New Delhi: Watching Lakshya Sen play at the All England Open brought back memories of him at his best; memories that had dimmed in a spate of first-round exits. The dip in form was so acute that both, player and coaching team, were stumped.
At the Paris Olympics, he lost a clearly winnable semi-final against Dane Viktor Axelsen. He then gave away an almost won match against Malaysian Lee Zii Jia in the bronze playoff, which seemed to take a mental toll on him. After the Games, losses in some very tough, close matches seemed to throw him off even more.
The Lakshya that the nation was banking on seemed like a thing of the past. Until now.
Just like in 2022, the Almora-born player is in the middle of a purple patch. In the second half of 2025, after reaching multiple quarters and semi-finals, he finally reached the Hong Kong Open final in September before winning the Australian Open in November — his first title outside India in 28 months.
He started 2026 strongly too, reaching two quarter-finals, before a brilliant run in Birmingham where he became only the second Indian after childhood mentor Prakash Padukone to reach the All England final twice.
But Lakshya had struggled in the interim period. And miserably. To be fair, he dealt with injuries and surgeries and change in coaches, but the player never replicated his former form, dropping from No.6 in the world to No.25. So what changed?
“Basically, we were able to put a good team together. A lot of credit should go to (coach) Yoo Yong-sung, putting him through the paces. Then his physio Satej (Dalvi) played a very important role,” Lakshya’s coach U Vimal Kumar told HT.
“But the involvement of his trainer-cum-mental conditioning coach Mon Nimrod Brokman helped Lakshya bridge his issues. That is all slowly paying dividend. He has balanced a lot of these things.”
Lakshya started working with Brokman at the start of 2025 when he was perhaps at his lowest. In the first 12 tournaments of 2025, the world No.12 had suffered eight first and two second round exits. Neither he nor his coaches had an answer for such a dip in form.
“The main idea we were working on was to improve his perception. We wanted him to be able to capture more details faster, which means eventually the game becomes slower for him. We were working on different cognitive skills and physical load,” Brokman told HT.
“But one of the main things is his maturity. Other than his talent which he has nurtured, the maturity of developing his character on-and-off-court, the importance of recovering properly are a few changes that we have done. He is very open minded to explore and is very aware of what works for him and what doesn’t.”
In an earlier interview with HT, Lakshya credited Brokman with playing a very important role in bringing him back to form. As Vimal says, when nobody could give answers, Brokman stepped up.
“His game style is somewhere between Rafael Nadal and Muhammad Ali as it is a game of patience. He is not rushing, not jumping at the opponent. These athletes set the tone, build the rhythm and you need to have the capacity for that,” said Brokman, who accompanied Lakshya to England.
“At times when you’re doing well, you want to finish things quickly. One of the things that we were working on is not to rush for the results but to stay present in the journey. We could see that in All England.”
Apart from Lakshya, Brokman has also worked with IPL team Rajasthan Royals, the Indian women’s hockey team, golfers Anirban Lahiri and Shubhankar Sharma as well as shuttler HS Prannoy. Based in Bengaluru for the last nine years, he runs his company Behavioural Foresight.
Asked how Lakshya specifically dealt with the criticism he faced, Brokman described the shuttler as mentally a very strong character.
“It’s important to share with the world the intense pressure of being an athlete representing your country at the Olympics. Even those who win medals, they will have a big downfall. It’s a crash because you were at such a high. You can see scientifically many athletes do not perform well after Olympics,” said Brokman, who represented Israel in fencing for more than a decade.
“Lakshya had the capability to put things behind him, not deal with it too heavily and look forward. We didn’t have to work too much on that. He took a healthy break. It took him some time to find his rhythm again. But it was all in the natural phase of what athletes face. He didn’t deal with it for too long.
“He knows how to look forward. This is what has brought him to where he is, his capability to have the attitude to look forward and willing to look for the next challenge and not getting stuck in the past. Because of this attitude, he was able to push through the challenges. Sometimes it surprises me how much he is willing to push beyond what is expected. We hope to use it as one of his weapons to perform even better.”
