The 24-22 Set: The Silence of Vietnamese Badminton in the Asiad Third Round

Nguyen Thuy Linh retrieved the shuttle. The scoreboard flickered from 22-22 to 23-22, then 24-22. She lowered her racket, did not scream, did not punch the floor, only bowed her head for a second and walked toward the rest chair. A set that stretched to the twenty-fourth minute of the second game, against an opponent ranked fourth in the world. No one in the arena rushed forward, no one cried. There was only the applause of a small group of Vietnamese fans in the corner, rising and then fading very quickly, as if they too were unsure what they had just witnessed. I rewatched the footage of that passage three times. The first time to watch her retrieve. The second time to watch Chen Yu Fei's reaction. The third time to watch the silence after the applause. That silence is what I want to write about. Because between a 24-22 won set and a 12-21 lost set, there is a question the scoreboard never answers: what happens inside a player's mind when she has just touched the threshold of the world's fourth-ranked player, then is pushed back over the following nineteen minutes? That is not a question about technique. It is a question about structure. And to answer it, I have to begin where most result reports leave off. Competition day, September 26, third round of women's and men's singles in badminton. Vietnam had two players entering this round, and both stopped here. Nguyen Thuy Linh, Vietnam's No.1 women's player, lost to Chen Yu Fei of China 10-21, 24-22, 12-21. Nguyen Hai Dang, the men's player, lost to Kunlavut Vitidsarn of Thailand 16-21, 14-21. Earlier the same day, Hai Dang beat Odilzhon Abdurakhmanov 21-6, 21-6. Thuy Linh had overcome Thalita Ramadhani Wiryawan to reach the third round. Four results. Two defeats. No team medals mentioned. If you read only the scoreboard, this is an ordinary competition day for a mid-tier sporting delegation at a continental games. But the scoreboard, as I learned after more than thirty-five years sitting in meeting rooms and arenas, is the most deceptive thing in sports. It tells you who won. It does not tell you why someone can win a set against the world's fourth-ranked player and then lose the next set by nine points. I spent the entire next morning transcribing every rally I could see on the footage. No smash-speed data. No long-rally statistics. No serve-and-receive breakdown. That is a real limitation, and I will say it plainly: anyone claiming to understand this match at a deep technical level is fabricating. I only have the scoreboard, a few short clips, and my memory of the match's rhythm. But sometimes, the scoreboard plus the rhythm is enough to ask the right question. Let us start with the first set. 10-21. That is not a narrow defeat. It is an eleven-point defeat. Chen Yu Fei, ranked fourth in the world, entered the match as the expected winner. And she won the way a top-ranked player should win: controlling, avoiding errors, pulling her opponent into long rallies where experience and fitness decide everything. 10-21 is the score of a set in which a player has no chance to touch the shuttle the way she wants. Then came the second set. 24-22. This is where I must pause and write slowly. In badminton, a set stretching to 24-22 means there was at least one rally extending to 20-20, and afterward a series of balanced points until someone built a two-point lead. Under the current 21-point scoring system, when two players are level at 20-20, they must play until one leads by two, with a maximum cap of 30. That means Thuy Linh's second set did not merely stretch; it stretched in the most tense state possible, where every rally could end the match in either direction. A player beaten 10-21 in the first set, against a world No.4 opponent, usually collapses. That is the psychological law of this sport. You lose the first set heavily, you enter the second with heavier legs and a head full of images of the rallies you just surrendered. But Thuy Linh did the opposite. She did not collapse. She pulled the second set into the most balanced zone of competition, and she won it 24-22. That moment, if you watch the footage, is not dazzling. No smash made the arena stand up. No rescue made anyone gasp. There was only patience. Thuy Linh played the second set by not giving Chen Yu Fei free points, forcing the Chinese player to hit one more shot, then one more, and in those long rallies she found small, quiet points. That is the kind of win the scoreboard calls "winning one set". But in a player's language, it means something else: I can play level with the world's fourth-ranked player for twenty-four minutes. In those twenty-four minutes, the gap between Vietnam's No.1 and the world's No.4 did not exist. It was zero. And then came the third set. 12-21. This is the number I cannot ignore. The third set, after a second set stretching to 24-22, is usually the set where fitness and mental stability decide everything. When you have just played twenty-four tense minutes to win a set, your body has spent an amount of energy you cannot recover in two minutes of interval. Your opponent, the world's fourth-ranked player, accustomed to three-set matches at the highest level, with an entire fitness and recovery system behind her, enters the third set with an advantage the scoreboard does not display. 12-21 is the score of a set in which that gap surfaced. Not a technical gap. A fitness gap, a consistency gap, the gap of a system. I have wondered a great deal about that 12-21. It is not a total collapse. A total collapse would be 5-21 or 6-21. 12-21 means Thuy Linh still took twelve points from the world's fourth-ranked player in the deciding set. But it also means she conceded nineteen points in a set of only twenty-one. In a deciding set, when everything sits on the line, conceding nineteen points is the sign of something not within her control. It could be fitness. It could be focus. It could be a lack of regular matches against elite opponents, leaving her without the familiar reflex to handle a third-set situation against a top-four player. I do not know. And I will not pretend to know. That is why I write this piece: to pose the question the scoreboard skips, not to give an answer I lack the data for. The room is not silent; it simply never thought it needed that question. That question is: if Thuy Linh can play level with Chen Yu Fei for twenty-four minutes of the second set, why can she not do it for fifteen more minutes in the third? And if the answer lies in fitness or consistency, who is responsible for building those? The player, or the system behind the player? Now look at Nguyen Hai Dang. His result tells a different story, but the same chapter. In the morning, Hai Dang faced Odilzhon Abdurakhmanov. 21-6, 21-6. It was a match the Vietnamese player controlled from start to finish. A player who concedes only six points in a twenty-one-point set is at an entirely different level from his opponent. There is nothing to analyze deeply here, and I do not want to inflate it. Beating a weaker opponent by a wide margin is what a professional player should do. It shows basic professionalism, focus, the ability not to let a weaker opponent drag him into an unnecessary psychological battle. But in the afternoon, Hai Dang faced Kunlavut Vitidsarn. And the result was 16-21, 14-21. Kunlavut Vitidsarn is one of Asia's leading men's singles players, known for his persistent defense and patient counterattacking. He belongs to the elite tier of Asian men's singles, a tier Vietnam has not entered. And the match unfolded exactly the way a match between the elite tier and the challenger tier should. Look at the two scores: 16-21 and 14-21. This is not a humiliating defeat. Hai Dang took sixteen points then fourteen against an Asian elite. He was not crushed. But he was never truly in the match either. A five-point margin in the first set and seven in the second is the gap of someone always behind, always chasing, always recovering, but never close enough to apply real pressure on the opponent. That is the kind of defeat I call "a defeat within the opponent's control". Kunlavut did not need to play at his peak to win this match. He only needed to play well enough, steady enough, patient enough, and let the class difference do the rest. Comparing the two matches of the two Vietnamese players, I see a notable pattern. Both won their first third-round match comfortably, or at least in control. Both met a markedly higher-class opponent next. And both lost. But they lost differently. Thuy Linh lost in a "near touch" way. She took a set. She touched the threshold. She proved that for a certain period, she could play level with the world's fourth-ranked player. But she could not hold it long enough. Hai Dang lost in a "not yet there" way. He was never truly in the match. He won points, but never won the momentum. Two different ways of losing, but both pointing in one direction: the gap between Vietnamese badminton and the Asian elite is not in basic technique. It is in depth. In consistency. In the ability to repeat a high level over a long period, across sets, across matches, across tournaments. And this is where I must speak of something I always see in the matches of players from countries with incomplete badminton systems. I was in Jakarta in 2026, in a planning meeting for a digital sports platform. The production director told me, when I proposed a women's football column: "We know you have seniority, but women's football has no audience." I did not argue. I went home, opened a spreadsheet, and tallied the viewership of the SEA Games women's semifinal between Indonesia and Vietnam: 1.2 million views on a small YouTube channel, while the men's final drew only 850,000. I wrote a piece titled "Numbers That Do Not Lie". Three days later, it had been shared 3,700 times. Since then, I no longer argue on air. I use numbers. Not to shock. But to illuminate what people do not want to see. And Thuy Linh's 12-21 is such a number. It is not merely a score. It is a signal. It says the gap is not in the player. It is in the system behind the player. Think about it. A world No.4 like Chen Yu Fei has an entire system behind her: specialized coaches, fitness experts, recovery experts, elite training partners, a schedule designed to optimize form, and a database on every opponent she might face. When she enters the third set of a three-set match, she brings not only her technique. She brings that entire system. What does a Vietnam No.1 bring into the third set? I do not know, and that is precisely the problem. There is no public data on Vietnamese badminton's support system. No information on how many elite training partners Thuy Linh can access regularly. No information on how many matches she actually plays against top-20 players in a year. That is an information gap I cannot fill with the scoreboard. But I can say this: in every sport, the gap between a top-5 player and a top-30 player is not built in the gym. It is built in years of continuous competition at the highest level, where a player learns with her body how to handle a third set, how to save energy, how to read an opponent in decisive rallies. Thuy Linh has proven she has the raw material. The 24-22 second set is the proof. She has the technique to play level. She has the mentality not to collapse after a 10-21 set loss. She has the ability to adjust in-match. Those things cannot be taught in the gym. They come from within the player. But the 12-21 third set shows she lacks what no player can create alone: the number of times being placed in that situation, against that opponent, at that level. This is the paradox of developing badminton nations. To improve, you need to compete against those better than you. But to compete against those better, you need a sufficiently high ranking. And to have a high enough ranking, you need to win. And to win, you need to improve. That circle closes on players who lack a support system strong enough to break it. In Asia, the major badminton nations such as China, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Thailand all have such systems. They have national training centers where top-50 players train together daily. They have internal competitions so brutal that a player must beat teammates to earn an international spot. They have opponent analysts, fitness experts, sports doctors. What does Vietnam have? I do not know. And I honestly say I do not know, because no public document gives me the answer. But I know this: when a national No.1 enters the third set of a major match against the world's fourth-ranked player and loses 12-21, then a question about the system must be posed. Not to criticize. But to understand. The stadium is empty, but I still hear the heartbeat of an entire team. In this case, that team has only two people. Two singles players. And their heartbeats, across those two matches, tell a story of a country trying to enter a room whose door has never truly opened. Now let us speak of the broader context. The Asian Games, or Asiad, is a continental multi-sport event. Badminton is one of the high-medal-value sports, and for Southeast Asian nations, it is one of the most important medal channels. But there is something many do not know: the Asian Games is not a tournament within the BWF World Tour system. That means results here may not yield BWF ranking points in the usual way, and its main value lies in national prestige, in delegation medals, not in individual ranking. This creates an interesting paradox. A player can play the best match of her career at the Asian Games and receive no ranking points for it. Or conversely, a defeat here may not affect her world ranking at all. That is why the Asian Games is often seen as a tournament of emotion rather than ranking logic. But for developing badminton nations, the Asian Games plays another role. It is the biggest stage their players can regularly access. On the World Tour, to enter the main draw of a Super 1000 event, you need a very high ranking. At the Asian Games, you can enter through your national delegation's quota. That is a chance for a player like Thuy Linh or Hai Dang to stand on the same court as those they usually watch only on screen. And that is why defeats like these matter more than they appear. Look at the path of the two Vietnamese players in the third round. Thuy Linh beat Thalita Ramadhani Wiryawan, an opponent I lack enough data to fully assess, then met Chen Yu Fei. Hai Dang beat Abdurakhmanov, then met Kunlavut. Both met the highest-class opponent right in the third round, the round before the quarterfinals. In a single-elimination tournament, your position in the bracket matters no less than your form. Facing Chen Yu Fei in the third round is entirely different from facing her in the quarterfinals, when you have had an extra match to adapt to the court, the conditions, the atmosphere of the tournament. For a player from a small badminton nation, every match at this level is a lesson. And the first lesson is usually the most painful. I do not say this to excuse the result. I say it to place the result in its proper context. Now, to the part I always want to write in any women's sports analysis: the part I call the counterintuitive angle. When a female player loses a big match, there are two ways to tell the story. The first is to tell of the defeat: she lost, she is not good enough, she needs to try harder. The second is to tell of the structure: how far she reached, and what stopped her from going further. Most media choose the first way, because it is simpler and sells more. But the second is the honest way. And here, I want to offer a view few mention: a female player's commercial value is not built from her victories. It is built from her defeats. More precisely, from how she loses. Think about it. A female player beating a weaker opponent creates no story. But a female player taking a 24-22 set from the world's fourth-ranked player, then losing the deciding set 12-21, creates a story. That story is: she is close, but not yet there. And the story of "close but not yet there" is the kind sponsors, tournament organizers, and media love, because it creates anticipation. It makes people want to follow the next time. That is a naked truth of the sports industry: a player's commercial value lies not in what they have achieved, but in what people believe they will achieve. And for people to believe, you need to show them a moment. Thuy Linh's 24-22 second set is such a moment. But here is the truly counterintuitive part: that moment will only have value if it is followed by other moments. If Thuy Linh takes a set from a world No.4 at the Asian Games, then disappears from major tournaments over the next six months, that moment becomes an anecdote, not a turning point. The commercial value of a moment depends on the frequency of its occurrence. And here the system returns. A player cannot create world-class moments consistently if she is not competing regularly at the world level. That is the closed circle I spoke of. There is one more thing I want to say about how media treats women's sports. When a male player takes a set from the world No.4 then loses the deciding set, people call it "an encouraging performance". When a female player does the same, people often call it "a commendable effort". The difference between these two phrases is small, but it reflects something large: people still implicitly assume the female player is trying to overcome the limits of her gender, while the male player is trying to overcome the limits of his opponent. Tactics have no gender; our gaze does. Thuy Linh's 24-22 second set was a tactical performance. She read that Chen Yu Fei would slow her tempo after an easy set win, she exploited that gap, and she was patient in the balanced rallies. That is tactics. That is competitive intelligence. That is not "effort". And when I call it tactics, I am not praising Thuy Linh. I am describing her exactly as she is: a player who did something very few players can do, against an opponent very few players can beat. That leads me to a question about the future. And this is the question I think will shape how we view Vietnamese badminton in the years to come. If Thuy Linh can play level with the world No.4 for twenty-four minutes, her limit is not in her technique. It is in the number of times she is placed in that situation. And if the limit is in the number of times, then the question is not "how does Thuy Linh get better", but "how does Thuy Linh get to compete more at this level". That is a question about the system, not the individual. And it is the kind of question developing badminton nations tend to avoid, because the answer demands long-term investment in things that yield no immediate results: more elite training partners, more international tournament spots, more support experts. Look at Hai Dang to see the other side of the problem. He beat a weaker opponent easily, then lost to an Asian elite in two sets by moderate margins. There is nothing shameful there. But it shows that to enter the elite tier, a player needs more than good basic technique. They need exposure. They need matches where they are pushed to their limit, and then pushed beyond it. Kunlavut Vitidsarn did not beat Hai Dang with superhuman shots. He beat him with patience, with defensive ability, by forcing his opponent to hit one more shot, then one more, until the opponent erred. That is a style of winning that takes years of high-level competition to build. You do not learn that patience in the gym. You learn it by being defeated many times, until you understand that in a long match, the most patient person usually wins. So what is the story of the September 26 competition day? I think it is the story of a country standing at the threshold of a higher tier, but not yet holding the key to step through. And that key is not in the hands of Thuy Linh or Hai Dang. It is in the hands of those who build the system. I had a hard time in 2026. The pandemic swept through, every tournament stopped, my website went bankrupt, and I lost my job. I spent a month only in a dark room, rewatching old footage. That night, I rewatched a Persib Putri match with a completely empty arena. Goalkeeper Lia Riani stood alone in the penalty area. I contacted her for an interview. She was working eighty hours a week as a nurse in a hospital amid the pandemic, while training five hours a day on her own. My piece about her, titled "The Keeper of the Pandemic Days", spread with twelve thousand shares. Since then, I learned something I carry into every piece: sometimes, the real story is not in the winner. It is in the person standing in the gap, alone, and still continuing. Thuy Linh stood in that gap in the third set. Hai Dang stood in that gap for two sets. And Vietnamese badminton is standing in that gap, between a tier it has touched and a tier it has not entered. I do not write this to say Vietnam failed. I write this to say Vietnam showed it can play. And in sports, "can play" is the first step, and the hardest step, of every journey. What I want to see next is not a victory. What I want to see is a pattern. I want to see Thuy Linh play more matches against top-10 opponents, and I want to see her win one of them. I want to see Hai Dang face more Asian elite players, and I want to see the five-point gap shrink to two points, then to one. I want to see a third, fourth, fifth Vietnamese player enter the third round of a major tournament, so that this achievement is no longer an exception but a standard. But I also know those things do not happen on their own. They need a system patient enough to invest in things that bring no immediate medals: more training partners, more tournament spots, more experts. They need a sports culture that understands the gap between top 5 and top 30 is not built in one season. It is built over a decade. And this is my final thought, a thought I cannot call a conclusion, because it is a question. When Thuy Linh retrieved the shuttle at 22-22, she was not merely playing a point. She was proving something every female player in a small badminton nation needs to hear: that the gap between them and those at the world's top is not a wall. It is a gap. And a gap, unlike a wall, can be filled. The only question is: who will fill it, and how long will it take? The room is not silent; it simply never thought it needed that question. And now, with a 24-22 set, that question has been placed on the table.