Today was my first tourney, and happened to be watching a game that included my own doubles teamates. Their opponents had this rather nice but weird service....they didn't point the shuttle on the base of the racket as you are usually suppose to do to make it 100% sure you are hitting the cork first, but rather, it looks like they were serving with the plastic bird on its side (cork pointing downward, but maybe it was inward a little bit). I don't know if it is possible to get the plastic shuttle over the net without hitting the cork first, but it REALLY looked like they hit the skirt and the cork the same time..but the skirt looked more apparent...no one said anything however, but it sure did annoy me...what do you all think?
According to the rules of badminton. 11.1.3 The server's racket shall initially hit the base of the shuttle while the whole of the shuttle is below the server's waist;
I don't think it was an S-Serve, because they were using plastic shuttles, which I don't think the S-serve could be executed on. Maybe they did hit the base of the shuttle, but it sure doesn't seem convincing. I think these two guys trained at OCBC, where I think Tony Gunawan coaches. I don't know if they exactly coached with him specifically but I think they were at OCBC. They happen to win the tournament for boy's doubles too. Pretty good pair. IF they did train there, I guess the serve was legal...it's kind of hard to describe lol
those serves are to serve to the far corner. When you hold the shuttle sideways across the racket, the shuttle will look like it should go straight, but it will go to the far corner. Usually used for deception.
not necessarily. For all my serves, except singles high serve, I hold the shuttle like that. Plastic and feather. Horizontal with the base pointed slightly in, so that the base is hit first. If I want to serve wide to the right, I have to point it in a bit more, but I rarely do that serve.
That is definately not the S-serve It's legal if the base is hit first. With a serve like that, it can be a little ambiguous wether the base is hit first (legal) or the feathers/nylon skirt are hit simultaneously (illegal). It does not have to be a serve out to the tramlines either. Watch old videos of Li Yong Bo and Tian Bing Yi serving for good examples of this serve.
