Show your opponent your ability to serve high, deep, and somewhere close to the corners Arm yourself with a slice serve that looks exactly like your long serve, and Vuala!
the perfect singles serve is one that wins the point straight off seriously though, there is no perfect serve, or else everyone would use it.... the serve you use should be based on your strengths and weaknesses, your opponents strengths and weaknesses, and how you want to exploit those at the moment.... not to mention the way you serve should have something to do with what you will do after you serve.... if you have no idea what you are going to do after the serve, that is a problem
Off hand, it would be one that catches your opponent off-guard and solicit a weak return. But normally, it would be a high deep serve so that it would drop straight down on the back baseline right in the middle.
A perfect singles serve would put your opponent in a tough split second situation where he/she has to make a decision to drop or clear while in trouble and that maybe their weaknesses and causing them to make an error I usually like to serve to the top right corner when they're on the left and to the back right corner when they're on the right and from there I can try to read them a bit. I don't really play singles due to my laziness to move around the court
Anyone remember the Sidek 'S-serve'? It's illegal now i know (though I don't think there is anything wrong with it) but I think it would make an effective singles serve as well. The shuttle is spinning all the way until just before it reaches the floor so your opponent has no choice but to lift the shuttle and be exposed to your attack.
you have to define "perfect" first. what will be perfect service do? gain you a point right away, or put you into an advantageous situation? and if so, what is an advantageous situation to you? will that be a lift from your opponent, or just a location such that your opponent don't have a offense edge? i guess my point is, your question was a little vague, and with a vague questoin, you will get a vague (and often not useful) answer.
The basic singles serve used to be the forehand serve that is high and deep into the baseline, usually at a corner, with short serves every now and then to keep the opponent guessing. Most players still use this serve in singles. The backhand serve is now quite common at the top level in singles, but I would not be able to use the backhand serve as a qiuck push will put me into trouble immediately. To use the backhand serve in singles consistently, one has to be very fast and with good backcourt coverage. Ron
If I don't remember wrong, the reason (at least, 1 of the reasons) they got rid off S-serve was due to the protential this serve will dmg. the shuttle in play, since it's a slice on the feather. Personally, I agree with the decision. In tournaments, players are allowed to stop the game (of course, not during a rally), and ask for exchanging shuttle, if it's damaged (highly effect flying pattern / speed). For S-serve, the chance a shuttle will worn out will be much higher, since the player who serves surely slice the feather, and one return possibly hit the feather as well. Also, we know pros can have numerous of rallies just for a single point, and what will happen if during a rally, the feather starts to peel off? Sorry to see a great "invention" won't be allowed anymore, but have to agree with the decision due to such reason.
Spinning serve. Damaging feathers are not the real reason. You damage the shuttle feathers' during the game anyways - i.e. slice drop shots. Don't know the real reason behind the banning. Some say because the Chinese excelled at it. I don't believe in this theory because Dan Travers and Billy Gililland from Scotland were also excellent at spinning serve. Most probably was the 'negative' effect it had on the game of badminton itself. The spinning serve is most effective in doubles game. It's very difficult to attack a good spinning serve. The hard to predict flight pattern often forces the receiver to lift the shuttle. In summary, this would lead players to practice mostly the varieties of spinning serve and smash. The game could become more monotonous and less attractive to watch - imagine watching a tennis game where both players excel in service and average in all the remainder of strokes. Also, then there were a lot of upsets during the tournaments where theoretically weaker teams beat the stronger ones due to good spinning serves. To my knowledge the spinning serve was not started by the Sidek brothers. It was Tong Sin Fu. I first time I saw this serve was back in the mid 70's (75-76??) during a visit of the Chinese team to HK for an invitational open. According to the then sports commentator, Tong was already using it for some time. Tong also mentioned that he learnt the service from one of his opponents during a friendly tournament. He noticed that his opponent had a peculiar way doing his service and that the shuttle sometimes had an erratic flight pattern. When returning home he did some studies and found a way to consistenly make the shuttle travel an erratic flight pattern during the serve.
For the traditional deep serve, the ideal (different from "perfect") serve would be hit as high as is physically possible (limited by the strength of the server or the height of the ceiling) and drop nearly straight down on the intersection of the back and center lines. (Not only does serving to the center take away the quick down-the-line return shot, but in this particular case, the receiver is thinking about whether it's out long or out wide). I was so glad when that serve was banned. Even when I returned it with a defensive stroke, I would often hit it off-center on the racket, causing it to go out. I think it was banned because it didn't meet the technical requirements for a legal serve.
New rules were introduced by IBF, probably around 1983 to make it not possible to deliver a spinning serve - like initial contact must be the cork and so on...
I agree with ur point of the "technic" issues, and the possible neg. impact comments. However, I still think "dmg shuttle" more or less should worth certain level of consideration: 1. Shuttle surely got dmg. during rallies, but s-serve is on-purposly hit the feather (intentional dmg. equipment is banned in a lot of other sports), but rallies are consider "un-intentional". 2. Isn't slice drop shots "slice" the cork? How u going to do a slice drop shot by slicing the feather???
LB, Damaging the shuttle feathers is an issue for us who have to pay for them. The pros could not care less. If you watch international matches sometimes players change shuttles almost after every rally. When we hit the shuttle - whether in a clear or smash, your racquet may contact more than once with the shuttle. It appear to us that our action was a smooth and clean, but contact with the shuttle could be more than once in most occasions. A simple test used by Chinese players back in the 60's (they did not have the high speed cameras then), they painted the strings with ink and then performed different strokes. The parts of the shuttle which has ink were actually the ones that had contact with the string bed. Only the motion like doing a high and deep service, the cork of the shuttle had ink on it. 'Slice' is actually hitting the shuttle not squarelly with your racquet. Rather with an angle. Do a slice drop shot, and pick up the shuttle and verify the status of the feathers. Nothing better than testing yourself the effect, right?
seeing that quite a number of readers agree with the banning of the s-serve, why is it that when someone slices the shuttle on the serve it's a fault but if he/she were to do it in a rally (say a tight net shot) it's considered a skillful shot? if you're allowed to do it in during the game, i think it should be legal as a serve too, after all you're still only using the racket to kit the shuttle. comments?
As mentioned in a previous thread, IBF introduced new laws to make the players not able to use the spinning serve. They had to apply the law on service only otherwise, badminton could only be played using underhand stroke. Actually you already answered your own question. If hitting feathers was illegal then most of the strokes would be deemed illegal - i.e. clears, drops and smashes. I mentioned that it was tested that most strokes, there is more than 1 contact point between the racquet and shuttle. It is because of this that the law had to specifically target the initial contact between the racquet and shuttle must be the cork and not afterwards.
