“Tai Tzu-ying, I didn’t have breakfast or lunch just to see you play,” a fan shouted in September, as the magician of a player, turned out at her home Taiwan Open, for one last time. Tzu-ying smiled mid-game, but didn’t reply, for badminton is bashful like that.
So she would wait for the end of the match to note that she had heard that voice of the invisible fan before in different galleries that are never lit up, and was grateful for the unfailing, unintrusive support even as her career faded out from the centrestage. Injuries were making her tiptoe around magic, and she wanted to chill now, travel to every corner of Taiwan, and have three children. She had entered her home Super Series with a shaky ankle just so fans could see her play one last time. And the sport has several such connoisseurs who added to the chorus of applause but didn’t chase selfies for Instagram. Tzu-ying’s reverse drops, imprinted on memory, were enough.
So in its own quiet way, badminton is bidding farewell to scores of big names who have been the staple for the last decade, and will not turn up when the jamboree assembles in Malaysia next year. Of course, the Olympics neatly demarcate such decisions. But the signs of the large vacuum staring at the game were most visible at the World Tour Finals. The women’s singles had no Tzu-ying, and though they haven’t announced retirements, Carolina Marin, Nozomi Okuhara, Intanon Ratchanok, PV Sindhu and Chen Yufei were also all absent.
Akane Yamaguchi’s shadow remained good enough to pull two whacky matches, including beating An Se-young, who is wowing China with her Mandarin. But Yamaguchi didn’t make the semis, and Aya Ohori, who was playing like a dream, left watchers with questions about why she was retiring, having reached her career-high ranking.
What this bunch of women had managed to do was keep badminton fascinating, helping fans tide over retirements of Lin Dan and Lee Chong Wei, the OG superstars. This time the signs are staggered, and the dots disparate. Spain officially let go of its hosting rights of a Super 300 event in 2025, and the Marin era might well be over. The smiling southpaw, He Bingjiao’s meditative graceful game will be sorely missed too.
Viktor Axelsen will continue to blast off to titles and lambast authorities after winning – but the name that vamoozed leaving no closure whatsoever was Kento Momota’s in 2024. It is strange that men’s singles had readymade Gen-Next Fab-4 material in Lakshya Sen, Kunlavut Vitidsarn, Li Shifeng and Kodai Naraoka, but neither them nor Lee Zii Jia and Anders Antonsen have settled into rivalry patterns or greatly engaging classics. The gradual dimming of Kidambi Srikanth from the big circuit however is acutely felt.
The biggest melancholy however, will be reserved for Mohammad Ahsan and Hendra Setiawan, the Indonesian Daddies. It had seemed like they would never lose their skill – Ahsan setting things up coolly at the front court, and Setiawan finishing from the back. But there simply hasn’t been a pairing this adored for their calm demeanour, greatness of skills and the utter humility with which they carried themselves.
With both them and Tai Tzu-ying as well as Nozomi Okuhara, you wondered, if the unfazed temperament came from the sheer assurance that their games were born on the pedestal, and they had nothing to prove, so they were immersed almost spiritually into their styles, and detached from results. Win or lose, every point of theirs got rich applause, because the skill was scintillating, unmatched, winning was incidental. No unnecessary fist-pumping, screaming, gamesmanship – pure talent and the commitment to work hard. They won and lost Olympic titles, but it was watching them play that brought the most contentment.
Perhaps badminton’s most astonishing retirement will be of Chinese mixed doubles Olympic champion, Zheng Siwei at just 27. On top of the world with the Olympic gold, three World titles and two Asiad gold, the high-achieving shuttler was clear he wanted his life to be defined by more than the tag of “Olympic champion”, adding that winning more titles held little appeal to him now.
In a social media post he wrote, “I’ve officially decided to step out of the international stage! I can imagine my fans might find this news both sudden and somewhat (un)reasonable…. I know what I love, what I’m good at, where my goals lie, and this life I want to lead. In terms of my career, I’ve never been overly attached to it.”
Siwei joined the Chinese national setup in 2013 at age 16. He had met his now-wife at age 15, but the devotion to the game, travel and competition, took up all his time. “If I continue competing on the courts, I’ll inevitably spend more time away from my loved ones. My wife and I have been together for 12 years, but our true life together begins only after this Olympic cycle,” he would add.
Zheng Siwei was a pioneer of sorts always – the first Chinese to communicate with global media in English, the first to go beyond clichés and grant raw insights into the games and minds of Chinese champions. His partnership with Huang Yaqiong seldom faltered, as they struck up long winning streaks, and were an absolute live wire on the court, culminating in the Olympics. They were unique for their openness and how lightly they wore their greatness.
The game never stops and will throw up new stars in 2025, but the familiarity of deep rivalries, storied quirks and guaranteed high quality of creative badminton always laced with respect, might have snapped at multiple points with retirements of 2024.
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