Lunch with Taufik Hidayat

Hello everyone, just wanted to post a little info on a recent meeting i had with Taufik Hidayat at the Thomas/Uber cups in guangzhou. Well I ran into him in the hallways of the hotel and i talked with him a bit, communicating in english. Luckily my father who was with me and talked to Taufik in his native tounge. Well we all went to the cafe and had what turned out to be a 4 hour lunch, just chatting and getting to know each other better. He told us about the troubles in Indonesia, about himself, about the reports that he beat up a spectator, and i told him about badminton in America. He is quite a soft spoken person, very polite and proper, i was surprised to see him dress so stylish for a badminton player. Usually badminton players lounging around the hotel, wear their Yonex outfits, sandals. He infact wore suede shoes, blue jeans and a nice jacket to lunch.

What he told me about his badminton career was not something i hadnt heard before, but a few things he brought up were new to me. First of which, i ask why do you change the bird so many times during the match? He said that after 3 or 4 hits with the racket, the bird's feathers become frayed and do not grab the wind well, therefore making the bird faster than it was out of the tube, they keep this in mind when they play, trying to keep the shuttle in. You would think that if the bird gets too fast, they change it right? well thats not the half of it, infact during a game, a player has so many things going through his/her mind that they forget about the bird itself, and when they forget weather the bird is fast or slow, they change it. It doesnt have to deal directly with the speed or performance of the shuttle when they change.

Another thing i asked him was, what does your coach tell you during the breaks? He answered that, its nothing complicated, "i can even remember it now, tomorrow, whenever". During the semifinal game against Anders Bosen, Joko Suprianto told taufik that he wasnt attacking the net as much as he should be, i saw the game live and i realized it too, the next break Joko told him to push the shuttle past anders' head so that anders has difficulty attacking. Simple huh? I myself thought that it would be complicated, but i learned that during a game, a player cannot comprehend 100+ words, and only benefits from 1 important strategy point each break.

The President of PBSI was an Army General, Taufik did not like they way PBSI was being ran by this individual, and Taufik asked him personally to step down as president and let a more qualified person take over. Well i read about this in the newspaper, but i didn't read that Taufik had to go everywhere with body guard in fear something might happen to him. I jokingly told him that indonesian badminton is almost as corrupt as US badminton.

Well thats it, i mean its not everything, but the other things we talked about are abit more personal, and confidential. I have to say Taufik is a great person, and he is definately a gift to the world of badminton.