She's now at peak physical fitness in her career. So her thinking may be that if she gets gold OG, she will retire with a happy ending. And if she doesn't get gold, to keep her physicality going for another 4 years from now would be too much especially for female WS players, so she will also retire. Either way, retirement. Sent from my SM-G965W using Tapatalk
https://www.newindianexpress.com/sp...nent-but-no-rivalry-tai-tzu-ying-2091733.html From the article:
This can mean everything and nothing. Thinking about it, it makes total sense not to go public with her post-tokyo plans before the actual tournament, even if she knew already. Let's just assume she really decides to call it quits - can you image the mental pressure coming from the public (added to the one that is already existing in herself...) since it's her final chance to win a "big one"? You must be superhuman not to crumble under that before you even hit the first olympic shuttle.
BWF unlimited épisode of the week is out and we have a good interview of TTY starting at 15:00 through the end of the video. At 19:00 she talks about retirement and it does seem like her mind is set to something. May be not a full retirement but it seems that she might take things easier after the Olympics.
Great interview. You can feel that she's talking from her heart instead of replying with prepared zero-content phrases. And from the way she answered the question regarding her post-tokyo plans, I think it's pretty obvious that she has specific plans that start after the Olympics. So I expect her to take a certain (part)time-out afterwards and then to make up her mind before start of the 2021 season if she fully gets back into badminton business or retires. And apart from that, it's remarkable to see how much her whole appearance has changed over the years. Also, I love the spot-on analysis in terms of strengths and weaknesses of her own game. There is literally not a single word to add.
Morten's analysis on yesterday's match was spot on, clear determination on her play. so long serves and less "fancy shots" are the way to play against Chen Yufei?
Tai is the most talented player in the ladies field and you can feel how she feels every shuttlecock. Also think that their consistency was the key. Normally she has problems with Yamaguchi and Yufei. They just play everything back without mistakes on a high level .Tai can only beat himself.
Yes, you could clearly sense how serious she had been in that final and how much she was focused on playing a safe game during most parts of the match. And IMO that will be the way to improve her consistency and lower the typical rate of unforced errors. It was obvious that she really, really wanted to win that match and it was great to see with how much determination she fought towards that goal.
Classic case of keeping it simple when you're the clearly superior player. It's probably a challenge for her because naturally she's very creative and probably wants to play the 'beautiful' shots, not necessarily the most effective or safe ones (at least for me, that can be a challenge at times), but against CYF or Yamaguchi she doesn't need anything special to win. Against Marin, for example, you may want to play some difficult shots in situations where you'd otherwise give her an easy attacking opportunity. Anyway, congrats to TTY for collecting this AE win. Now she can set her sights on Toyko - if she can get there in similar shape and with this focus, I don't see who could beat her.
I felt like she was borderline to fall back into her usual habit in the first 3-4 rallies of game 2 when she messed up those fancy cross court net shot. Luckily, that seemed to have been a wake-up call and she got back on track in time. To me, the biggest threat is still Carolina in her typical WC & Olympics over-the-top killer-mode shape. Against that full-on attack game, it wouldn't really help to play a safer game since Carolina will be aiming to score points herself and wouldn't rely on TTY making mistakes.
Exactly, hence my comment why this kind of game plan isn't really necessary against Marin. The plus side is that Marin does inject a lot of pace and urgency on her own, which does allow TTY to feed off of it and also puts her under pressure so she doesn't have the 'free time' to think of unnecessarily fancy shots Also, Marin doesn't retrieve enough to create frustration or the urge to play increasingly difficult shots in order to score the point. Sindhu was a bit of a bad match up for TTY too, now that I've mulled this over a bit. Apart from those two, though, I don't see much of a danger provided she can replicate this more disciplined game plan in her potential matches against more passive players.
TTY warming up with her coach at AE (and also watch how Watanabe practices his spin serves) Sent from my SM-G988W using Tapatalk
Post final match interview. Says she focused on being more patient and consistent, and more hungry to win, especially after finding out that all further tournaments over the next 2 months were being cancelled due to the covid situation. Sent from my SM-G988W using Tapatalk