Recently I played doubles vs a player who flicked the shuttle aggressively to my backhand side or body steep over the net, so a few times I couldnt react fast enough to return it since i expected a classic long or short serve. Is this behaviour legal?
You mean like a drive serve? As long as his racket is not pointing upwards and the point of contact is below his lowest rib there is nothing wrong with it. Although I think it is hard to meet this criteria and execute such a serve.
The shuttle must first travel upward to pass the net, but even with drive serves this is easy to accomplish. I use drive serves because I know the likely return of players is going to be a block shot to the net, then I can play a net shot and comfortably take control of the rally.
Ok thank you. [MENTION=94298]phili[/MENTION] yeah it is like a drive shot. The annoying thing is that sometimes the shuttle would land outside the serivce court, but you get surprised and need to react fast so you wont really have the time to judge if to take it or let it fly outside, especially when its on the backhand side.
People don't seem to ever use drive serves even though they're now a lot easier to do legally. That also means people don't know how to defend or respond to them as well. Part of the point is to be able to catch people off guard with them, like I said before it makes the rallies very easy for me to predict because I know what response they'll use before they use it
Just flick it back over their head Kindest regards, -Ajay- Quote of the Day Laziness is nothing more than the habit of resting before you get tired.
If I am reading this correctly, I don't think it's that hard a serve to return. It can surprise you if you're not ready, but if you have some experience and observe your opponent's service motion, there is usually a tell that a drive serve is coming (general sense of tension in shoulder and arms). You just have to expect that the drive serve is down the middle. They can't go wide with the serve for obvious reasons. Have your racket up and just stuff that weak cheese back at them... I typically see the drive serve with beginners because they can't handle the pressure of the low serve in MD. After stuffing them several times, I kindly advise them to practice the low serve after the match since the drive serve is not a sustainable shot beyond beginner level imo.
That's my favourite serve. LOL. As long as you're tall enough. lowest rib drive serve it's not a problem. advantage of height. HAHA.
Probably the most annoying serve ever. I can do it legally, however it isn't as effective and puts my partner in a crappy position if it's returned with interest. However some people insist on smacking the bird at chest flat down the backhand side of opponents as a cheap way to get points. Unless you're super tall. GG. Its really a height thing, although most people will have a hard time doing it legally unless they consciously try too simply because trying to hit a flat serve from below the rib is tough so they will naturally raise their racket higher.
I tend to agree with this. Usually when I see a drive serve, the racket head ends up almost horizontal on point of impact which is a clear service fault. Not saying that you can't do it legally, of course. But maybe the more legal you perform this service, the less effective it will be.
You are right amleto. I thought the racket head needed to point downwards by a certain angle, like the whole rackethead should be under your racket hand or something. But reading the rules now, it says nothing about how much the racket must point downward, just that it has to point downward.
Those were the old rules Vixter, they changed them about 7 years ago to having the racket head slightly point downwards, so you can have practically a nearly horizontal racket stroke and its legal on the serve. Kindest regards, -Ajay- Quote of the Day The problem with the designated driver program, it's not a desirable job, but if you ever get sucked into doing it, have fun with it. At the end of the night, drop them off at the wrong house.
I don't know about the semantics of it... but in order to hit the bird while it's below the waist (which can be considered to be the level of the elbow tip), the racket must end up pointing downwards visibly. And yes, as a result of that the whole racket head ends up below the racket hand.
visor, that's empirically not true! The wrist is more than flexible enough to raise the racket head up whilst keeping it below the waist, and far below de facto standards
I think even top players may seriously struggle with this one if it was thrown in out of the blue. But never more than once. On the other point this looks legal to me. [video]https://video-lhr3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hvideo-xap1/v/t42.1790-2/10828224_719407334822320_663271806_n.mp4?efg=eyJyb HIiOjQwMywicmxhIjo1MTIsInZlbmNvZGVfdGFnIjoibGVnYWN 5X3NkIn0%3D&rl=403&vabr=224&oh=de2c3a96fe1e6fae4a8b9b8ad4371248&oe=55B0DE04[/video]
Dunno if that link works properly here it is [video=youtube;tGCrvXKbC3s]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGCrvXKbC3s[/video]
