Badminton World Championships 2007

As you may know, one of my passions in life is playing badminton. However, before yesterday I’d never been to see, or seen on TV, professionals playing. I watch plenty of tennis, and have visited Wimbledon many times…but not so with badminton.

Anyhow, this all changed last night. With 3 of my Broomgrove Badminton Club buddies, I travelled down to the All England Championships in Birmingham. It was an amazing evening.

To watch the best in the world at any activity is special, but in something you have a real passion for, it is incredible.

While watching these awesome athletes, I noted down a number of points that I would try to practise and develop into part of my game -

• the best players had a good rapport: they encouraged each other after points lost rather than finding fault – a whole bunch of high fives, whoo-whoos, and even the odd moment of chest pumping going on
• with the new scoring system, pairs can score a point even when their opponents are serving. However, this doesn’t seem to be as difficult to comprehend as I’d heard (even though some of the pros were standing in the wrong place for a few points and needed correcting!)
• the game is very fast and attacking. Note how far forward the receiver’s partner is in the below shot – both of them standing on the service line. This attacking/pressurising style is something I can work on for sure!

This was a classic quarter final game where the Danish players knocked out the number 2 seeds from Malaysia.