Badminton - Steps to Success - Tony Grice

Badminton - Steps to Success

by Tony Grice

NEW, 200 pages

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About Badminton - Steps to Success

Players clocking shuttlecocks at speeds of 200 miles per hour, new scoring rules, and nonstop action make badminton one of the fastest racket sports in the world. With Badminton: Steps to Success you will learn the skills and tactics to excel at the highest level.

Through detailed, fully illustrated instruction, you will develop precision, power, and finesse as you use this step-by-step guide to master serves, forehands, backhands, clears, drop shots, smashes, drives, and more.

Badminton: Steps to Success also breaks down common errors players make and provides corrective techniques to pinpoint problems and improve execution. Over 100 drills will further enforce correct technique, with designated drills for tactical practice, conditioning, and teamwork for doubles play.

About Tony Grice

Tony Grice has played and coached badminton for over 40 years. He has been ranked nationally as high as 11th in open men's doubles and 15th in open men's singles. At the masters level, he won the 1998 U.S. National Championship in masters men's singles, as well as the 1998 and 1999 U.S. National Championship in masters men's doubles. At the 2003 National Senior Games, he finished second in 55+ badminton singles and doubles. At the 2008 U.S. Senior National Badminton Tournament, Grice won the 40+ mixed doubles and the 60+ men's doubles.

Grice served as the head women's varsity badminton coach at Northwestern State University of Louisiana from 1973-1975. In 1975, two team members were among the first eight women to receive college athletic scholarships in the state of Louisiana. In 1987, Grice traveled to the World Badminton Championships in Beijing, China, as a U.S. national coach and team trainer. In addition, he was the team exercise physiologist for 10 years (1988-1999), which involved supervising several research studies at the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs. Grice served on the USA Badminton board of directors from 1987 to 1993. He was the coach for the South team at the 1989 Olympic Sports Festival in Oklahoma City and was an umpire at the United States Olympic Festivals in 1993 and 1995. Since 1998, Grice has served as chair of the NCAA committee for USA Badminton. He is a member of the U.S. Badminton Education Foundation and a life member of both USA Badminton and the Southern Badminton Association.

Grice is currently an associate professor in the health, physical education, and recreation department at Delta State University in Cleveland, Mississippi. He is the author of two badminton textbooks, one of which has been published in six languages. He continues to teach badminton at Delta State University.

Reviews

"The illustrations and descriptions in Badminton: Steps to Success are easy to comprehend, and they provide players with the ability to quickly improve their skills. This book is the best resource for every badminton player.”

Soohyun Bang
Olympic Gold Medalist

About Badminton

To win in badminton, players need to employ a wide variety of strokes in the right situations. These range from powerful jumping smashes to delicate tumbling net returns. Often rallies finish with a smash, but setting up the smash requires subtler strokes. For example, a netshot can force the opponent to lift the shuttlecock, which gives an opportunity to smash. If the netshot is tight and tumbling, then the opponent's lift will not reach the back of the court, which makes the subsequent smash much harder to return.

Deception is also important. Expert players prepare for many different strokes that look identical, and use slicing to deceive their opponents about the speed or direction of the stroke. If an opponent tries to anticipate the stroke, he may move in the wrong direction and may be unable to change his body momentum in time to reach the shuttlecock.

Doubles

Both pairs will try to gain and maintain the attack, smashing downwards when possible. Whenever possible, a pair will adopt an ideal attacking formation with one player hitting down from the rearcourt, and his partner in the midcourt intercepting all smash returns except the lift. If the rearcourt attacker plays a dropshot, his partner will move into the forecourt to threaten the net reply. If a pair cannot hit downwards, they will use flat strokes in an attempt to gain the attack. If a pair is forced to lift or clear the shuttlecock, then they must defend: they will adopt a side-by-side position in the rear midcourt, to cover the full width of their court against the opponents' smashes. In doubles, players generally smash to the middle ground between two players in order to take advantage of confusion and clashes.

At high levels of play, the backhand serve has become popular to the extent that forehand serves have become fairly rare at a high level of play. The straight low serve is used most frequently, in an attempt to prevent the opponents gaining the attack immediately. Flick serves are used to prevent the opponent from anticipating the low serve and attacking it decisively.

At high levels of play, doubles rallies are extremely fast. Men's doubles is the most aggressive form of badminton, with a high proportion of powerful jump smashes.

Singles

The singles court is narrower than the doubles court, but the same length. Since one person needs to cover the entire court, singles tactics are based on forcing the opponent to move as much as possible; this means that singles strokes are normally directed to the corners of the court. Players exploit the length of the court by combining lifts and clears with drop shots and net shots. Smashing is less prominent in singles than in doubles because players are rarely in the ideal position to execute a smash, and smashing often leaves the smasher vulnerable if the smash is returned.

In singles, players will often start the rally with a forehand high serve or with a flick serve. Low serves are also used frequently, either forehand or backhand. Drive serves are rare.

At high levels of play, singles demands extraordinary fitness. Singles is a game of patient positional manoeuvring, unlike the all-out aggression of doubles.

Mixed doubles

In mixed doubles, both pairs typically try to maintain an attacking formation with the woman at the front and the man at the back. This is because the male players are usually substantially stronger, and can therefore produce smashes that are more powerful. As a result, mixed doubles requires greater tactical awareness and subtler positional play. Clever opponents will try to reverse the ideal position, by forcing the woman towards the back or the man towards the front. In order to protect against this danger, mixed players must be careful and systematic in their shot selection.

At high levels of play, the formations will generally be more flexible: the top women players are capable of playing powerfully from the back-court, and will happily do so if required. When the opportunity arises, however, the pair will switch back to the standard mixed attacking position, with the woman in front.

Badminton - Steps to Success