It's not the easiest thing to see when there is only string over the tram lines. If he genuinely thought it went under then he has to stop then. If j4ckie & partner disagree with his call then they need to play a let (or consult hawkeye...).
Its very irritating when you think it went under, so I'm not gonna criticize him for stopping the rally. That he was so confidently claiming it was definitely under is the reason I'll rub his nose in it
Completely agree, was a very bad match from an errors point of view... usually guys on the English circuit may refer to me as a 'runner' - consistent if unspectacular - I am trying to change that and be more aggressive and improve shot-making to get to the next level... I think I made an error on service 4-5 times in the match which is completely unacceptable!! I wasn't in the best of shape leading into the tournament to be honest which you will see from some of the sluggish movement - Tournaments here generally finish around April and I then also lose some sparring partners during the 'off season'. This has now changed in the last few weeks and I am playing singles regularly with my doubles partner (think we're currently 59 & 60 in singles in England) It feels and appears to be having an effect already... PS... targeting Silver and Gold BE tourneys mainly, been playing them for 2 years also. Are you familiar with the system over here? Indeed the venue wasn't the best - I made mention of this in reference to players' complaints about concrete flooring in the Canada Open thread. There were skylights, yes, it wasn't anywhere near as bad for visibility as you would think.... for me anyway.
Yes, I will look at my schedule for the coming 'season' (Mid-Aug to May) including county matches along with domestic tournaments and see what's do-able. Finances will have a bearing also My goal is to just push myself as far as I can... I cannot dedicate my whole life to it obviously, I have a well paid job in IT... More international tourneys when I have the time and money, aim is to win some matches... maybe long term target by the time I hang my rackets up, last 32 of an IS? Domestically is to appear in the Nationals at least once. I've got 'serious' in the sport pretty late, I turned 27 at the weekend. I did not play a competitive singles match between the age of 17 and 25 to give you some idea LOL (family took hold for a few years) But then on the flip side, my legs will last longer as I've not had the years and years of pounding that others' on the English circuit have had. My experience in combination with my comparitively 'fresh' legs may be an asset later on - that's my hope anyway!
I've watched j4ckie's videos and it's a recurring theme.... Personally it would drive me absolutely bonkers, I'd refuse to play a tournament and ask for money back if the nets didn't cover the whole court!!!
Yes I'm very familiar with the way tournaments work in England, and I understand the problems regarding the off season. It only ever seems to be the serious players that have the willpower to train during the summer months Maybe next season you'll be in a better shape, better drilled and more ready. Hopefully you'll be back out at another event soon Ps, are badminton England still making you pay that ludicrous "administration fee" for entering international events out with the national set up?
Kudos to you. I was in a similar position not playing any singles. Luckily, I found a singles player to coach me who was playing on the international circuit at the same time. During my losses, I would go back to him and talk tactics. Then, we would train areas where I felt there were weaknesses. Against my regular gang, we would be on court for easily an hour - that was excellent for training the mental aspect of the game. Fortunately, there are a lot of singles players in Hong Kong - far more than in UK. Having a hard core group of singles players helps a lot as does changing the venue frequently.
Yes, £20 per tournament. I believe they may be ditching it this season onwards and putting Internationals up on BE's Tournament Software instead. The only 'manual' requirement then is to pass on your BWF ID.
Thanks for your answers msitpro. I'm not that familiar with BE. Still, I've seen some guys play. Anyway, how would you compare yourself to players like, Joel Gayle, Viktor Loke or (on a higer level) Chris Coles? I hope you enjoy the (international) games and can push your limits.
Well glad to see they're ditching it. I think it was terrible that you guys were being made to pay "administration costs" when it's a simple process. Those fees ontop on paying 100% of all other costs. We as players, could quite easily handle our own tournament entries if both the BWF and our NA's would let us. Apparently though, it's just too complicated for us players.
Played Joel at doubles in March. He was playing with a youngster, Matt Widdicombe. They won 14 & 14 I think. We were on pretty soon after beating Andrew Smith and his mate in the first round and I think if we'd had more time to recover it would have been closer. On the singles front, he would likely beat me 10 & 10 or so I suspect based on last season's form. Never played Coles as the national team doubles players never play domestically....
Lampionturnier 2014 Hattrick!! Third tournament we won in a row The two videos are from our last final. We won in two games (21:19 21:7). The first set was pretty close and in the second set our opponents couldn't keep up the pace. We already knew them before for their solid defensive game, but this time they couldn't handle our offense We are the ones playing in blue. I'm the tall guy with the orange shoes. My partner is my regular doubles partner. Any tactical/technical advice is always highly appreciated as we always want to improve our level. [video=youtube;YVlId6BRcjw]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVlId6BRcjw[/video] [video=youtube;o0pQSUyg8H0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0pQSUyg8H0[/video] Sorry for the blurry quality of the first game's video. I don't know what happened to my camera there.
Based on a quick view of the second vid, the first thing that comes to mind for me is that your partner really needs to improve his overhead timing. He's giving away at least 20, probably 25-30cm because he has his arm angled too much and always falls down before he hits a drop. Also pretty easy to read him because of that - he can't really put on pressure when he's all relaxed and dropping down like that, although your opponents didnt seem to do so and were too slow to take advantage anyway. Had a little chuckle at both of them having logos stencilled on and the Oliver guy even appearing to be sponsored in a fashion (god, I hope he's a retailer, or Oliver has the worst endorsement strategy ever!). Anyhow, one more thing you could improve is your movement when your partner gets a high lift. You step back pretty far, and since he doesn't really have a big hammer, you don't need to be that far back. It leaves you vulnerable to a good block defense, and since he plays drop shots so often, you need to step forward most of the time anyway. Both of you need to work on one very basic part of movement - the split step. You never seem to do one, and often kind of walk into your positions/shots, and your reaction time (especially defensively) suffers for it. Related to that, you need to get back to your base position more quickly when you're at the back, you have a really good attack for this level but don't return to a more neutral position after a smash, which opens up the court for a crosscourt defensive shot which doesn't even need to be flat or fast. As a tall guy I know that's a bit harder on us, but it really makes a big difference against a defensively strong pair! You could also variate your attack a bit more (throw in some quick(!) drop shots, spotted a few that were basically gifted points against a quick player ), but against this pair it wasn't really needed. All things considered, this is pretty good attacking play for B class fun tournaments!
@j4ackie: Thank you for the analysis The "sponsored guy" is in fact a retailer and has a small badminton shop. I actually know a guy who was sponsored by Oliver, but he was way way better (Hessenliga), so nothing wrong with Oliver's endorsement strategy The missing split step is probably the main reason why I hate playing singles. Most of the time in doubles one has to cover only one axis (front+back or left+right), especially when in an attacking position and dictating the rally and it's quite easy to cover that adequately without using a split step. That's probably the reason why I never learned to do it. Especially in singles I notice that I am not able to cover all four corners equally well. I tend to pick two corners that I can easily cover and if my opponent plays in one of the remaining corners I have a big problem. I will ask my coach for some advice/training on that topic. The slow recovery is one of the bad habits I developed during my early years. I played Badminton for quite some time on a very low level without any coaching at all and just recently (2 years) started playing+training on a higher level with a real coach. Apart from the slow recovery I also tend to have an awkward "racket ready position". It has gotten better, but I still have my racket pointing forward when my arm is raised and I tend to need some extra time to wind up. I'll try to work on that. Do you have any tipps how to improve fast recovery? Probably not going 100% on power all the time would be a good start Thank you for the tipps, I'll pass on your remarks about my partners drop to him. For the next tournaments we will probably enlists in some higher levels and see how we can perform against more skilled players. In our last season we won all our doubles together and hope to climb into "Bezirksoberliga" next season.
Not concentrating on putting 100% into the smash, what is more helpful for me though is thinking aboit the next shot already. I land differently with my balance already shifted towards the position I want to return to/advance to. I actually have trouble with that particular aspect, especially when the rally goes on a while and you don't want to return to a neutral position again I noticed you often do a small hop before starting to move back, you should try to either skip that or at least direct it into the direction you want to go next. Its best if you only do it after very fast lateral movement to regain your balance. Also, you might want to consider either playing without a preference or with you gravitating towards the back, your stronger smash and vastly superior angle make you more dangerous than your partner there while he seems to have a slightly cooler head around the net at times. Continue playing as aggressively as you do on your own serve though, it really puts pressure on opponents and at this level youre able to take the net away from them almost entirely. As for the retailer, I suspected as much, its fairly common for them to have a (minor) endorsement with a particular company (my go-to retailer uses Li Ning and has the logo on his rackets as well).
[MENTION=80749]alex292[/MENTION] The split step is in doubles very important as well. It gives you loooots of benefits and you are even faster than you are now (cause you are automatically in balance and have the quick start). I suggest you concentrate from now one in training always one doing the split step at every hit of your opponent player does at every hitting practice or skirmish. Until you have the right timing and it goes into your flesh. And when you feel slow at court again just think about the split-step do it and you will be fast again. For doing the split step the right way, just look at matches of Pro players in slow motion and copy it (only look at their feet and the right timing). (tall players are Hong Wei, Ivanov (for doubles) and chen Long, victor axelsen, Boonsak Ponsana (for singles).
Bao Chunlai rather than Boonsak, I'd say - BP isn't actually tall for European standards Also, BCL is the closer to normal players in movement because he doesn't jump insanely high or lunge incredibly deep like CL VA is a pretty good players to watch as well and probably the closest to us where explosiveness is concerned (from the players listed!). MB and CM are good to watch if you want to learn how to attack in a controlled manner. You can also pick up a few things about mind games from them, but I'd advise you not to play any if you want to keep a friendly relationship with your opponents
Its been a while since I have posted a video, here is one on my men's singles match from the recent 2014 Canada Open Grand Prix. I made it to 2nd round (RD 32) after winning my 1st round against a local Canadian player. In the 2nd round I had to play a player from the Korean University team named Ju Hyung Shon who beat Eric Pang in his first round. Overall not much to say, hes better than me and I gave up the shuttle to many times allowing him to attack and instantly putting myself into a defensive position which I need to work on deference. I needed to continue to play a flat game and not give up the shuttle, control the net and then go from there. Over the past few months my coaches have been trying to change my game and technique so I think it may slightly be working and coming through here, it is very hard to do though for sure especially in a tournament. Overall happy with the result, 2nd round a good chunk of world ranking points and a boost to my world ranking so that is a good thing. I am wearing white and black in the video and start on the far side. [video=youtube;Fq7dLkSLgnU]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fq7dLkSLgnU&list=UUpEC9SYB1JopHnDHIu_4Yog[/video]
[MENTION=75565]nbonkowsky[/MENTION] Good result! Thanks for keeping us updated. I noticed that a lot of your inside-out cross courts were landing fairly central.
