If I play doubles with my son (don't worry, we choose our opponents to be more or less equally), sure they try to smash at him. What I tend to do is swap places. One of us hits the shuttle to the end of the opponents court (clear, drive) to give us time to switch. Then you usually have one single chance to break the attack, cause after this shot the opponent sees he has hit the shuttle to me instead of my son. Doesn't work all the time, and the better the opponents are, the less it works. But from time to time… Ever since, he learned from it. His return is better, and most important, he starts to see how you can prevent your opponent from smashing. I tend to call that : disarming your opponent. Use your weaknesses to be an advantage, and prevent your opponent to use his strongest weapon. Simple theory, but sometimes rather hard to execute.

But if anybody has some scenario to get out of this, I'll be very interested to read it (and try it).

Cheers, ED

You see, that's why we need this forum. That's why we need a professional trainer to moderate us. Thanks for the tip !

However, I posted this a bit in a hurry, and now I see the thread is for singles. Sorry folks for that.

Now I read my own post, it reads like we stand our grounds and don't move arround. That's not the case. He's only just turned 13, so still has some stuff to learn, but he's getting there.

Cheers, ED