If my memory serves me right, it was the first time that China sent its national team players to Hong Kong for a tournament. Top Chinese table tennis players visited Hong Kong before, but not the badminton team. I remember was the excitement surrounding the event then. A well knows sports coach appealed on TV for people to go to the stadium to support the badminton team. He told the fans to pay special attention to the legendary Chinese player Tang Xinfu who was known to execute a serve with spin unseen at that time since China does not play in international badminton tournaments. At that time that coach said it was unbelievable that in badminton the shuttle could spin like in table tennis. Misbun was born in 1960 according to Wikipedia. For him to develop the spinning serve, like the one Tang Xinfu performed with the feathers pointing downwards, he has to be in his early teens.
I tried holding the shuttle as shown and it's very difficult to release it with a spin consistently. Needs a lot more practicing with it. It is tricky to release the shuttle with spin and I am sending the shuttle everywhere with no control where it goes. My racket hand is way toooo slow to react to the release of the shuttle to hit it effectively. And another issue to me is if the shuttle moved sideways I am not hitting cleanly the cork.
The trick is to compensate that downward momentum by moving the arm upwards during the release. Again, super tricky to get it right and this also will cause heavy discussions about the correct service height. It looks like you are raising the shuttle significantly right before the stroke.
after watching the video i'm concluding that this definitely needs some serious practice to make it effective, a few things jump out for me immediately: 1. getting your hand out the way is definitely a factor here, for those of us who hold the very end of the feathers, changing to this way of holding the shuttle is going to need a significant adjustment 2. people have already said that spinning the shuttle is inducing movement downwards so you either need to be quick to hit the shuttle or adjust your position 3. surely spinning the shuttle before hitting it is going to result in variation in delivery - the youtube shows the successful serves - i wonder how many unsuccessful ones there were as a result of the spin..
This is a link to a match where Choi Sol Gyu uses this new spin serve. I encourage you guys to watch especially from minute 30 onwards. Especially in the third set it becomes quite clear that this serve poses some trouble for the opponents
Thanks a lot for sharing. Skipped through the match and it seems to prove all the things mentioned in this thread. If done consistently and with enough spin, this serve is just disgusting for the receiver. Just look what the shuttle does mid air during the whole flight (serve at 41:01): They manage to score a decent amount of quick and easy points and in fact to turn around the whole match once he gets the spin serve nailed down more consistently in the second game. But the resulting rallies are just incredibly unattractive to watch - just look at that sh*t fest in the decider after around 43:00. Who wants to watch something like this?! On the other hand, there are still a significant number of service mistakes, especially in the early phase of the match.
I agree with everything you say I also think, that the resulting rallies are far from spectator friendly. My worry is that we will get quite a few tournaments on the professional circuit where this serve will be used, before BWF will act on it. But I am sure it will make for some heated discussions with the umpires. Definitely intersting times ahead
Honestly, no clue how they managed to do release the shuttle so steadily and with so much spin. I still haven't made any real progress at that point.
I can do it consistently with my dominant hand but not with my shuttle hand! Maybe I can spin it for my doubles partner to serve?! Sent from my SM-S918W using Tapatalk
Apparently, this was already well-known by Japanese league players (and Koreans?) but they kept it quiet on purpose. Some videos dating all the way to 2019: Did Choi somehow break a de-facto agreement by using this in international competition?
That's very interesting. I wonder why top japanese double players didn't use it in international tournaments. Maybe because it will get banned eventually and they wanted to prevent that.
Yes, I'm very confused. Tried it several times and it was almost impossible to release a steady shuttle. It just spinned and flew all over the place
Gradually improving with shuttle hand but only maybe 4/10 successful stable spins. My dominant hand however is 10/10! The main tip imho is to practice first with your dominant hand in order to learn and fine tune the proper mechanics in the spin release. Second tip, to produce a stable spin both the thumb and third finger has to move in opposite directions at the same rate. And thirdly, don't overdo the spin, otherwise the release becomes unstable. Once you understand then you can transfer that to practice with your shuttle hand. Sent from my SM-S918W using Tapatalk
Hmm I don't know. Greg's left handed and would spin clock wise with his right hand. Did he have to counter spin to serve effectively? Sent from my SM-S918W using Tapatalk
I have been playing on and off with this new spin serve. I am able to do it a bit more consistent now, but I only tried with nylon shuttles. Using the Victor Carbosonic synthetic shuttles the spin is much more noticeable. I am still not quite able to tell the spin I produce with the serve, unlike with the now banned reverse spin serve, I could tell which type of spin I produce. Back for more training and learning.
