Taiwanese badminton star Tai Tzu-ying yesterday launched her record-matching 10th and potentially penultimate BWF World Tour Finals campaign with a decisive victory over Indonesia’s Gregoria Mariska Tunjung in Hangzhou, China.
The 29-year-old Kaohsiung native, who announced in April that she would retire at the end of next year, beat world No. 7 Tunjung 21-18, 21-17 in 48 minutes in her first match of the Group A women’s singles.
World No. 4 Tai has beaten the Indonesia shuttler in each of their nine head-to-head matches since they first met on the court at the BCA Indonesian Open in 2017.
Photo: AFP
She is today to play world No. 13 Kim Ga-eun of South Korea, who Tai has beaten in all seven of their matchups since the BWF World Championships in 2019.
Most recently, Tai beat Kim 21-10, 21-12 in the opening round of the Yonex All England Open Badminton Championships in Birmingham in March.
Kim opened her campaign yesterday with a 21-18, 21-18 victory over compatriot and world No. 1 An Se-young.
Group B includes world No. 2 Chen Yufei of China, world No. 5 Carolina Marin of Spain, world No. 8 Han Yue of China and world No. 9 Zhang Beiwen of the US.
Tai, the Tokyo Olympic silver-medalist is seeking to win her fourth Finals championship, after narrowly losing out to Japanese ace Akane Yamaguchi for the title in last year’s final.
Only retired shuttlers Susi Susanti of Indonesia and Li Lingwei of China have more Finals titles than Tai, at six and four respectively, the BWF Web site says.
This year’s tournament is Tai’s 10th, matching retired Danish star Kamilla Rytter Juhl for the most appearances in the season-ending Finals, which were known as the BWF Super Series Finals prior to 2018, the site says.
Tai is the only shuttler representing Taiwan in this year’s Finals.
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