Lee Hyun-il

	Lee Hyun-il
Hangul	이현일
Hanja	李炫一
Revised Romanization	I Hyeon-il
McCune–Reischauer	Yi Hyŏn-il

Lee Hyun-il
Lee Hyun-il
	File:Badminton-lee hyun il cropped.jpg
Personal information
Country	South Korea
Born	April 17, 1980 (age 44); Seoul, South Korea
Handedness	Left
Men's singles
Highest ranking	1 (February 21, 2004)
Current ranking	15 (November 20, 2015)
Men's badminton
	Representing South Korea
World Championships
Asian Championships
Thomas Cup
Sudirman Cup
Asian Games
	BWF profile
	Updated on 03:41, 27 October 2013 (UTC).

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Lee Hyun-il (Korean: 이현일, born April 17, 1980 in Seoul) is a male badminton player from South Korea.

Career

2002 Asian Games

Lee competed in the 2002 Asian Games where he showed signs of promise as an ace singles player for Team Korea. In the men's team event, Lee dominated the opponents he faced in the tourney, completing all three matches less than 30 minutes and allowing only seven points in the semifinals and eight in the final. Team Korea eventually won their first men's team gold medal since 1986 when Park Joo-bong and Kim Moon-soo led the team.

2002 Asian Games - Men's Team
Date	Round	Result	Score	Opponents
October 6	Quarterfinal	Win	15–11, 15–7	Hidetaka Yamada
October 7	Semifinal	Win	15–5, 15–2	Lee Tsuen Seng
October 9	Final	Win	15–3, 15–5	Rony Agustinus

2003 Sudirman Cup

At the 2003 Sudirman Cup held in Eindhoven, Netherlands, Lee helped his team to win its third Sudirman Cup title, winning all three singles matches. Though lots of great doubles players from South Korea had won numerous international competitions, Team Korea had always struggled to win the Thomas and Sudirman Cup competitions due to the lack of top men's singles players. However, Lee, the winner of the 2003 Swiss Open, showed spectacular performances through the Sudirman Cup tourney, not dropping a single set. In the semifinal, Lee defeated 2001 World Championship runner-up and 2001 All England Open champion Peter Gade 2-0, which led his team to a 3-2 victory over Denmark. Lee won another 2-0 upset victory over world number one ranked Chen Hong in Game 1 of the South Korea's final team event against China.

2003 Sudirman Cup
Date	Round	Result	Score	Opponents
March 18	Group 1A	Win	15–5, 15–5	Rasmus Wengberg
March 22	Semifinal	Win	15–9, 15–12	Peter Gade
March 23	Final	Win	15–10, 15–12	Chen Hong

2004 Olympics

Lee competed in the 2004 Summer Olympics, which was his first Olympic appearance. Lee easily defeated Stuart Brehaut of Australia in the first round. However, he was surprisingly eliminated in the second round by Boonsak Ponsana of Thailand.

2006

At the 2006 IBF World Championships held in Madrid, Spain, Lee captured his first world championship medal in the men's singles event. He defeated Chetan Anand, Jan Fröhlich, Eric Pang and Chen Jin before losing to Bao Chunlai of China in the semifinals.

2006 World Championships - Men's Singles
Date	Round	Result	Score	Opponents
September 18	First Rd	Win	21-18, 18-21, 21-10	Chetan Anand
September 19	Second Rd	Win	21-10, 21-4	Jan Fröhlich
September 20	Third Rd	Win	21-16, 21-6	Eric Pang
September 21	Quarterfinal	Win	21-14, 19-21, 21-12	Chen Jin
September 22	Semifinal	Loss	15–21, 19-21	Bao Chunlai

2008 Olympics

In 2008, after defeating top rank players Lin Dan and Lee Chong Wei in Korea Open, he participated in the Beijing Olympics again, and managed to reach semi-finals before being defeated by world number 1, Lee Chong Wei from Malaysia, then being beaten by Chen Jin of China to the bronze medal.

Retirement and comeback

After the 2008 Olympics, Lee announced his retirement from international badminton and only competed in national competitions. However, in April 2010 he came out of retirement after much persuasion from the coach and teammates to fill the void of singles players in the Team Korea squad. In May 2010, Lee participated in the 2010 Thomas Cup and played in two singles matches.

2012 Summer Olympics

Lee lost to Chinese Chen Long in the badminton bronze-medal playoff on August 5, 2012.^[1]

Titles

Singles

Outcome	Event	Year	Venue	Opponent in the final	Score in the final
Olympics
4	Singles	2012	London, United Kingdom	Chen Long	12-21, 21-15, 15-21
4	Singles	2008	Beijing, China	Chen Jin	16-21, 21-12, 14-21
World Championships
3	Singles	2006	Madrid, Spain
Asian Games
3	Singles	2006	Doha, Qatar
2	Singles	2002	Busan, Korea	Taufik Hidayat	7-15, 9-15
All England Open
2	Singles	2006	Birmingham, England	Lin Dan	7-15, 7-15
3	Singles	2012	Birmingham, England
Other International Tournaments
1	Singles	2011	Macau Open	Du Pengyu	17-21, 21-11, 21-18
1	Singles	2008	German Open	Sho Sasaki	22-20, 21-5
1	Singles	2008	Korea Open	Lin Dan	4-21, 23-21, 25-23
1	Singles	2005	Chinese Taipei Open	Shon Seung-mo	15-13, 15-6
1	Singles	2005	Indonesia Open	Boonsak Ponsana	15-10, 15-3
1	Singles	2003	German Open	Lin Dan	15-4, 15-4
1	Singles	2003	Dutch Open	Muhd Hafiz B Hashim	5-15, 15-8, 15-6
1	Singles	2003	Swiss Open	Anders Boesen	15-10, 15-2
1	Singles	2002	Japan Open	Xia Xuanze	8-7, 7-5, 0-7
1	Singles	2001	US Open	Kenneth Jonassen	6-8, 7-2, 7-2