Queering the Court

When I first saw Tai Tzu Ying on the badminton court, I couldn’t tell if I wanted to be her, or wanted to be with her. Is this what KT Tunstall meant when she sang about Patti Smith? 

Suddenly I see/this is what I want to be

Suddenly I see/why the hell it means so much to me

(Oh, that familiar queer refrain.) 

Tai wears her hair in an undercut, topped with a sweatband and held in place by candy-coloured pins. A few simple chains and rings adorn her wrists and fingers. Her ears are haphazardly pierced with small silver rings, two in each lobe and a stud in her right helix. A snake tattoo slithers down her left wrist, her father’s zodiac, with '相信自己' (believe in yourself) inked into the skin in his handwriting. She seals her wins by flashing the cameras a cheeky grin and a peace sign. (Oh, my heart!) 

On the court, Tai is a visionary. Her creativity and deception skills are unparalleled in women’s or men’s badminton. As at 19 April 2022, she held the women’s singles world No. 1 ranking for a record breaking 212 weeks. Her skills are a double-edged sword, though, with her ability to switch the play leaving her vulnerable to the disruption of her own rhythms. On a bad day, her mesmerising pinpoint placements give way to multiple unforced errors, and sluggish play that one would expect from a player well beneath her calibre. Tai’s kryptonite? Players with an unyielding defensive playing style. In the gold medal match at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, Tai’s creative tactics were thwarted repeatedly by the No 5. seed, Chen Yufei. Her frustration became evident in the final game of the match, allowing Chen to plow ox-like towards victory. Tai’s desire to play out every trick in the book, sometimes at the cost of winning, makes her the true queen of badminton—her brilliance, punctuated by occasional mediocrity endears her to us, her loyal subjects, ever the more. When asked about her inconsistencies during a 2017 interview, Tai says simply, “I am learning to play more straightforward strokes.”  

bell hooks speaks about queerness as “being about the self that is at odds with everything around it and has to invent and create and find a place to speak and to thrive and to live.” Tai’s presence in the badminton world feels errant, queer, radical. There is something about her style, her ‘method’ of play that seems to seek out arrhythmia and disjoint in a game that rewards precision and flow. And yet, her game thrives, even in places where it shouldn’t. Like Tai, I’ve spent my entire badminton life training and playing with men. I grew up playing sports with the boys in my neighbourhood, and don’t think I ever grew out of it. In my university years, I started to play social badminton, at clubs that were predominantly male. At these clubs, I learned that women didn’t play badminton socially. They were either trained from a young age to play competitively, or brought along by their boyfriends as cheerleaders with Kmart racquets in hand. There were hardly any women in-between (though, there was me).  

Perhaps out of necessity, I learned to like the way men played badminton—or learned to play like men. I enjoyed the pace of it, the aggression; the thrill of pushing someone to their limits, and having them push back. Of course, there were limits to my anatomy (my height, my strength, the lack of hair on my chest), and my game evolved to make up for it, as I suspect did Tai, who stands at a diminutive 163 cm—two centimetres shorter than I. What I lacked in strength and speed, I made up for with skill and deception. I exploited every misstep and shuffle my opponent took, and waited for the single moment in which I could catch him off-guard. And then I would take it. There was no room for hesitation. If I did, he might push me, and I might not be able to push back. 

This insecurity formed the cornerstone of my game for years. I felt different from the men with whom I played, found them to be largely clueless and insensitive. They didn’t know how to play with a woman who played ‘like a man’. I refused them the easy scripts of play that were meant to accompany a mixed doubles pairing (covering the net, crouching in front during their serve). Though I had much respect for women’s mixed doubles players, I knew I wasn’t one (a woman? a mixed doubles player?). Occupying that position on the court made me feel subservient, and I shrugged off every suggestion of the same. Yet, putting up such a constant resistance plagued my game. 

This is what I imagine Tai felt like when facing off against Chen for gold at the 2020 Olympics. Though the match was closely contested, Chen subtly controlled the game by denying Tai creative satisfaction at every turn. Tai found herself trapped in this dialectic of call and response, where all she could do was respond, respond, respond. Like Tai, I wasn’t asking questions of the men who I played with (not the hard-hitting ones, anyway). My tactics betrayed me, and I was still being shuffled around the court by my partners and opponents. I dropped matches out of frustration (leaving the box half-empty), thinking about the way the game was constructed, and about how I was set up to fail. But in hindsight, these gendered tactics served their purpose: to distract me from winning. While I moped around the court, nursing my doubts (my wounds were well licked), the men were just there, playing to win (what a privilege it must be, to simply exist).  

As a queer person, the act of wanting can be (is) complicated. Desire is sometimes seen as something optional, able to be put off, postponed, stymied. When we are not accepted, we learn to keep ourselves to ourselves (stumbling round empty hallways, finding mirrors in our minds). In those days, I spent a lot of time on and off those courts, pretending that I didn’t want what I wanted. To win, to possess, to hold desire in my hand (or her hand in mine). For me, winning was about more than reaching 21 points. Winning meant surviving, achieving, holding one’s bloody sex in triumphant hand. The act of winning is an act of desire; nothing else could be meant by that unabashed ‘YES!’.

In May 2022, Tai faced Chen again in the Thailand Open women’s singles final, in their first rematch since the Olympics. The players enter the third set, one game apiece. Halfway through the third set of the match, the score is 13-7 to Tai. Chen smashes, and Tai sinks an effortless cross-court backhand. “Good shot from Tai,” one commentator says, just as Tai rockets a smash down the line, which Chen flaps helplessly at. “And that, is even better,” the other commentator finishes, in her voice a note of disbelief. Tai spins on her heel, holding her clenched fist in front of her, and looses a guttural yell. What resounds is not an early celebration, but an issuance of desire. She rattled something loose in me, some dogged sense of determination to invent and create. For once, I wasn’t thinking about skill or finesse. I was thinking about what I wanted (to win), and how I wanted it. 

Here’s the how: I rock up to my local queer badminton club, where I’ve played regularly for the last three years. My friend remarks, ‘you look like you’re out for blood.’ (I had been sidelined by injury for almost 6 months prior. She wasn’t wrong.) My hand closes over my racquet, settling into a forehand grip (‘it’s just like shaking someone’s hand’). I spin it experimentally, feeling the rubber catch my skin. Stepping onto the court, the blue-green rectangles feel both familiar and new. An hour in, feeling a twinge in my shoulder, I suck in a breath and push through. I breeze through matches, feeling the win(d)s in my hair (short, tied back, revealing an undercut). I start a match with a friend, a strong player. ‘Hello, stranger,’ he says, smiling. We tap hands and kick off. Sync up, take your chances, smash if you need to. Halfway through a point I crouch low in front. Our opponents make a mistake, pop a floater midcourt and I see it first (front row, box seat). ‘YEP!’ I yell, and my partner brings the shuttle home. Houston, we have touchdown. The next point is all mine; a clever cross-court net warrants a scrambled return that slips high into the midcourt. I rise up and intercept with a quick tap-in, claiming the point. My fingers begin to curl before my feet even hit the ground.

I lift my hand, my fist a conduit of queer joy. 

JANELLE KOH (they/them) is a lawyer, writer and editor working and living on Wurundjeri Country in Naarm/Melbourne. They were previously the Managing Editor of Right Now and have had fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and criticism published in publications such as Portside Review, Red Pocket Press, Right Now, and Limina Journal. They are often preoccupied with the stories we tell about ourselves and each other, particularly in the contexts of race, gender, and intersecting identities. They are currently enrolled in a PhD at Melbourne Law School. They can be found on X @writeforwhat or Instagram @thisisadeadgram.