I was watching the 1984 world Championship match between Han Jian and Liem Swie King (downloaded from www.badmintoncity.com) and the commentator Stephen Baddeley was talking about how Liem Swie King had one of the most powerful smashes. So powerful that he would sometimes "fold" the shuttle. I assume this means that the feather skirt partially collapses, permanently rather than temporarily, making the shuttle fly faster due to less air resistance. Does anyone have any first hand experience of this sort of thing? Did it happen more in the old days of heavy racquets? Do you have to have a complete monster of a smash to do it?
Any combination of big smash, mis-hit and crappy shuttles can lead to folding. I've folded the shuttle on numerous occasions. My smash is only mediocre, so the latter two probably applied in my case
Liem had a jump smash combined with body weight, he hit the shuttle as he was landing from his leaps. I think his smash was so hard, his opponents always asked for the shuttle to be changed everytime he smashed.Everytime he played I think he had to go thru 1 tube per set. I think maybe the way he cut the shuttle with his heavy 3.7s or cab 8 was more likely to cause the feathers to collapse. Some people like to say older players can smash harder than current ones.
one reason that i can think of, in 1980s ... the shuttles are not as good as Yonex shuttles ... most likely they are using either Gajah Mada or Garuda, which are the two top brands at that time.
I've played doubles with tezta.com and in one game, we used more than one tube of shuttles due to the shuttle folding. The shuttles were RSL tourney no.1. That was some crazy game - never used so many shuttles in one game before. BTW, it wasn't one smash and the shuttle folds. The rallies were quite long so the shuttles did get hit a number of times.
I remember that even in the "old days" (as some might call the 70s), some players hit the shuttle so hard that stop-action photos showed the feathers actually bowed out and forward so that the tips touched the racquet strings. This led to some controversy as to whether or not it should be considered a "double hit." As it was impossible to detect with the naked eye, the issue was dropped. I don't know if this is what is meant by "folding" the shuttle.
