I’m dumb. Really, really dumb. And in badminton it is painfully easy (and incredibly fun) to trick me.
My coach does it all the time, feigning his body left while hitting the birdie to the right. Or jumping up to smash the birdie to the center/rear of the court, yet at the last second giving it a tiny touch and it barely falls over the net.
I pay attention to my opponents body movements too much (I should only focus on the birdie) and as a result it’s way too easy to trick me. Several players take great delight in tricking me as often as they can because they think it’s so damn funny. And like a yappy little puppy, it makes me madder and madder, which makes me more careless and fumbling which makes it easier for them to trick me which they love. It’s a vicious cycle.
But jokes on them cause this week I learned my first deception shot!
It’s called the “deceptive cross-court net shot” (you have no idea how long that took me searching google to figure out the name. Just another disadvantage of learning badminton in another language…having no idea what the English terminology is.)
It’s at the front of the net, and it looks like you are just gonna hit it over the next exactly where you are, but at the last second you hit it all the way across to the other side of the net.
Needless to say, when my opponents use this against me, I fall for it every time. So I’m really looking forward to adding this bad boy into my arsenal.
I actually told my coach to not tell anyone I can do it. We do training in the morning, with no one around, so it’s still a secret that I can do it. None of my badminton friends knows. When I bust it out in some games I’m gonna gloat the hell out of tricking my opponent. Heh heh heh. (When I told my coach to keep it a secret he gave me a sneaky smile. He knew exactly what my plan was. He’s a sneaky bastard too, and loves tricking others in a game.)
So here’s hoping I can master a more advanced shot!