Badminton Year-Ender: Top 5 shuttlers of the 2018 season

#2 Tai Tzu Ying

Is there any shot, any court, any tournament that the wondrous Tai Tzu Ying has no answer to? The Chinese Taipei girl never fails to leave spectators spellbound with her breathtaking deceptive strokes that only she can come up with.

And that is why, most of the time her opponents are left scratching their heads when they face the magic of Tai. The 24-year-old simply picked up from where she left last year and even outdid her 2017 season.

It needs to be mentioned here that she did not have the best of starts to the season and suffered a loss in her very first final of the year at the Malaysia Masters. But that slip in Bukit Jalil was only an anomaly which she proved the very next week when she beat Saina Nehwal to win the Indonesia Masters.

Thus began her march and it continued through the All England Open, Badminton Asia Championships, Uber Cup, Malaysia Open, Indonesia Open, finally ending in the quarter-finals of the World Championships to He Bingjiao.

By then, she had accumulated 31 wins in a row, breaking Li Xuerui’s record of winning 30 consecutive matches.

After that stutter, she simply brushed it off and resumed her title hunt once more, sweeping the Asian Games gold, Chinese Taipei Open, Denmark Open until injury reared its ugly head and interrupted her run.

Tai’s exploits in 2018 gave her eight titles and two runner-up finishes.

About the author

Sudeshna is a veteran Indian Sports and International Tennis journalist as well as editor at Sportskeeda. She has an overall experience of over 10 years with top publications like The Bridge, Fox Sports Asia, and gained a keen interest in Indian sports since the 2002 Commonwealth and Asian Games when she was in school.

Sudeshna holds a Master's degree in Journalism and Mass Communication. She attends tournaments regularly and being a highly experienced journalist, she ensures she only contacts the correct people from her network for the most authentic information to be put in her articles.

Sudeshna’s favorite Indian athlete is PV Sindhu owing to her big-tournament performances. She also admires Tennis legend Rafael Nadal for his resilience and has witnessed the Spaniard in action at the French Open, due to which, Roland Garros is her all-time favorite Grand Slam tournament.

Neeraj Chopra’s gold medal win at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics made a lasting impact on Sudeshna. She has also interviewed him along with Badminton star Chirag Shetty and several other sports personalities. She has done on-ground reporting on multiple ITF tournaments along with the Premier Badminton League, Asian Boxing Championships and the Davis Cup.

When not using her skills and years of experience in crafting compelling content, Sudeshna likes to read, watch movies and travel.

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Edited by Sripad