well being on BC for a while, i've read a few times about the poor image of badminton in north america, but it never bothered me much because it did not really directly affect me. well all that changed, because a few days ago i met these two guys really into tennis. my age, and they could turn pro if they wanted to. one was sponsored by head (free rackets and such), and the other was sponsored by wilson (same thing again). so yea i just told them i play badminton way more than tennis, since i love playing it so much as usual, the mockery came. lol they started fooling around pretending to do a backhand serve with their whole elbow in such an awkward looking motion, mocking saying "a tennis serve is fast, what about a badminton serve?" lol and i couldnt really reply with much of anything except just smiling along. and the usual excuse as well, saying how badminton is for those who cant use/hold a tennis racket or play tennis yada yada yada. fighting arguments like these i never bother trying to win, theres no point. anywho, so yea its the first time this sorta thing has really directly affected me. its too bad badminton isnt as well known over here like tennis is. it seriously does have that wuss-sport image :S *tear* and btw, last thursday was my first time doing some serious smashes i used to only dream about doing. im talking a serious BOOM and straight up eye-blinking fast smashes. why am i mentioning this? cuz im a follower now of the fact that you dont need a pricy racket or high tension + pricier/thinner string to do that. technique, timing, and hitting it on the sweetspot is what matters. i was using a cab 8200 light (extra flexible shaft) with BG70 @ 20lbs (and they werent jump smashes either) /rant
preach on man, preach on...it's the same as that damn friggin vitamin water commercial with urlacher and ortiz...supposed to be funny and humourously intended of course...but it propelles the image that badminton is weak and exaggerated.... furthermore, with the less media exposure that badminton already has...an example would be hardly anyone in canada knowing who Andrew Dabeka would be compared to anyone who knows who Mike Weir is...and how does that make us a good country for improvement? we wouldn't have had the world junior championships in vancouver a few years earlier without having the idea that we could grow the sport here...not for the asian majority in van. city and doing it for a financial stand point ==".... the only way we can deal with haters of the sport is to make fun of their sport =p!..or show'em up at their own sport or kill them in ours!... and if not, you can have the consolation that those stupid tennis players won't make it anywhere in tennis playing in canada
Does anyone else find that it's easier for us badminton player to convert to tennis than the other way around? Just my personal opinion. Anyways, I find tennis a big bore really. I love playing, sometimes love watching but I just see too much rallying back and forth. I don't mean the normal running rallies, I mean the ones where Fed and Roddick are smacking the ball back and eachother for 5 minutes before Fed finally hits to make Roddick run and the rally ends . People that make fun of our beloved sport are simply ignorant and miss the beauty of it, that which requires brain power to place the bird and not just smack it back and forth at eachother with different spins. Of course i'm not saying it's always like that. I'm just saying that I see it alot, and it kind of kills the view I have on pro-tennis. Well, the best way to prove those type of people wrong is to just nail a fast bird. A tennis serve is the only boomstick shot in the game, if those pros you met only look at that. And compared to badminton's boomstick, its alot slower.
The best thing to do is to politely invite them to play a game with you and let them find out firsthand how wrong they were. If they were to start bringing up excuses, you could always retort "what? too scared to take on a geeky badminton player?" See, you can't lose that way.
Store some MD matches in your handphone, and when someone mock about badminton you just show them the MD game (I recommend 2003 MD WC, between CW/TG against FH/CY or TL/LP). Tennis is not even close as exiciting as these matches ...
lolz either that or pull a "tezuka" on them for those of you who watch PoT...XD...if not, i mean whack them in the arm with a badminton racket on their dominant hand, and thus ruining their career ...
tell them while tennis serves maybe faster than a badminton serve, but it's slower than a smash. deliberately ask them how fast the fastest tennis serve is. then say, "oh, is that all??? i'm disappointed. world's fastest badminton smash was 206 miles per hour" in case these guys are dumb, fastest tennis serve was Andy Roddick, 155mph. pales a little compared to ol' Fu Haifeng.
Hey! I don't think you need to be confrontational with them.. They obviously have the wrong picture of badminton, so think like a salesman.. How can I sell my sport to these guys .. a) don't start talking down on their sport.. Its much easier to get them to accept the good values of badminton, if you accept the fact that they like tennis (and will not likely revert that opinion after a few minutes argument ) You could say. Yea the serve is defensive in competetive badminton, overhead serves are not allowed, as it would be to much of an advantage to the server. Btw it has been discussed widely in tennis to only have one service, or even non-overhead services because the huge benefit of serve is a problem with the sport. However in badminton you play more smashes and overhead shots during the rallies, and also its alot quicker (smashes are +200mph) which requires more exposive speed and reactions...ie if you play att high/pro level. It's really not hard to understand why guys like Jet Li, and Jackie Chan plays badminton!! Did you know Jacki Chan even has his own racket model What you guys seen is obviously not competetive badminton, but the silly backyard game, that I agree is completely sissy :-D.. Maybe we could do a challenge competition.. we play both games (on point per won rally, lets say to 21) and see how it goes? Btw did you know head, just started to make competetive badminton rackets as well Just some ideas /Twobeer
wow a lot of responses! and maybe i over-exaggerated a little with the two guys. either way, very interesting to read. learned quite a bit
1) a lot of tennis player think they can turn pro. Actually they can't. why? just like us badminton player, many are very very good. but not good enough. 2) getting sponsership is not a hard task. you just need to get to know the local distributer and do some paperwork and do some obligation. no big deal. 3) trust me, if you are good tennis player who can turn pro at that age, you would not be playing in TOR where there is no tournment for 4 month. you will be living in CA or FL tournment every weekend. 4) if you meet the top 100 tennis pros, most of them are great sportsmen. even they do not understand our love of badminton, they do not mack our sport because they are also like us, "gentalmen". i aime at talking to other people about badminton. get more court and gym open unused time for badminton. getting to know people loves badminton, one person at time.
Like apples vs. orange, there's no comparison in between. There's no better or worse sports, just a matter of which one you love and and work hard to improve. The best gymnastic can be the last one in the draft for basketball, well the NBA MVP might never know how to swim. So, which one is better or worse? Just pick the ones you like to do, and do it.
