How do you hold the bird when you serve?

Depends what way you are serving, for back hands, I would always hold it by the feathers and by my fingers (number of fingers used is personal preference)
For forehand serves I would hold it in the palm, but not by the feathers as there is a different technique involved...

My 2 cents

 

I agree.

 

Yes, it is all personal preference.

You can hold the shuttle in various different ways but the best way to find out how you should hold it is by trial and error.

For the forehand serve although I said palm, really, it is the fingers again, but it is a different technique than with a backhand serve as you hold it around the cork area as opposed to by the tips of the feathers.

Try and look at pictures of Peter Gade doing a forehand serve and you will see what I mean, Nguyen Tien Minh as well is another person to look at.

 

For backhand serve, in addition to holding the feather with your fingers, positioning/angle of cork toward the racket is also important (plus which part racket face to hit).

 

To choose how to do short serve more effectively u have to make sure that whenever u let go of yr fingers that are holding the shuttlecock, the head of the cock is going to fall on the sweetspot of the racket swing w/o too much motion. This will enable u to concentrate on the racket face angle and the speed of the swing to get the 'perfect' short serve.

 

^^ many players don't use the sweet spot... instead, the top 1/4 corner of the racket is better for control and consistency in backhand serves

 

I should try that, but how does that go for flick serves? Wouldn't it be difficult to adjust how far/high it will go?

 

For backhand serves I hold the shuttles by the feathers
For forehand serves I hold the shuttle by the cage

 

For short service, like in double I hold the birdie by the feathers..
For long service , like in singles I hold the birdie by the cork.