Steel core and childish wonder make Tai Tzu-Ying badminton’s SpongeBob

Tai Tzu Ying.

It is that sort of an interview: the question we are dying to ask Tai Tzu-Ying is about her six-pack abs, an outrageously impressive set of toned muscles on a female athlete in badminton. The intent is to prop her up as the latest symbol of women’s power – she does have a mean, scything smash when she chooses that weapon. You sense it’s time to drop the infantile referring to women’s singles as ‘girls’ — in case of international shuttle, a dazzling dozen girls who have elevated the sport to high-art by the sheer wide variety of their playing styles.

Only, Tai Tzu — of that empowering power-abs reputation — is oblivious to this narrative we are weaving about grown-ups, hinging on her six-pack as pivot. She wants to talk about SpongeBob SquarePants.

There’s that other minor handicap of having never learnt to speak Chinese, making communication with the most enigmatic player on the circuit, that much more difficult. She’s in India as part of the Ahmedabad Smash Blasters franchise, and the six-pack query is completely lost in translation as she conveys through an interpreter that, “In Grade 6, I hated studying so much that I decided I’d prefer playing badminton instead.”

It is only when someone prods her to say that she loves watching Doraemon (because we assume anyone in the Pacific rim would dig Japanese manga), that she chortles away instead about the kiddy favourite that came from the other coast – SpongeBob SquarePants. That marine spongechild, taking in the surroundings, happy and naïve, and perennially amused and astounded with the world, like pop culture writer Blake Harper said, is exactly what Tai Tzu-Ying, women’s badminton’s World No 1, has tended to be in her life of 24 years.

Harper, writing for ‘Fatherly’ spoke of the ‘absolutely bizarre, childish convictions’ that have kept SpongeBob unchanging, relevant and popular all these years after it aired on Nickelodeon. Tai Tzu, though she is known to have worked manically on strengthening her core and getting herself that rippling torso that propelled her to World No 1 after the Rio Olympics, retains that childish wonder, even if her on-court game toughened and wizened up, after she lost at the Olympics.

The defeat had come against PV Sindhu before the medal came in sights, and while the 5’11” juggernaut rolled on, Tai Tzu stood quietly by the wayside, trying to understand the heap of disappointment caused by the Indian wrecking ball. “She’s so fast” was all she uttered that day, still wide-eyed and shocked at how it had all ended within no time.

But there was none of Squidward’s sorrow, anger or bitterness or the very adult comprehension that her world was broken — bulldozed, like only Olympic dreams are. Or if there was, it was privately nursed away from all. “She’s fast,” Tai Tzu would say again, picking her kitbag with teddybear keychains hanging off it, shrugging, smiling, bowing a tad, and walking away from RioCentro Pavilion 4.

“I had a shoulder injury, during practice,” she goes back to that time, and though she’s beaten Sindhu in key finals ever since (at All England and at a SS finals), she maintains what troubles her the most is when the Indian gets her handspeed whirring to go with that intimidating height. “She’s much taller than me, and has power. Also her speed is the most difficult,” she adds.

However adult ambitions have still not caught hold of her. Last August, she skipped the World Championships, where she’d have been the favourite, to play instead in the World University Games that Taipei hosted. She values all her titles on the circuit – she has 12 Super Series crowns – and says, “all opponents are tough.” But her most gleeful final remains her first-ever SS final in 2010, where she incidentally lost to Saina Nehwal. But, it had been her birthday, and the whole stadium sang out the birthday song for her. Tai Tzu, badminton’s Peter Pan-in-Pineapple house, whose enthusiasm for the sport never grows out, had loved turning 17 that night.

While she added the whip of power to her strokes after the Olympics setback and grew considerably compact in closing out matches post Rio, her points can swing between childish audacity to believe every outrageous angle will land alright and a miserable mistake of a failing fool, at other times. Like SpongeBob crashes his boat unfailingly, much to Mrs Puffs’ dismay.

Tai Tzu is known for her deceptive strokes – you’ll seldom know where she hits till the shuttle actually crosses the net. There’s a sizeable those who wonder if she herself knows till the very last spontaneous second. She has the widest repertoire of strokes, but it is in her choice of selecting her strokes that lies the delight of watching the Taiwanese play. Unpredictable, she’s often given out the impression that she’s deeply immersed in the wonderment of her own strokes. That, the ensuing point is the be-all-end-all of her playing, never mind the match that needs to be won.

Though should you ask her if talent is bigger or hardwork, she’s quick to say: “Hardwork.”

When she sticks her tongue out after a mistake, it is just a minor blip, not an enormous end of the world epoch – like exiting from the Olympics. Tai Tzu, it would seem, loves badminton more than she loves winning.

“I started at age 9 in 2003,” she recalls. Her father — a firefighter — who loves the sport and was the director of the Kaohsiung district badminton committee, was her first coach. All that wrist wizardry came from her father’s many friends who trained her. “They would teach me different strokes, including the drop shots,” she says.

It wasn’t a single-minded pursuit of a medal; Tai Tzu would learn the sport in its most organic form, from local connoisseurs who fancied playing their specialised strokes and loved talking about those tricks to a four-footer who bounced around absorbing all they taught.

It’s why despite never having won the big titles — Olympics or the Worlds — Tai Tzu is far away from being jaded or embittered by her losses. When she’s away from badminton, she’s either listening to music or spending time with her family. In India, like most far eastern athletes, she’s discovered the joy of eating naan or roti. “With gravy. But not too spicy,” she giggles.

She’s a rarity in the cut-throat world of pro-sport where winning is everything. And as Tokyo approaches, there might well be a tightening of focus. But till then, she’s happy bouncing away in her own nautical world, absorbing everything around her, gleefully playing badminton’s SpongeBob SquarePants.