Tai Tzu-Ying\u2019s reverse-sliced backhand that shapes up to travel at a 45 degree cross-court angle but goes dead straight, is the cleverest con pulled off in Denmark since two weavers convinced the emperor he was draped in the finest clothes.<\/p>\n
Outwitted by the uncanny strokes produced by her opponent\u2019s wrist was Saina Nehwal in the Denmark Open Super 750 finals on Sunday. Losing to Tai Tzu often has an air of inevitability for most opponents. But the 13-21, 21-13, 6-21 loss had a brief phase of 22 minutes in the second game when Saina looked capable of ending the 10-match losing streak against the Taiwanese.<\/p>\n
However, on either side of those 22 minutes, Tai Tzu was straight out of Hans Christian Andersen\u2019s compulsive fairy tales \u2013 her day poised to end well as she dictated both pace and placement.<\/p>\n
But first, Saina\u2019s resistance that makes her 13th loss, 11th on a trot, a shade different than all the other ones: Tai Tzu later admitted she was made to work hard.<\/p>\n
Saina had entered the court with a plan backed by better fitness than the last two years, and buoyed by her results over the last few days. Saina was looping the lifts to the back court, but had conceded a biggish lead to start with in the first set midway. While Tai Tzu\u2019s perennial disguised shots were working their magic, the Indian wasn\u2019t backing off from fast-paced mid-court exchanges and resisting the onslaught with a couple of body smashes that declared her intent. But as happens always, Tai Tzu would wrap it up with a flurry.<\/p>\n
The score read 21-13 but no one in the Odense stadium believed that this was finishing in a hurry. For Saina was tangling the puppeteer Tai Tzu\u2019s strings, one knot at a time. This would typically involve high deep lifts which would send the Taiwanese scrambling to the back line. To her credit, Saina was striking the right length and would later evoke some indecision in a player who revels in seeing befuddlement in opponents\u2019 legs.<\/p>\n
Tai Tzu was kept busy guarding her deep backhand and Saina would even gift herself a rasping return of serve, a vicious return of the weak, short serve, and go into the break on a high. Parupalli Kashyap, talking to her at the end of Game 1, would tell her she was playing well, and needed to keep moving Tai Tzu front and back, ration the cross-courts and slow drops, using them when needed.<\/p>\n
There was a charging smash at 4-2, and a sliced variation at 6-3 after a long rally. For all that\u2019ve watched Saina struggle in fitness the past two years (though a Worlds and Asiad bronze were pocketed in the interim), her retrieving was a throwback to her fittest days. In fact, she didn\u2019t harry around mindlessly, but looked for the kills and the set-ups keeping pace with Tai Tzu\u2019s pace of thought and strokes.<\/p>\n
For three points from 13-8 to 15-8, Saina\u2019s high clears aggravated Tai Tzu so bad that she started either leaving the shuttle praying it would fly out or hacked at it wildly sending it wide herself.<\/p>\n
All this time, Saina was retrieving beautifully, and there was a promise of low net picks and crosses \u2013 shots that look recent additions to her game. At 16-9, Saina would roar with a feral might, and at 17-9 she was truly fired up unwilling to cede inches. Making Tai Tzu run circles though even her defence elicits wonderment \u2013 Saina would get the crowd on its feet with a backhand push giving her an identical 21-13 scoreline.<\/p>\n
Yet, Saina is 28. Saina is nearing the end of a tough season. Saina needs her body to back a mind that\u2019s computing at its best. And the strain of Game 2 would chip at her energies. There was a whiff of an upset, but a gust of Tai Tzu upping the ante and packing it all in, blew Saina away in the decider. Those 22 minutes seemed eons away.<\/p>\n
But you can\u2019t blame Saina for not being ready for a shot that is disrupting the rules of physics no one sees Tai Tzu\u2019s shots coming, until everyone suddenly does.<\/p>\n
Hitting to the back sure cuts down Tai Tzu\u2019s options though it\u2019s all relative, for if she has seven options for one forecourt net position, she might have only three from the back. That\u2019s three too many in most cases.<\/p>\n
But scrambling ceaselessly as Saina did on Sunday is tough to sustain and she will need to be fitter than this to take this strategy to its logical conclusion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tai Tzu-Ying\u2019s reverse-sliced backhand that shapes up to travel at a 45 degree cross-court angle but goes dead straight, is the cleverest con pulled off in Denmark since two weavers convinced the emperor he was draped in the finest clothes. Outwitted by the uncanny strokes produced by her opponent\u2019s wrist was Saina Nehwal in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":45057,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45056"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45056\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45058,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45056\/revisions\/45058"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45057"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}