We are still here!

Hello Everyone!!

The last few weeks have seen the same regulars which has given a good turn around of matches for a couple of hours, but, hello! where is everyone else?!?

Surely Thursday night TV isn't that gripping at the moment,so get up and get out and come along! Its all good fun lets get a regular 12-16 instead of a regular 8-10 which is where we are now.

If any of you have any friends who you haven't yet mentioned the club to, bring them along! We have 2 nicely undisturbed courts now without any people strolling by at about 9pm which has made things even more enjoyable.

We were hoping to get enough people to put together a team that compete in a local league, to help encourage new and younger members of a good quality and get promoted to county league level, which I am confident with the standard of our current players we can achieve quickly anyway - that is a joke by the way - there are no plans to create a team or join a league as we would get an arse whooping most weeks I am sure!

Anyway, back to the point, come back all you flaky people, we love you!

The Season So Far...

The season so far has been a good one. We've had the regular people along, me, Jez, Andrea, Vanessa, Chris, Cathy, Colin, Rob & Sarah with others making the odd appearance, thank you Gordon. I think each game has it's own special way of playing depending who's playing it. You'll always see long shots, whether they're in or out, but there has been a regular occurance of drop shots. That again, whether they go over the net or not, some smart play is coming into our game. Perhaps we should enter into a league! We also have every week the walkers across the courts which makes some people, ie Jez, blow their lid off! That has now changed thanks to Vanessa. We are now booked on courts 3 & 4 and the arrogant people are on court 1. With that, can you please enter by the Activity Hall which is when you walk into the Grange turn left and you'll find a door on the back wall to get to our courts. I suppose if you want to get them angry, walk across their court to pay them back but for the kind hearted people, please use the other route.

Hope to see as many of you as possible this Thursday because some information about the skittles night shall be annouced.

Cheers

Nick

New Courts

As of this week, Thursday 7th October Hammer Badminton Club will be using courts 3 & 4 as opposed to 1 and 2.
This will mean that we should now enter and leave the hall via the side door by the activity hall.
This change of courts was requested due the fact that the 'old dragons' who play on the end court every week have no respect for etiquette when entering or leaving the hall simply walking past when we have games in progress.
For this reason it would be much appreciate if we can all show more respect than they have in the past and ensure we enter via the side door!

Happy Hitting

The New Season is Here!

Welcome all to Hammer Badminton Clubs 2010 / 2011 season. It has at long last arrived and actually started last week.
The annual subscription will be £65 for the year, which includes every Thursday from 8-10pm, except over the Christmas period, with the last week being the Thursday before the Easter weekend.
That is really good value for money if you plan on coming along regularly, to play at the club at Bohunt School in Liphook is about £60 per term, about twice our rate.
If you are unsure how often you may being joining us you are more than welcome to pay on a weekly basis for £4.
Unfortunately, you cannot use your regular £4 payments as a pay off against the years subscriptions.
We are hoping for some new faces this year, which will I am sure increase number playing, so we feel it will be more important to keep games flowing, to select the 4 going on while the other courts are in use, with the person choosing being the 1st in line to play. Hopefully we can do this verbally, if it proves to be a problem the good old peg system will be back!

New Season Starts Soon

Hello Everyone!

I know it is still the Summer and you probably havent got badminton on your list of high prioritise as yet, but it wont be long and the season starts!

We are still waiting for confirmation of prices from The Grange so we can calculate the annual subs, but we are sure it will be less than £500 a year!!

To help those of you who are interested, below is a short clip on low serves! A technique that is not as easy as it looks to master - enjoy.

New Season starts Next Month

Hello Everyone!!

Hopefully you are all enjoying the summer, not sure sure the gardens are as happy though.

The new season starts in August and we are just trying to finalise the annual subscription amount as The Grange did implement a price increase in January this year.

We are hopefull we can keep this amount as close to last year as possible, for those choosing to pay the one off amount that lasts from August through to Easter 2011. For those who arent able to commit to playing weekly, the weekly subs will still be £4.00.

As the numbers have been increasing and there are some regular new faces, we will be putting together a brief Hammer Badminton Club set of notes to try and help the club evenings run smoothly - mainly based around the re-introduction of 'The Peg System'

We look forward to seeing you all soon, please let us know if you have any questions in the meantime, but dates, fees etc will soon be published!

Jez

New Season Looming

Hi Everyone!

Hopefully your enjoying the good weather, Wimbledon, the World Cup and looking forward to a summer break of some description.

The summer badminton at the grange has shown a couple of new faces, and the return of some old which is great news, and the standard is definately improving!! We appreciate that numbers will fluctuate week by week, but if your free and at a loose end, its still 8pm on Thursdays.

The new season kicks off in August, and with some more people it is likely we will be reverting to the peg rotation system, some are used to it others may not be, but to help keep a smooth flow of play and the 4's mixed up it is about the best way to do it.

In addition, with more people we will be introducing a brief 'club etiquette' guide taht we hope all players will respect. It will all add the the overall enjoyment and smooth running of the club.

Watch this space for more details to appear soon!

Jez

The Season Is Over!

Hello everone who reads this, the season is now officially over, unfortunatley through illness and work commitments I was unable to make the last couple of Thursdays.

Hopefully everyone enjoyed their Thursday nights at the Grange, and are already itching to move ahead to next season - we are still working on finalising the start dates for it.

If you still want to keep your eye in through the summer, Vanessa orchestrates a casual meeting of players at 8pm on a Thursday, and depending on numbers, depends how long we play for.

Want to win a Nanospeed 9900 badminton racket?

You can win a new Yonex Nanospeed 9900 badminton racket - just visit the badminton-coach blog and register!! easy

Its easy to see why they play badminton.....

and are not successful models!

Trying to raise the profile of the game in England, our badminton starts really are trying to pull out all the stops

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/other_sports/badminton/8562767.stm

Anyone for Tennis?

I know I know, yes we are a badminton club, but it is nice to get outside when the weather is good!
I was thinking of trying to play tennis this summer and wondered if anyone else fancies it? Badminton will obviously continue at the Grange on Thursdays, but I have found a nice little club at Headley, and maybe if anyone is interested we could arrange a regular meet-up there - membership is £42 a year - there are only a couple of courts, but it seems quite friendly.
We do already have a resident LTA coach - the young Gordon!! for those who may want (or need) lessons

Interesting Fact of the week.......

Badminton is the world's fastest racket sport. According to the International Badminton Federation (IBF), the fastest badminton smash was by Chinese doubles player Fu Haifeng, at 332 kilometers per hour. That's about 206 miles per hour. For comparison, tennis player Andy Roddick's record fastest serve clocked in just over 150 miles per hour.

Of course we all know that that is only the fastest recorded time, if in fact they came to the hammer badminton club on a thursday night I'm sure they would be able to update their record for fastest smash! Pah 206 mph

Colin

Is it working?

Wow well i think i may have made it onto the Blog? please let me know if i have or I'm just chatting to myself!

Jez have you been able to purchase www.badminton-gear.co.uk yet? I'm keen to see all of the exciting kit i can get for my evenings at the grange!

How modern are we as a club these days, not like it was in the beginning we have blogs and e-mail etc now! Shame i have as much skill and talent on these things a i do on the court, still i managed to bumble my way onto this i guess!

Nick how is your back, after reaching behind you to get all those shots? god knows how you do it, or even see the shuttle for that matter! still an interesting technique all the same!

Well i will look forward to seeing if this works, and will see everyone on thursday!

Colin

Landmark win for Lee in All-England tournament

The world No 1 Lee Chong Wei claimed his first All-England title with victory over the Japanese underdog Kenichi Tago yesterday.

Lee prevailed 21-19 21-19 at Birmingham's National Indoor Arena to become the first non-Chinese men's singles winner since 2003 and only the second Malaysian champion in 44 years. The unseeded Tago showed spirit to save two match points but Lee, who has struggled to win major titles throughout his career, finished the job and overcame a psychological barrier with a good body shot.

to read full article from The Independent online, click here

Armchair Lesson 2!

Well, last nights club night saw - as usual its normal mix of good, bad and surprisingly ridiculous shots!
With only 3 weeks left of the season, it would be good to get a good turnout to see us through till the end.
For those of you who enjoyed the first armchair coaching session, heres installment number 2.

Badminton All England 2010: GB's 'lost generation' need success, says Anthony Clark

Doubles specialist Anthony Clark believes England have “lost a generation” of players as the squad assembles for the 100th All England Open, the sport’s oldest tournament.

click here to read full article

Another great video!

I was trawling through the information I could find to post another article on the blog about badminton, there didn't appear to be anything new or great, but then I found this great video, pass it on to your friends and enjoy!!



Ha ha

Beckman Stuns seeds to claim Croation Open Title

Tadworth’s Ben Beckman notched his first major title when he won the men’s singles at the Croatian Open in Zagreb last weekend.

The 22-year-old defeated the number two, five and six seeds en route to the final where he fought out a tense clash with Russian top seed Vladimir Malkov, ranked some 73 places above him in the world.

Click here to read full article

Raising the Profile of Badminton!

An interesting article from The Times online!!

Also, keep your eyes open for more Badminton on the TV, it looks like its going to be on sky sports.

Practice While Watching TV!

Yes this is possible!!
The video clip below shows how to practice changing your grip from the comfort of your armchair! This is part 1 of armchair badminton coaching from the badminton coach No excuses now for better 'wrist' action next Thursday!!

Trick Shots!

Hammer Badminton Club may not be famous for its rigorous training sessions, fast and competitive matches, however, there are usually a good amount of pretty amazing shots! The main issue with these is whether or not they are meant on purpose or just a stroke of luck!

A rally of maybe 8 or 9 shots, of which only 2 or 3 actually come of the strings isn't that unusual! Still none the less, some people (most of whom probably play to a much higher standard!) actually mean to play trick shots... a few can be seen on this clip - enjoy.

Club NightThursday 25th Feb

Hello Everyone!

Well another Thursday is already here, so time for a good 2 hour badminton session this evening!
Another good turnout is anticipated this week - it's always good to see our members arriving, on time would always be a little better! We manage to bring with us everything we need to play, us, rackets, shuttlecocks! We therefore have a question that is unanswered to most of us - what the hell is in all the bags that some people playing on other courts??? It seriously looks like they are going on a weeks long residential badminton course, not a couple of hours training.
That aside, here's a coaching lesson below that you may want to try and put into practice tonight!

The Season is almost over!

I am sure to most it feels like it only just started, but before Hammer Badminton Club transforms into its summer shape of 'Vanessa's Thursday night mob' there only 6 more weeks to go!!
The last evening before Easter is Thursday 1st April.
We can hopefully maintain a good turnout between now and the end of the Season, It may not be every ones cup of tea, but the couple of 'runarounds' we have had have been good fun, and maybe a small handicapped round robin tournament may be fun for an evening! If not this season, a possibility for next - we will put down a proposed format and see what ya'll think.

Say Hello, Wave Goodbye!

Last nights badminton was good, numbers were a little light - but not a bad turnout for a half term - nice to see Clare and Dave there, Dave being as entertaining and inconsistent as usual - play more, practice makes perfect!!
Adrian and Aurora were there again last night, but unfortunately it may have been their last - there house move is due to complete next Thursday which will tale them out of the area and there are also off to the Philippines fro a few months! all right for some, but it was good to have them both at the club for a few weeks and if we don't see them again, all the best!
If you're interested in learning a little more about playing the game and trying to improve - and boy do we need it!!! Try this site for the badminton coach!

What a Week!!

Infact let me rephrase that, what a fantastic Wednesday and Thursday night. To start with with we had the skittles evening, which looked like everyone enjoyed. We had some new players along, Chris and Keith, and I thought they were going to spring a surprise on us and knock every skittle down with their first ball. That wasn't the case! Chris had her spritly walk up to the alley, bowled her balls down and I wont mention what was the end result. With Keith, it looked as though he was planning each ball carefully but the result wasn't! We did of course have people bowl down a no ball in every round but there were a few of us who knocked down alot. Some of us knocked them all down, had a re-rack and got a very good score. Well done to you. At the end of the first half, we had Di and Les in the lead but that soon changed after our meal. The second half was full of everything with no balls, re-racks and only a few skittles being knocked down. We had a fairly tight finish but congratulations go to Claire who finished with the top score, then Rasa in second and Les third. I'll bring the score sheet with me on Thursday so you can see how it all went. Thanks to everyone who turned up and played. We'll try and have it before Christmas this year.

We now move to Thursday evening and playing badminton. Well sort of! We had a good turn out of players and I thought every game was eventfully. There was of course the odd shots, the comments and then the blinding play by a few of us. It wasn't me! Colin and Mike with their long and short range shots making people run around everywhere. Cathy, Chris and Di with their superb net play. I just hope I play better this week and with the season coming to a close soon, I finish better than I started. I doubt that very much but wait and see!

Hope to see as many of you as possible this week.

Cheers

Nick