Max secures national title

The 21-year-old from Hermitage won the title in Milton Keynes

MAX Flynn, a 21-year-old England badminton player from Hermitage, together with partner Fee Teng Liew from Milton Keynes, pulled off an unexpected senior national title.

The unseeded Flynn and Teng Liew were crowned English National Badminton Mixed Champions in Winchester’s Westgate Badminton Performance Centre venue in their first senior final.

They recently reconnected as a partnership as they are both studying and training at Loughborough University, having won the under-19 Mixed National Championships together two years ago.

After beating the third seeds in Saturday’s quarter-final, they defeated a pair in two sets in the semi-finals, who had beaten the first seeds in the last eight.

Flynn and Fee then triumphed 21-11 21-19 over the second seeds Tom Wolfenden and Jenny Moore in an exciting final.

Flynn is formerly of The Downs School and Peter Symonds College, now competing in the senior international circuit having won a silver medal in the men’s under-19 doubles in the 2017 European Championships in Mulhouse, France.

His first senior international win in men’s doubles was in Cardiff in 2018 in the Welsh International Series.

In January 2020, Badminton Europe recently tipped Flynn with his men’s doubles partner Matthew Clare as the pair to watch in 2020, their first big run of 2019 coming at the Belarus International, where they reached the final, giving world number 23 pair from China a close match.

More recently in Milan in December 2019, they defeated the Irish Open champions Peter Kaesbauer and Jones Jansen from Germany.