badminton is obviously the worlds fastest racket sport. tennis isn't as most shots don't reach the opponent for a while whereas badminton can play 2 or 3 shots in the time for tennis's one shot. badminton smash-207mph tennis serve-153mph i think that says it all. in a typical rally roddick hits 100mph forehand shots but in badminton a smash is like a roddick forehand so a badminton smash on a forehand is over twice the speed roddick hits his normal shots at. in my on opinion badminton is definately the fastest racket sport, no doubt about it! watch tennis and squash and then badminton and you will see a big difference in speed of movement and shot production.
Just found this: http://www.napa.ufl.edu/98news/baseball.htm, amongst others. So, ~0.48 second to react to a 90mph fastball. (Actually quite a bit less because by the end of that 0.48 second, it'd be too late to react to it.) Trying to find some sources on tennis.
This is one I found in my brief search. You may have to register to read it, though if you search for it on Google, you can read the cached version. [font=arial,sans-serif][size=-1]http://www.reporter-news.com/abil/sp_lc_columns/article/0,1874,ABIL_8777_3047358,00.html So, also about 0.5 second. But, tennis racquets are more unwieldy to manoeuvre compared to badminton racquets, so that'd cut quite a bit into that 0.5 second. Then again, tennis players have the luxury of *not* having to judge for themselves whether a serve is in or out before they hit it. At the top level, anyway. Badminton players don't have such a luxury. In the end, I think reaction times in various sports played at the top level push the limit of human ability. Because, otherwise, badminton players can just switch to tennis and clean house. BTW, I don't believe anyone's mentioned it, was Fu's smash a winner or not? I'd imagine at 332kmh that it's a clear winner (i.e., hit the floor without either opposing players touching it). [/size][/font]
LOL if the shuttle got returned, that would make the world's fastest smash return. Funny to see my coach up there as having one of the fastest smashes in the Swiss Open.
BTW, the smash speed comes up regularly on the TV screen. I think it makes great viewing. We need a few more stats on the TV on a regular basis, apart from the score.
Badminton IS the world's fastest racket sport!! The speed testing done in Beijing in the Sudirman cup,has left many of them shocked.Shuttles were recorded in general over 200kmph,while the fastest smash recoreded a whopping 332kmph.Some of us have always believed that badminton is the fastest racket sport,while others who were pessimistic about this are beginning to believe.Ok,so badminton is fast but is it the fastest;faster than tennis??The debate had aldready begun after the speed trials.Some of them in the 'new world record ' thread had talked about the shuttle deceleration etc. Well this should close all arguments.The International Olympic Committe[IOC] itself says that badminton is the world's fastest racket sport,and when the governing body for the Olympics says it, i doubt there should be room for any debate.[One more thing,'fastest' should not be considered only for the shuttle speed ,it also includes movement of the players.badminton players have to cover a lot of ground in short interval of time] http://www.olympic.org/uk/sports/programme/index_uk.asp?SportCode=BD All said and done, We know now for sure that Badminton is the world's fastest racket sport and i guess it's only a matter of time before the whole world does
An interesting finding on the speed and speed-loss of various shots in tennis. http://www.advancedtennis.com ("Results to Date" > "Speed MPH" / "Speed Loss %") For instance, about 55% for a serve by the time it gets to the receiver. So, a 120MPH (192KMH) serve as it leaves the racquet slows down to 87MPH (~139KMH) pre-bounce, to 62MPH (~99KMH) post-bounce and to 54MPH (~86KMH) by the time the receiver returns it. Someone ought to do a similar study for badminton. I know about the study done back in the 70's, but that was over 30 years ago and done in a lab situation. We should do it again now with all the advances in equipments and training, and we should do it in a real match situation. I think we'd see some interesting results. One other statistic I'd like to see, as someone's mentioned it, is the average time between shots. Both in singles and doubles. I think we'd be surprised there, especially for top-level doubles.
The difference is that for tennis, the distance between server and receiver is more or less always the same. For badmintonn, the distance can be very different depending on the smasher's position (mid-court, back of the court...) and defender's position on court. I should think on mid-court smashes, the shuttle is still very fast when it arrives on the defender!!
We have some data for singles. I know because I compiled it. Shots per second (while shuttle in play) varied between 0.75 and 1.28 The fastest game examined was Thomas Cup 2004 Bao Chunlai vs Kenneth Jonassen at 1.28 next fastest was Grand Prix Finals 1998 Peter Gade vs Sun Jun at 1.075 slowest was All England 2003 Roslin Hashim v Kenneth Jonassen Poor Ken. In the fastest and slowest, and lost both matches. they're figures for the whole match By game, a quick look shows a range from 0.62 to 1.44
That's wonderful piece of info! Thanks. Playing even "only" 6 shots in 10 seconds in singles is very fast, especially in a sustained fashion, rally after rally, covering the whole court. Ouch. I think I just pulled my quads thinking about it.
Found a mistake from when I transposed the data from paper to Excel. BCL v KJ overall is only 1.169 (still the fastest though) Fastest single game is also still BCL v KJ with 1.185
remember it, yonex did Jim Laugesen Født: 10.11.1974 i Gentofte Højde: 185 cm Uddannelse: Litograf Kategori: Herredouble (Carsten Mogensen) Klub: Gentofte Badminton Klub Tidligere klubber: Grantoften Bopæl: Valby Højre/venstrehåndet: Højre Sponsor: Yonex Landskampe: 21 (1994 - ) Profil: Jim er humørsprederen i den danske badminton trup. Rap i replikken og med en meget veludviklet humoristisk sans kan han få smilet frem under både træning og kamp. Han har altid haft et godt blik for spillet og specielt hans hårde og uforudsigelige smash volder de fleste modstandere problemer. Det fik han også dokumentation for ved Swiss Open 2001 hvor hans smash ved en test blev målt til 364 km/t, som det bedste resultat.
There's some numbers shown on those matches from SC 2005. LD's top smashes were normally in the 270-290 Km/h range. But keep in mind, many of his smashes were his infamous deceptive cross courts with that slight slicing action and hence they may be even more effective than FHF's straight on 332km/h smash!
generally doubles players smash harder than singles players in their games. so Fu Haifeng rather than Lin Dan or LCW holding the smash speed record makes perfect sense. If singles players' smashes are more impressive to you, what really impresses you might not be the speed but the killing effect. In doubles, harder smashes are even less killing. what i'm not sure is, if Lin Dan or LCW or Taufik can smash harder in a doubles match, harder than the best doubles smashers.
If I could remember it correctly, LCW also made a stunning record by hitting the shuttle at 321 or 331 kph.
