Week Post Five: Comparing Badminton

Badminton is like tennis and volleyball put together. In both tennis and volleyball, the team who gets the first serve is the team who wins the coin toss, but in badminton, the first person to serve is determined by popping up the bird and the team that the cork side of the bird is facing gets to serve. In tennis, volleyball, and badminton you must serve behind a line. In tennis and badminton, you have to serve cross court and it has to land in the service area. In volleyball, a team gets to hit a ball three times to get it over the net, and in tennis, a person gets a bounce to hit it over the net, but in badminton, you only get one hit. In badminton and volleyball, a team must win by two points, while in tennis, a team has to win by two points only when there is a deuce. Also, in volleyball and in badminton, you have to win two out of three games, while in tennis you have to win six games and win by two. Tennis and badminton have similar shots. In both tennis and badminton, there is the forehand, backhand, a smash, and a drop-shot. Tennis calls a badminton clear a lob. The only thing volleyball has in common is the spike. All in all, badminton is really similar to tennis and volleyball, only the equipment and certain vocabulary is different.

Week Post Four: Top Badminton Players

I always hear about the top players in every other sport but badminton. There is Serena and Venus Williams that play tennis, there’s Peyton Manning that plays football, there’s Kobe Bryant that plays basketball, but who are the top players for badminton? Coincidently, most of the greatest badminton players come from China. The top female player’s name is Zhang Ning and the top male player’s name is Lin Dan. Zhang Ning has made many impressive accomplishments so far. She is the first of either sex to win consecutive Olympic singles gold medals in 2004 and in 2008 and she has won eight tournaments as well. Lin Dan has been ranked as the dominant player from China. Some believe that he is one of the greatest in his generation, while some think that he is the best out of all time. His greatest accomplishment is that he is the only male badminton player in history that has won three consecutive titles at the World Championships in 2006, 2007, and 2009. I wonder why Chinese are so good at badminton. It’s not only China who have Chinese playing to represent their country, but the United States also have Chinese representing our country.

Week Post Three: Badminton Raquet Review

Honestly, a badminton racquet does not make you a better player when you’re a beginner. The racquet does not decide what shot to do, what direction the shuttle goes in, or how high or low the shuttle goes. A racquet is just an extension of a player’s arm, but I guess to an advanced player, it’s more than that. When it comes to purchasing racquets online, it’s tough because every badminton player is different, this means that not every racquet is going to feel the same for every player. A racquet is an extension of YOUR body, nobody else’s, so you have to basically play with it, before you buy it. When reading online reviews on racquets, the reviews are all personal, so you don’t know that it will do the same for you. The solution to this problem is to know how you play and to know the kind of player you are. For example, many reviews will provide the string tension and the racquet flexibility. If you don’t know your game, you don’t know how this relates to the racquet. So when deciding to either buy a ArcSaber Z-Slash or a Yonex Nanospeed 9000X, you either need to try it out first to see the compatibility between you and the racquet or really know the badminton vocabulary and how it relates to your game.

Week Post Two: How to Play

Badminton is a great game. A game of badminton can be played in singles or doubles. The object of the game is to hit the bird over the net where the opponent isn’t so that it can’t be returned. You start out playing by popping the bird up and the team who gets to decide who serves first is the team that the cork end is facing. You serve underhand from the right side of the court since the score is even (0-0) and when your score is odd, you serve from the left (1-0). You rally until someone makes a fault: hitting the net, hitting out of bounds, hitting the bird twice, etc. You play two matches if one team wins both, but if both teams win one, you play three matches so that one team wins two matches and the other wins one. Every match is played until the score is twenty-one, but you have to win by two points. If not, then the maximum you can play until is thirty and then it’s okay to win by one point. Badminton is a really fun game, whether it’s just for fun or for competition.