I have recently purchased some aeroplane SG1130 to play and find that they fly way too fast. And watching the WC2006, I saw some doubles matches where the players requested for the shuttlecocks to be tipped. May I know the correct way to do it? Do we do four, then eight if necessary? Thanks
yeah, if it's too fast, i always start off by tipping 4, spread even throughout the shuttle of course, not just any random 4. then try hitting it from the baseline again. if you need to tip it more than that, well, you might want to rethink your shuttle choice.
i tip the top 0.5 cm outwards, don't know what other players do though. experiment for yourself and see what works for you, but i would suggest going slowly, start with 0.5cm then try 1cm if you're not happy.
Takes a bit of practice and experimentation but in general: If the shuttle is a bit fast, tip every 4th feather. If the shuttle is noticeably faster, tip every other feather. If the shuttle is way fast, tip every feather. In SoCal, tipping every other feather is sufficient 90% of the time.
the players are not allowed to do it. if the tournament really don't have the right speed shuttle, the official in charge of shuttle distribution or the service judge will tip the shuttle.
I remembered seeing LD tipping the feathers between rallies in a LD/PG match. Forgot which tourney, but it's 2004/2005. In that match, LD picks up the shuttle whenever he loses a point, turns around for his usual walk of fame between rallies and secretly tips some feathers during his tour around the court. Then LD hits it over to PG for his serve. PG would then look at the shuttle, makes a funny face like this , and ask for a shuttle change. LD will then wave with his racquet, signalling "no change". Haha... nasty and hilarious... Both LD and PG are playing a lot of mind games in that match, like not allowing shuttle change (obviously, since LD "modified" each shuttle to his liking...), not allowing towel breaks, diving purposely to get the floor mopped... pretty nasty game, but VERY entertaining...
sorry if this is a dumb question, but what exactly is tipping a shuttle? ive never heard of 'tipping' a shuttle before.
you basically intentionally bend the tips of selected feathers feathers outwards to create more drag, effectively slowing down the shuttle. you can imagine a similar thing being done to plastics when you press a shuttle down into the floor a bit to spread the skirt outwards to slow it down.
take a look at the WC2006 MD finals video (found in video sharing sub-forum here)... before the match starts, there's a shot of a "tipped" shuttle after Clark demanded to fix them up...
How would the official-in-charge know if the shuttles are too fast? There wasn't any way to measure these, was there? Also, isn't a tournamant like the World Championship has Yonex supplying tournament grade shuttlecocks? I think the official-in-charged erred in the case of the MD semis btw the English and Indonesians by relenting to the English pairs' insistence. I empathize with the Indonesians as they lost their rhythm after the shuttles were tampered with.
The official badminton rules state the method of testing shuttle speed. Section 3 of http://www.worldbadminton.com/documents/ibflaws2006.pdf The players would perform the testing, and the officials will decide whether the speed needs to be adjusted or not. Tournament grade shuttles has various speed ratings (slow, medium, fast, usually labelled by some numbers) as well.
Thanks for the great info. However, the testing of the shuttles is still very subjective, imho. I thought Yonex would have very stringent quality control with very minimal variation (6 sigma or even 3 sigma) between shuttlecocks in one tube and with other tubes in the World Championship. I am ignorant about the various speed ratings of tournament grade shuttlecocks but isn't it audacious for players to tip the shuttles once the organizers had decided which grade to use? My thought is that the English pair just wanted to slow the game down after watching the Indonesians having dispatched the Malaysians in the quarter-finals with much ease. They were fast and their smashes were very powerful. In the semis, these characteristics were evidently missing and the Indonesians just wilted and frustrated by the slow shuttlecocks, as they could not play their usual attacking game to greater effect.
