Recently i heard that sometimes, most of professional players use their fingers instead of wrist in order to perform backhand drive stroke. as they keep the top of the grip with thumb and next to fingers then push the botom of the grip toward palm with two fingers left. is it true? and if the answer is positive whats its advantage over using wrist?
Backhand drives are normally executed with the racquet using the thumb grip (check out gollum's badminton bible for the pictures). With this grip, the thumb is placed on the cone, and the face if the racquet is directly forwards. Given this grip, your 4 fingers (other then your thumb), have the ability to make the racquet face go faster, if you tighten your grip. This grip tightening action is essential to generating power for drives, in my opinion. The thumb grip inhibits your wrist (makes it harder to move around) naturally, so you are forced to use the fingers.
Grip tightening is an important part of any power shot, but it's especially noticeable for short-action shots such as net kills (and drives, to a lesser extent). As a general rule, the closer you are to the net, the shorter your arm swing needs to be -- and the more you need to rely on grip tightening for power. Although some backhand drives should be hit with a thumb grip, others require a basic or bevel grip.
