THE GIRL NEXT DOOR
TAI TZU YING:
I don’t put pressure on myself. I just enjoy the game
Her father, a firefighter, is also the director of the Kaohsiung badminton committee and a huge fan of the sport – he and his wife would often sit on the coaches’ chairs behind her during her formative years.
Tai’s natural talent was obvious from the moment that she first started competing in Taiwan’s first division when she was only 13 years of age. At 16, she became the youngest-ever National Champion, having already started to compete outside her own borders, finishing runner-up in her first international tournament in Vietnam.
Taiwan had been waiting for someone to replace its former No.1 Cheng Shao-Chieh, who had been World Junior Champion before scooping a Bronze medal at the 2005 World Championships but who never progressed to the top 5.
As a teenager Tai Tzu deflected pressure through training hard
www.isportgroup.com/InternationalBadmintonMagazine 20 | March 2017 INTERNATIONALBADMINTONMAGAZINE
with her usual humility. Her junior years were spent on the senior BWF World Tour. “I didn’t have much time to think about my opponents then, I just played to gain more experience. I just focussed on my daily practice and time flew like an arrow”. Slowly, she progressed through the world rankings with wins over the top players and in June 2010 reached her first Superseries final at the Singapore Open.
“It’s my best memory on court. I lost in the final, but it was my 16th birthday that day and everyone celebrated it while I was on court”.
Two years later, she was beaten in the quarter-finals at the London Olympics by the eventual winner Li Xuerui, but clinched her first Superseries title just one month later in Japan to become the then world’s youngest ever Superseries winner. Despite of losing in the quarter-finals in Rio, 2016 was her best
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32
