I am wondering your thoughts on this so called "drifts" in tournaments. You may hear commentators talking about players playing against drifts and with drifts etc. It kinda does not make sense to me that there is so much air circulation in professional tournaments so flight of birdie can be affected greatly. Is that really that noticeable? I feel like they are really exaggerating what is happening. What are your thoughts on that? Edit: I started to hear this drift like maybe last 2-3 years. I am not sure I heard it is mentioned this much before.
I think maybe they exaggerate a little, or attribute certain outcomes to drift where it might just be the inconsistency of the player. It's hard to definitively say any specific shot landing long or wide is because of drift. It is more conclusive if there is a trend and if players only have trouble from one side of the court. But they've been following the circuit for years and they talk to the players sometimes. If the players experience it, it's definitely a thing. I've never experienced it, but then I've never played in a hall (or stadium I guess) with a ceiling that high.
Short answer: They're not exaggerating and if you're not used to it, it's hell. In one hall, I regularly play in, there's ventilation blowing from one end of the court to the other one. Standing on court, it's barely noticeable, but it's a huge difference for the shuttle. Even when Speed testing, it's almost 1m difference, depending on which side you're hitting from. that translates roughly to speed 76 needed on one side vs. 78 on the other one.... that is a significant difference and it translates to clears, smashes, high serves, flick serves, drop shots, .... well, almost any shot. Try it yourself if you get the chance. You'll appreciate the pros even more afterwards.
Yes. The larger the hall the worse it is. Once, in an eight court hall had drift that affected the shuttle going sideways by nearly two feet in the corner of one particular court. This was in a competition. In our halls, we also get end to end drift. Adapting to it is part of the experience of playing the game. That’s because our halls have air conditioning! I have played in a few countries where the halls don’t have a huge degree of machine ventilation - there definitely is less drift but one really hot summer in England, the emergency door had to be opened for ventilation, the wind blew in at intervals in and you can guess what happened to the shuttle on the court nearest to the door. In a huge international arena, there’s going to be lots air currents due to the ventilation and with air temperature variability setting up convection currents.
I see. Thanks for inputs. I understand that it can be expected to happen in not so high level tournaments and club level play but this kind of drift happening in world class tournaments and even in olympics sounds unacceptable to me, so I thought it is likely to be an exaggeration. That's why I wondered how serious that drift is. So, I guess there is no way to prevent this given that it is even happening in olympics etc. In the end, I suppose drift is more likely to happen in these pro tournaments bec halls are bigger compare to our average gym.
