Badminton racquet

When I first started playing badminton, I used to prefer a head-heavy racquet - mainly because I liked to whack the ball. The problem is that I'm not a very good badminton player and my smashes were never particularly dangerous. In fact, most of the time, the opposing player would very easily knock the ball to the back of my court.

Another problem is that my reaction times aren't particularly great so that whenever someone smashed the ball at me, I would never be able to return the ball. The fact that I had a head-heavy racquet also didn't help much! So in summary, I wasn't able to win many points by smashing and I couldn't return the ball when smashed either. :(

As a result of this, many years ago, I decided to switch to a more defensive style racquet - one which wasn't as head-heavy and hence quicker for me to play with. My thinking was that I would prefer to have a chance to return a smash (as I wasn't very good at smashing anyway). And this has been the case now for many years.

Anyway, while playing badminton last night, the strings on my racquet broke (a Yonex Isometric Swing Power 900). As far as I can recall, this has been the first time that the strings on my racquet broke as a result of play (normally, I replace them either due to age or because the tension has leaked). Luckily, my friend had a spare racquet. He lent me his old Yonex MP100 (which is a head-heavy racquet) and we restarted the match.

Now, bear in mind that our opponents for that match weren't particularly good (don't get me wrong, they were much better than me - but just not someone which I would classify as good). Having said that, they were still good enough to return most of my normal smashes relatively easily. However, after I switched to the MP100, the extra velocity on my smashes was very noticeable. In fact, I even won quite a few points just by smashing the ball at them - which for me is a very rare circumstance.

After playing a couple of games last night using the MP100 and predominantly smashing the ball, I'm just wondering now whether I should rethink my decision to use a defensive racquet. To be honest, I had a lot of fun last night just whacking the ball as hard as I could. I'm under no illusion as to my skill - I know that if I had been up against some good players, then the extra power on the MP100 wouldn't have been enough to make up for my lack of skill. Having said that, I really had a lot of fun last night whacking the ball as hard as I could!

I really like my ISO900. It has a very flexible shaft and feels very light in nature (I bought the defense variant). However, maybe its time to retire my old racquet to the bench and get a new one.