JAKARTA: How do you recognise genius? Olympic medals? Maybe. The way they play? Maybe. The legacy they leave behind? Maybe. By how their peers talk about him/ her? Definitely. Saina Nehwal, wearing a tired, beaten expression, holds no grudges against Tai Tzu-ying. She may well be entitled to — the Indian has not beaten the athlete from Chinese Taipei for the last 1991 days.
In the 10 matches from November 2014 — the latest being the semifinals at the Asian Games on Monday — she has managed three wins. But the 28-year-old has only admiration. “I was confused,” she admits on one more than occasion. “She is World No 1... so,” she says two minutes later. At one point of time, when both of them are in the mixed zone, the 28-year-old looks at her opponent like how a fan would. You get the feeling that if journalists aren’t around, she will go autograph hunting.
She wouldn’t have been wrong to do so because Tzu-ying is currently blessed with the touch of God. She is not just a good player but an upcoming great because of how she reacts to adversity. Where others see problems and challenges, she starts calculating the percentages, comes up with a solution and executes a winning shot, all within a fraction of a second. She is the human calculator. The Kaohsiung-born shuttler does this very thing on a number of occasions. Saina agrees. “Even when I put her in difficult situations, she dug herself out of that and won the point.” What makes her such a unique player is her range.
Or ‘variety’ as Saina says. She doesn’t play the same two rallies ever. She has four or five options for every serve or return. By the time you decrypt her game, she is home and hosed. It’s not just the 2012 Olympic bronze medallist who struggles. Tzu-ying’s record against the top-10 in the world today — usually the gold stand for measuring how good or bad a player is — is incomparable. Out of the 123 matches she has played against the other members of the top-10, she has come out on top 80 times. An average of more than 65 per cent. Only Thai Ratchanok Intanon (10-12) has a positive W-L ratio.
The net effect of possessing a complete game. The 2018 All England winner has an extremely good understanding of the net — she used this method to collect a lot of cheap points — but is also adept enough to play from the deep. “Every rally is a different rally against her,” Saina says. “Most players on Tour have one standard way of playing. Not her.
For any return, she is good enough to reply with a deep lob, or a drop or a flat shot. That variety is confusing. That’s the problem with her, she is sometimes so good some of her stupid shots also catches you cold.” But Saina, whose next assignment is the Japan Open from September 11, won’t lose sleep over the loss. She will, after being written off time and again, go back home with an individual medal — India’s first in badminton in 36 years. “Winning a medal is definitely a very big thing,” she says. “Everyone is fighting for the same thing so I am happy with it. Going home without a medal would have been even more disappointing.”