipped out of the top 10 in March this year. He reached the quarterfinals at the Rio Olympics and then played at the Japan Super Series where he injured his right ankle.
"It was a small injury. It's okay now. I will be playing the Macau Open. I'm skipping China and Hong Kong. I have started training this week, I have to step up the training gradually. I don't want to push myself too much, don't want to do things hurriedly," said Srikanth, who had clinched the 2014 China Open and 2015 India Open.
"I have to keep working. It is tough to be at the highest level consistently so we have to keep working hard and I have been able to play well but sometimes I could not finish matches the way I want to. I have to work much more harder and I hope the comeback will be better.
"I am not thinking about the ranking. I just want to come back strong and perform well. The initial tournaments are really important to get back the confidence. If I play a few events and do well then I have a good chance of coming back into the top 8," said the Indian, currently ranked World No. 13th.
Playing his maiden Olympics, Srikanth had conjured up hopes of reaching the semifinals before losing narrowly to Chinese legend lin Dan at Rio.
Asked if he has got over the loss, Srikanth, who had beaten lin Dan at 2014 China Open final, said: "Ya, kind off."
"We play 12 super series events in a year and if you lose early in one, you still know that there is another tournament but for Olympics, it comes every four years and you give your heart out in the tournament, so it was really hard for me to take the loss because I had lost at a close margin. So I didn't talk to anybody then, I wanted to take some time off.
"But anyways, that's how the sport goes. We can't expect to win all the time. One has to win and one has to loss. What is important is to comeback hard. If you lose against a particular opponent, you really want to win the next time. You need to train mind to comeback really hard. I was happy with the way I played at Japan but then there was some injury and it aggravated," he said.