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Judy Devlin Hashman, one of the greatest-ever names of badminton, expressed barely a flicker of interest in the proceedings on the second day of the India Open Superseries. Taufik Hidayat was on court, but she hadn’t heard the name. “They all play alike now,” she said.
Then she asked: “Why is nobody serving high?”
The question encapsulated a lot of the limitations of contemporary badminton.
I remember I’d asked the question of Taufik at the Malaysia Open last year. Taufik has all but sacrificed the high serve. In all the tournaments I’ve seen him, his standard opening line is the backhand short serve – and he never varies it. At the Malaysia Open I had the rare sight of him attempting one high serve, and I asked him later why he didn’t use it more often. “Because the opponent will attack,” Taufik said.
Coming from Taufik, that was a surprise. The Indonesian has perhaps the tightest control over the shuttle among all his contemporaries, and his defence is usually unbreachable, especially if the smash comes from the back court. What then was he scared of?
Taufik’s position on the serve is the consensus among most international players. At best, they use the high serve as a variant, not to fire the opening salvo, but to keep the receiver from rushing the serve.
I posed the question to Judy. “Well, if you don’t serve deep enough, they’ll smash it,” was her commonsense reply. “But I divided the back alley (the rectangular space between the baseline and the long service line for doubles: a space of 2.5 feet) into three, and my serve had to fall in the last third. If you serve accurately into that space, often your opponent will misjudge it. If she returns it, I still have so much space to play the shuttle into.”
In other words: the high serve can be a potent weapon because the receiver has already been moved away from the centre of the court.
Of course, it can be a weapon only if it is accurate and well-controlled – that is, with the drift in the hall (assuming there is drift) accounted for.
Taufik Hidayat
Judy Hashman’s precision was so renowned that one commentator wrote that the lines moved to where the shuttle was hit. The Indian great Prakash Padukone was also a master of the high serve, with one journalist recalling that his high serve would find the line “nine times out of ten”.
Judy recalled an interesting story. There was only one match, she said, that she played in anger. That was because her opponent had walked around the stands telling everybody that she would beat Judy.
“The thing with the high serve is, hit right, the cork will come down perpendicular to the face of the racket, and it’s difficult to time the return,” says Judy. “So I served high and she mistimed her stroke, and I thought: “Now I’ve gotcha!’”
However, players of this generation have no doubt that the high serve is too risky in the contemporary context. Anup Sridhar, who generally uses the high serve more than his compatriots, grew up on the 15×3 points system and had to adjust to the 21×3. Anup says the points system makes a difference because players are reluctant to concede the advantage of attack. “The scoring system has a lot to do with it. The drift in most halls too plays a major role. If you’re serving with the drift, it’s very difficult to control the shuttle– if you serve high the shuttle will fall out by a couple of feet at least. Generally, players tend to serve high when they’re against the wind.
Still, it’s undeniable that current players do not practice the high serve as often as earlier generations did. The emphasis over the last ten years has been on speed, power and fitness, rather than on the more subtle aspects of the game. Anup’s coach Tom John, who has worked with the likes of Morten Frost, Yang Yang and Rexy Mainaky, acknowledges that current players do not spend enough time perfecting the serve or even tosses. “I don’t think drift is the issue,” says Tom. “Players just don’t spend enough time practising the serve.”
With players preferring the low serve to the high, singles badminton is beginning to resemble doubles. Most avoid the high clears – either due to fear of it being smashed down, or the drift carrying it away – and singles games, like doubles, have become a parallel game almost, with fast drives, net shots, clips and half-smashes. The ‘vertical’ elements of the high serve and clear – not to speak of the tumble or the slow drop — which were an inherent part of strokeplay earlier, have all but been compromised.
Those used to the speed of the modern game will scoff at the traditionalists, but one must acknowledge that some vital components of the game have been lost. Perhaps the field is open to the next visionary player who uses these elements to his advantage.
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