After analysing the deception at the net, I wanted to look at something at the back court. While watching Jonathan Christie’s matches, something about his smash movement from the back of the court caught my eye. So, I decided to focus on the over the head smash and found something interesting which is worth discussing.

The snapshot above shots Jonathan Christie hitting an over the head smash in the World Tour Finals against Shi Yuqi. In this moment, Shi Yuqi made a lift to Christie’s backhand side at the back. Christie leaps high and smashes it down. He keeps his body straight as he is in the air. This is to allow his body to turn quickly. He uses his body turn to generate the power, which he transfers to his arm and racquet for the hit.

After the smash, Christie lands with his legs spread apart to stop the turn. He lands with his left leg first before the right. This is typical given the position of the smash and the body turn. Nothing out of the ordinary here.

Now we turn our attention to Christie’s opponent, doing the same over the head smash. Shi Yuqi also does the body turn to smash. The power from the body turn is transferred to his arm and racquet as he hits. Shi Yuqi keeps his legs a bit further apart than Christie. This slows his body turn a bit, but it is not a significant impact.

Shi Yuqi lands with his legs spread apart to stop the body turn. Just like Christie, he lands with his left leg first followed by his right leg. Again, there is nothing significantly different to highlight.

Now, let’s look at how Lee Chong Wei and Lin Dan does the same move.

In this snapshot, Lee Chong Wei turns to hit the smash. He keeps his legs close to his body to turn quickly. The difference here is that Lee Chong is not making a big jump to smash. The shots from Lin Dan is low and fast, there is no time for Lee Chong Wei to do a big jump. He moves quickly, and does a low, fast jump to hit.

Lee Chong Wei spread his legs after the smash to stop the turn. And his left leg lands first before his right leg. There is not significant difference between Shi Yuqi and Christie here.

In this snapshot, it is Lin Dan hitting the over the head smash. As he is left handed, it is on the right side of the court. He too is taking the smash with a low jump. The level of the game played by Lee Chong Wei and Lin Dan is so high technically. The shots come in low and fast. Lin Dan does not have the time to do a big jump to hit the smash. He has to hit it quickly and to do so he do a low jump. He too keeps his legs close together to turn faster.

After the smash, Lin Dan spreads his legs to stop the turn. He lands with his right leg first before his left. This is because he is left handed, but other than that, there is no significant difference to highlight.

Let’s have a look at Lee Chong Wei doing the same move again. He is a very fine specimen to analyse as he is famous for his speed and smooth movement on court.

In the separate instance, Lee Chong Wei’s footwork and movement is near identical. He is so well drilled in his footwork that he repeats it perfectly every time. This is amazing.

After looking at Christie, Shi Yuqi, Lee Chong Wei and Lin Dan, what is the difference? It is extremely difficult to see a difference. They all look identical in executing the over the head smash. But, there is a slight difference in the posture when they land. Look closely at the head position.

Revisiting the 2 snapshots above, we can see the Chinese players are a bit more off balanced, with their heads further away on the side. However, the centre of gravity is the same for all of them, Christie, Shi Yuqi, Lee Chong Wei and Lin Dan. That means the Chinese players do not recover slower after the hit, they are able to move just as quickly. So what does this bring to their game?

This means the Chinese players are able to hit the shuttle further away from their head with an over the head swing instead of turning and using their backhand. Their reach is slightly better by a few inches for the same move.

Both Lee Chong Wei and Lin Dan has to stretch to take the shot. The quality of their game was of that high. There were no easy shots. Each shot stretched the player. That is why these 2 guys are the best there is. But in stretching, Lin Dan has a slight advantage in terms of reach for this shot. Lin Dan can still execute the smash if the shuttle is more than 6 inches on a horizontal plane from his head. This increases his range of attack. Lee Chong Wei would need to take a small extra step to execute an over the head smash.

The couple of inches may seem insignificant, but a badminton court is 17 feet across, or 204 inches across. A difference of 2 to 3 inches is equivalent a 1% increase in reach. And at the highest level, where everyone is able to cover the court almost just as well, to have the ability to cover 1% of the court more with the same footwork can mean the difference between winning and losing.

Take this example where an attacking lob gets hit into the backhand of the court, and the shot is close to line. The player is in a position where if he leaps he can almost reach the shuttle, with it being 7 inches away from him on a vertical plane. If the player has the Chinese technique, he would be able to smash it down. If the player does not, he would have to turn around and hit a return with his backhand. Once the player uses his backhand to return, there are 2 scenarios: He loses the initiative as he is not able to attack as he hits a clear with his backhand, or if he attacks using his backhand, he needs to move quickly forward after the backhand attack as it opens him up for a quick counter attack. This is because the player needs to turn to hit a backhand, and he would have no visibility of what his opponent is doing. He needs to turn forward again quickly after the hit in order to see his opponent again, and that short moment where he has no visibility leaves him very vulnerable.

Using an over the head attack instead of using a backhand allows the player to continue the attack and pressure his opponent. A backhand would hand the initiative back to the opponent, especially if the opponent is very good. And this 1% of additional reach could mean winning the point, or losing it.

I am not using Shi Yuqi or Christie’s over the head smashes for reference as they were both taking the smash with a shuttle which was coming straight down. They both are not required to stretch and hit the shuttle this way. What is interesting is Shi Yuqi landed in the same way despite not hitting the shot that way. He is trained to recover from the over the head smash in the same way. And what that means is that he likely has the same reach as Lin Dan with his over the head smash. Scary thought.

That’s all for this entry.

Until the next update, eat well, get plenty of rest, and keep the badminton going!