Mixed Company : San Diego Partners Will Face Top U.S., Canadian Players in Badminton Tournament

Dave Walker likes to play a trick on his friends who think badminton is just a sport you play in the back yard or at beach parties.

He’ll take them down to the badminton courts in the Federal Building at Balboa Park and show them what badminton is really like.

“It’s an education,” said Walker, a former member of the U.S national badminton team. “If they have played it outside on the beach, with a beer in their hand and just kind of wandering around, they’ll say, ‘Oh, we’ve played that before.’ Then you bring them out here, especially if you put a man against a woman, and soon they’ll be running all over the court. It really does get their attention.”

Watching Walker, 38, play with mixed doubles partner Ann French, 27, brings to the light the seriousness of badminton. They play with shuttlecocks with real goose feathers--which are good for only one game--and spend up to $80 for lightweight rackets.

Both are sponsored by big-name companies that pay for their equipment. Walker is sponsored by a Japanese firm that also sponsors Martina Navratilova.

They will compete this weekend in the Sportcraft San Diego Open badminton tournament at the Federal Building, featuring the top players in the United States and Canada. The tournament runs from 9 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. today. The finals begin at 1 p.m. Sunday.

Walker and French, who are ranked fifth in the nation in mixed doubles, have been playing together for the past two years, since French moved to San Diego from Arizona. They played in the World Championships last May in Beijing, China.

After returning, Walker left the national team because of tendinitis in both knees. He is expected to return to the team by the summer.

The U.S. Olympic team will select from the national team its representatives for this summer’s Olympics in Seoul. Badminton will be a demonstration sport this summer and a medal sport in 1992.

Walker and French are the only San Diego residents playing on the 25-member national team, which is based in Manhattan Beach.

Both have full-time jobs. Walker works for a company that develops insurance software, and French is a traffic engineer. They practice together two or three times a week.

Since 1974, Walker has won eight national mixed doubles titles with former partner Judy Ann Kelly. French has won the doubles and mixed doubles junior national title and two collegiate titles while at the University of Wisconsin.

The two met several years ago playing in national tournaments. They became partners out of convenience.

“It was the perfect opportunity to play with somebody local and somebody you can practice with,” said Walker, whose former partner lives in Los Angeles.

“There is a tremendous amount of underground badminton in this building every week,” Walker said of the Federal Building, one of the premier sites in the county for indoor badminton. “We have a great Asian population, and badminton is one of the top sports in their countries, so they come out here in throngs.”

Walker and French saw first-hand the popularity of the sport at Beijing. They lost in the early rounds, mainly because of the dominance of the Chinese teams.

The championships were held in a 17,000-seat arena, which was nearly filled to capacity during the week of competition, French said.

“We are always used to people in this country watching and not making much sound,” Walker said. “There, they scream at every good shot, and if you dive on the floor, they go ‘Ohhhh, woww.’ In that country, that is very much a part of the sport.

“You are playing in front of nearly 17,000 people against their countrymen, and you make a good shot and they cheer for you because it was a good shot, not necessarily because you are beating the country. They have a real appreciation of what badminton is really like.”

Walker and French have had that same kind of appreciation since each was 11. French was playing junior tennis and badminton back home in Chicago and reached the point where she had to pick between the two.

“I just wanted to be a kid, and I didn’t have time to do both,” she said. “At the time, the badminton program was a little smaller and a little friendlier, and it was just a little more fun for me so I phased out the tennis.”

Walker had played baseball and basketball and run track in college, but he kept coming back to badminton.

“It was what gave me the most pleasure, and it is a sport for your lifetime,” he said. “It’s not a sport you will play once or twice and, bang, you will be gone.”