You see, as I continue to say, choosing a racket is a personal thing. There's proof again.

Paul

I have the pleasure running a demo session recently. For the evening I took along over a dozen rackets for the player to try.

This player was a retired gentleman. He is a coach, but in another sport so we had a lot in common.

The first racket the gentleman tested was my VT80. That was it, as he said “this feels like an extension of my hand.” He still tested every racket I had but nothing came close to VT80.

This gentleman was not a high standard badminton player, but knew what he liked and how it felt. The question asked so many times is whether an intermediate player can benefit from a top of the range racket? In his case, every other racket he tested just didn't feel right and that was all that mattered to him. He liked that racket and wanted to play and learn the game with it. In fact, he liked it so much, he ordered two of the same.

You've heard me say so many times what a personal thing it is when choosing a cracket. As you can see from my story above, I am not commenting whether I believe this is right or wrong. for this gentleman, he knew what he liked, didn't care about the price and wanted it. If I'd been asked for a range of rackets within a certain budget then that's what i would have brought. Some may argue at his current standard of play, he could easily have settled for a cheaper racket and got as much out of it – and you may be right. But, at the end of the day, the cheaper rackets (I had the full range of Voltric rackets) just didn't feel right.

Maybe there's some of the magic quality Amitkale talks about in his post. For me it does exist at times. I notice a huge difference between VT80 and VT9 i tested last Thursday. In theory there shouldn't be much difference, the reality is VT80 outclassed it by a long way in every department except price.

Paul