I'm still quite new to badminton. Yesterday I had a coaching session. We did some work on my serve, and one thing I wanted to work on was to disguise my serve so you can't tell when I'm going to do the flick serve. When I showed the coach my serves I knew he'd notice a difference in the back swing, but before doing the flick serve he also noticed me tensing up and looking where I'm planning to hit it. I was wondering what might be some common tells in beginners apart from just the swing, or whether they typically give it away just by the swing.
It might varies upon each player. Sometimes it's a gesture, unrelated to the stroke in itself. Could be tensing up upon performing a flick as a beginner player have less finger power and try to use his/her body arm more, being a bit less relaxed and more straight as to want to create more impact instead of staying relax for a normal serve, etc. It could be so many things really. It's a good serve as long as it remains occasionally, I do love flick serves.
Every player had habit that they do repeatly & unconciously. Like when someone want to flick, Some people tend to rise their hand higher (tho its fault, but on club whos gona complaint) some other with weaker forehand do big backswing. Some other had different starting point, i mean when they are about to flick, they hold their racket differently Their eye or face tell that they are up to something. You need to be emotionless. Or sometimes they had pattern like 2x normal & then 1x flick. So, to do flick you have to give less to no hint. Well, you already had a hint from your coach, you do backswing & you give a hint yourself by looking at the direction. Also observe the reciever, where he stand? would he be ready for a flick? Sometimes they also had some kind of habbit to.
How much time in coaching/practice would it normally take someone to have a flick serve that can't be read? One of the best players in my club said he can read the serves of every other player in the club, and many of them are very good.
Basically for unreadable act can be perform by various way. Being flat no expresion, purposely give sign to hit somewhere but actually hit the oposite direction, even purposely giving a hint to where you aim for & actually hit there. The more variation, the less your opponent read you. So, assuming that a player had good technique, all the other is just a matter of experience. The more experience you got, the more you would know what to do to trick your opponent. But other hand if you for example had bad short serve & 3 times i kill you serve instantly. The 4th serve you will feel uneasy preasured by me & little act like looking at the back would be sign for me that 70%-80% of your serve would be flick. So, improve your basic skill 1st rather than concerning about how to makes you unreadable. The more variety of good shot you had, the less your opponent can read you.
I worked on this at coaching, and watched the video of me doing short serves and flick serves. I noticed dropping my head (of my body) before flicking. I need to wait a bit longer before starting my swing when I flick, as I noticed waiting longer before doing a short serve. I also need to avoid changing the racquet to a more vertical angle in the backswing, as well as doing a much quicker backswing when I flick.
