I can ensure you that it’s nothing wrong with your two weeks old Astrox77 or the strings. You mentioned earlier about floors and ”sand-paper-coating”...do you play on a tenniscourt floor? Because that surface is eating strings! I played with my fried on a tenniscourt a couple of years ago, and almost every time broke the strings on his rackets in those areas that you talks about.
I don't think it's a tennis court floor, others didn't have this problem, and I stopped scraping the racket after improving my scooping technique.
Just in case, I put a sellotape (invisible tape) on the top of the frame. I thought it may upset the racket balance or fall off quickly, but it has negligible weight and it seems to hold fine.
I'm doing both, and actually backhand is easier for some reason. It creates a sharper flick motion. Moreover, often I just scoop the shuttle towards the opponent or partner, and there are many variations there. But they all follow the same principle; place the racket near the shuttle in supination. By the way, isolierband (electric tape) is much nicer than sellotape.
Think of it as sort of opening a doorknob but adding a little scoop motion. Same rotation with your wrist and fingers but not moving your arm much.
@Zohar, what's this? You could've asked me man. hehehehe... You would've noticed that I most of the time don't scoop the shuttle off the floor but push it. For me scooping means the raquet will touch/scrape the floor. By pushing it against the air, the shuttle gets pinned against the string bed and then you now can lift it off the floor.
