I’m looking forward to your questions. Feel free to suggest some ideas for videos too.

I think you and your friends will love the videos I’m currently working on!

To your success.

Paul

yeah sure, you can go ahead and use my comment if it would help other players. in fact i would be glad to recommend your advice/tactics to others as well. i told my other badminton buddies about you and they are becoming regular on your blog. its pretty tough to find a coach for badminton in our country where it only played during winter. we actually try to play all year round and try to improve ourselves as much as possible. since we don’t have any coach to guide us on, we only rely on you tube and recently on your blog..

so thanks again and i’ll get back with a lot of questions soon.

take care and ciao

asif

Great to hear from you. Sorry you lost but I’m delighted that my advice is working for you! I hope you won’t mind me using your comments again in my blog?

Please continue to ask questions. This is why my blog was created – to solve players issues as much as I can.

I suspect your partner became over anxcious and probably became too eager to finish the point. If you look back on the game, perhaps this eagerness also meant that he changed position at the front of the net and was just too close to intercept. Check out his position and I think this will be a major factor in his mistakes.

It also sounds like you needed to play the tournament on one day. If you had, your confidence and good form may have helped you win. The fact that you played the final on the second day may have changed your form. It’s very hard to play consistently well.

Badminton is also played in the mind. I will be writing an article or even making a video about this in the future. It’s not even considered by many players as a factor in how you play. In fact, it’s the biggest factor and can decide whether you win or lose before you step foot on court.

It’s a huge subject and one I cannot tackle in a small article. I would also suggest you re-read my article about your badminton goals for 2010 because goals are linked to performance too.

To your success Asif.

Paul

thnks again for ur advice. i followed ur advice; altho we lost but took the game in to three sets. once again miss it by a whisker.. funny thing is, in all the sets we were in front by at least 5 point margin but eventually succumbed to defeat. my partner seemed to hit the panic button and could not cover the net when we were on the attack. i’m not saying i’m the best, but crowd was saying that if my partner could cover me up a bit more, we would have won easily. and believe me, after this match, i started to believe, badminton can be played in the mind too. we were playing like crazy before the finals and the day when it counts, we somehow lost it. i’m so very disappointed and will work hard on my game even more for next year. i hope you can touch on this temperament issue in your topic soon.

all in all, thanks for ur advice and i hope you wont mind if i bother you with my long queries. i love badminton and would want to improve my game with every opportunity available. you’ve been a great help so far.

kind regards,

asif

Delighted to see that you’ve made a recovery and you’re playing badminton again.

Thanks for your questions. Covering for a partner is very difficult. I’ve recently been in similar situations. No matter how experienced I am, there are times when you don’t see enough of the shuttle to be in the game.

Here’s what you can do and does work to a point. If you meet a good pair, they are going to pick on the week player and they may be too strong to do much. Appreciate the situation and focus on you.

What do I mean? When this situation arises, many players get frustrated, and their focus and attitude changes on court. Instead of being positive and working on your game, you become negative and feel you’re the victim of your partners skill levels.

Instead, you have to hunt the shuttle and me more focussed that every shot you play is good. That doesn’t mean try and hit winners with every shot, but you can try making returns that may get loose shots to the net you can kill.

The other thing you can do is make sure your service as really tight. From this try to intercept the push returns, threaten to kill any net shot returns therefore forcing your opponent to lift the shuttle.

Just because you see a flick serve as a defensive shot, this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use it. Practice this serve too so you become very accurate at hitting the tight corners. Use occasionally to keep your opponents guessing where you will serve next.

If your partner has the skill to play the shuttle downwards, then at least you’re maintaining the attack. Encourage them to continue hitting down at all times.

If you’re at the front of the court more often, move your base back another pace. Enough that you can still cover the net, but also to try to intercept mid court pushes or cross court lifts or drives. This way you’re giving yourself more chance of getting into the game.

Sadly, if your opponents are highly skilled, they can easily keep you away from the shuttle, even with these tactics.

However, give them a try and let me know what happened.

To your success.

Paul