Tochi's Hut

Badminton season started a few weeks ago.  KP, AA, JZ, and IS all came to “try out” badminton this week.  Since JZ didn’t have his own racquet, KP brought along two of his racquets from a $20 “badminton” toy set that he picked up at Canadian Tire.

I had just come off from a game.  AA, who was using KP’s toy racquet, asked to borrow mine.  A few minutes later, I was up for another game.  I thought about asking for my racquet back, but decided I could play a game with this toy racquet.  In the warm-up rallies, the racquet balance felt totally off in my hands; I thought I was just too used to my own racquet. The grip (or lack thereof) was hard plastic; I totally expect that with the sweat build up in my palms, the racquet would sooner or later fly out of my hands.  The strings had no tension at all; at least I will not hit the birdie out of bounds with this racquet.

This is a story about this toy racquet.  Boy, this thing was making me work for my points.   Since I couldn’t really get too much speed on the birdie, I had to really focus on the placements of my shots.  After a while, I felt the racquet handle cutting into my palm.  I just assumed it was the hard plastic.  Little did I know, fractures had begun to develop in the handle.

Then, as I got the perfect lob return shot from my opponents.  My body arched up, hips and shoulders rotated, racquet head sailed over my head for a smash onto the birdie… at the moment of contact, the handle of the racquet just exploded in my hand.  The frame of the racquet flew off into the next court. I had half the handle left in my hand, the rest were shattered into bits and pieces all over the floor. 

W.T.F.

“Holy Cow!!!” “What happened?!?!” “OMG!!!” “I’ve never seen a racquet break like that!!” were the general reactions from the crowd.  I was so embarrassed and glad that the racquet frame did not hit anyone.

JEEZ.

I picked up the pieces and went back to AA to ask for a trade of my own racquet.  He and JZ almost fell over laughing seeing the broken racquet.

My hand was traumatized by the experience.  For the next few shots, whenever my racquet made contact with the birdie, I subconsciously expected the racquet to explode in my hand again and felt surprised when it didn’t explode.  I can totally understand why people suffer from post-traumatic disorders after a disturbing experience – the reactions are totally involuntary, even if you mentally try to convince your body everything is okay.  Don’t worry, I recovered pretty much after a dozen shots.

This experience made me realize other things.  Good racquets are an engineering marvel!  I always just focused on racquet head angle and speed, and never really thought about the transfer of kinetic energy through the racquet during a shot.   It totally makes sense now that I think about it – just never considered how much force goes through the handle and up the frame.  Dang.

My trusty Yonex never felt so good in my hands.