This 12 year old player has good footwork, decent shots, his movement overall is quite fast, he rarely makes unfored errors and he is able to cover the court quite well and save many shots even though he is around 135cm.. I myself am not tall but around 178cm at 16yrs old and I am pretty skinny just so you wanted to know.. I like doing the 'Lin Dan' shot of leaping over to an offensive flat clear(backhand) and flexing the wrists to smash the shuttle straight in a steep angle which often works for me and I also like net killing. But I have pretty bad stamina and my legs get a bit tired after a while. I have bad defense but not sure if my height has anything to do with it? Not sure. Is there any tactics or strategies that would work against a shorter player? Move him around the court more and force him to react faster? or keep moving his front and back??? Thanks for your help.
you could always work on your weaknesses. don't think height hurts defense. in fact height is great for smashes down the sides as you move less to get to any shuttle. you really need good stamina for badminton in general, not to mention strong legs. as for dealing with a shorter player just think about this. he has to take 4 steps to cover the same shot you take 3 steps to reach. it should be very clear what you need to do.
are you talking about me? (joke ) I'm short, so I have to make up for my limited reach by being fast. We, vertically challenged people, struggle more to cover every corners of the court compared to you, the tall ones. Like what shifty said, you can reach more spots with one big lunge compared to us who need to take a few more steps. Nuf said. I wouldn't want to disclose our weakness.
178cm is not particularly tall, I would attribute your lack of stamina to your claim of being skinny. Putting on more muscle mass (shouldn't be hard for a 16-year-old) will help a lot in that area. Back to anti-short-player-tactics, 135cm is not really short for a 12-year-old, but it is very short compared to you. Of course moving the opponent around is always a good general strategy, against anyone. One good strategy specifically against shorter players is to go for lower clears. Since your opponent is very short, he will not be able to jump up and smash low clears. He will have to move very quickly to recover any low clears, possible hit off-balance shots, then you can hit a drop-shot to force him even more. However, you also have less time to recover from hitting the low clear than a high clear, so that could be a hindrance to this tactic.
