"discernably" Service Rule change?

Any one please confirm this? I noticed that some players, eg. Gao Ling, serving without pointing the racket discernably below the shaft at the point of contact with the shuttle.

 

many professional players gets away with this kind of service

 

From the recent video of Chinese Taipei Open, I notice that Lindan's short services are mostly fault. His racket moved ahead briefly, draw back again and move ahead again, I wonder how come the service judge allowed that?

 

from "Laws of Badminton 2006" as posted in the Badminton India website:

9.1.5 the whole shuttle shall be below the server’s waist at the instant of being hit by the server’s racket. The waist shall be considered to be an imaginary line round the body, level with the lowest part of the server’s bottom rib;

9.1.6 the shaft of the server’s racket at the instant of hitting the shuttle shall be pointing in a downward direction;

The phrase "to such an extent that the whole of the head of the racket is discernibly below the whole of the server’s hand holding the racket" has been removed.

 

Hold your fire, chaps, bercause you are firing aimlessly. What toddster alluded to was a change in the service law to the old one he quoted, and you chaps are firing at the old law.
The new law is more forgiving. It uses much the same words of the old one except for the deletion of "....racquet is discernibly below the whole of the server's hand..". In its place are the words " The waist shall be considered to be an imaginery line round the body, level with the lowest part of the server's rib." So the waist is now given a more definitive meaning, and the "whole of the head of the racquet is discernibly below the whole of the server's hand holding the racquet" is thrown out. A very realistic and sensible change.
With this correction, you can use all your fire power you want.

 

You obviously missed Mikej's post in which he quoted the new 2006 laws and answered the question in full and with complete accuracy.

 

I have a friend who does this. It is terribly distracting at times, especially since he only does it sometimes. I causes my to shift my weight prematurely!

I asked him not to do it, and told him that it is a fault. He only shaked my partners hand after the match.

Is it rude to tell players (with more experience then you) the rules?

 

Interesting...How would they define "downward direction"? Is it just slightly down from being horizontal? Reading the law would seems to indicate that as long your racquet head is pointing slightly down from horizontal, you would be okay. Yeah, this would make a different to how people would serve.

Good find, guys ...er.. and gals.

 

Besides the racquet shaft pointing in a downwards direction, the shuttle must be below the level of the server's lowest rib. It is just a change to reflect what has been going on.

 

Just wait till the "on-the-fringe" illegal servers get wind of this!

-dave

 

I must agree. The vast majority of players seem to serve from very high. As for the angle, Gao Ling and Lee Hyo-jung serve the same way every time. They start with their shafts almost vertical and then in the act of serving they drop the handle down so low that it is very close to horizontal at the point of contact. I can't believe that they were serving legally under the old rule (unless they were also slicing the bird because with the racquet face flat, you can have a shallower angle without breaking the old rule). However, I have seen both of those players faulted on occasion and so we can be sure that the service judges were not simply looking the other way. Maybe they were letting them break the old rule and simply enforcing the new one all along ie. they were only calling faults when the shaft was actually flat or pointed upward.

Well, on one hand, it would really suck for a judge to have to decide a game by calling a service fault but changing the rules won't prevent that. The new rally point system seems to involve a lot of points on loss of service, possibly a majority, although I haven't done the research. This stands in stark contrast to the reality in tennis or ping pong, which have always had rally-point systems. Theoretically, a team could win an entire game by only winning one service point. In fact, they could even win 30-29 without winning a single point on their service. A rule change that makes the servers at least less vulnerable (though not outright on the offensive) is probably a good thing.

See figure 1(the red line is obviously the horizontal):

 

Well, we've always had people where I play who serve with their shafts pointed upward and we have some who serve with the shuttle at chest-height and we have some who do both so I don't expect anything to change.

 

It's funny that Badminton India has the new laws on their website but that the IBF has only the proposed changes on theirs (in that statutes2.pdf link that toddster pointed out.

The Korean Badminton Association altered different rules from this apparent IBF decision. They altered rule 9.4 to say that the first movement rather than the first forward movement would be considered the start of the service. They also included a corresponding change to 9.1.7, so that it now states that the racquet must continue (not necessarily forward) from the start of service. In other words, the backswing must now be combined with the rest of a smooth motion service. I wonder what that would mean for cases like the complaints against Lin Dan above(post#4). Theoretically, as long as you didn't stop, you could make a bunch of smooth spirals in the air with your racquet and then finally hit the shuttle and it would be okay. That was not their rationale for changing the rule, though. They said too many Korean players were getting called on service faults so they wanted to nip them in the bud. Perhaps they hadn't considered the implications of that rule change, though. It would prevent deceptive pauses after a backswing, yes, but it would permit multiple, deceptive, smooth changes of direction prior to delivery.

Oh well, I've looked at the IBF site and the ostensibly more up-to-date Badminton India site and it looks as if this rule change will only affect elite Korean players in domestic tournaments. Club players here ignore all serving rules anyway, except for the ones about where the shuttle is supposed to land. By that I mean that everyone - except myself - will let anyone break any rule and yet the vast majority of people still choose to serve legally despite the knowledge that no one will fault them if they do not.

 

Not true. If you go to the IBF home page and look at the bottom for a button labelled "New Rally Points System" you will find the new laws in their entirety along with the appendices.

Alternatively go here: http://www.internationalbadminton.org/newrallypointsystem.asp

 

Thank you. Silly me. Looking for something called "The Laws of Badminton" in a link called "Statutes" instead of a link called "Rally Point Scoring System Final". What was I thinking? Still a little baffling that they would revise the "laws" and then leave both the new and the old document(without marking it as "outdated") up on their website but at least the new one is there.

 

The new laws make it clear that the only option is to stick with the old scoring system (law 7.1 and appendices). You have to follow the new laws as far as serving (laws 9.1.1 and 9.1.6), double hits (law 13.3.8) and passing around the net (law 13.3.3) are concerned.

I suspect the real reason for the racquet head change is that the old law was not properly enforced and they have now given up. It is potentially quite significant, though.