A reminder to members that our mixed senior / junior Badminton tournament is this Friday 9th May, and all are welcome to participate.

Senior / Junior pairings will play in a round robin competition to battle for the coveted title of “Top Senior Player” and “Top Junior Player”

The evening begins at 7pm for a 7.15pm prompt tournament start.

Unfortunately there will be no other badminton play other than the tournament on the night, so please get there before 7.15pm if you want to play.

The cost of feather shuttlecocks is a headache for many a club treasurer and from our experience playing matches at other Badminton Clubs in Northampton, there are a wide range of shuttles in use across the county. To ensure we were getting the best possible value for money at Mereway Badminton Club, we recently carried out a test of 6 different types of shuttlecock.

The shuttlecocks we tested, all from the low to mid price range for feather shuttlecocks, were:

Carlton GT 2
Forza FZ S-6000
Victor Service
Yehlex Competition
Yehlex Tournament
Yonex Aeroclub AC-07

We used a simple form to track shuttle changes and scores, as well as player names for later reference (some players might be harder on shuttles than others!). Players had to return spent shuttles before being given a new one, at which point their mid-game score at the point of the change was noted. Shuttles still playable at the end of a game were tracked through to the next game on that court. It was quite difficult at times to keep track, with 4 courts on the go completing games, or players asking for new shuttles!

At the end of the evening, all of the data collected was taken away and entered into a spreadsheet, and the total scores for each shuttle added together to allow an average points duration for each type of shuttle to be calculated.

The results were then double checked against the player names for any obvious things which may skew the results, e.g. a beginner consistently breaking shuttles quickly, games where most of the players are very heavy smashers .etc. but there were no glaring anomalies.

The shuttlecocks with best average duration are shown below, best to worst:

Yehlex Tournament
Victor Service
Yehlex Competition
Forza FZ S-6000
Yonex Aeroclub AC7
Carlton GT2

Price was added to the mix, with the best price we could obtain each shuttlecock (including bulk discounts) added to the spreadsheet, yielding an average price per point played. Sorting the resulting list in ascending order of the lowest average price per point gave us the best value shuttlecock, as follows, best value to worst value:

Yehlex Tournament (0.7 pence per point)
Yehlex Competition (1.1 pence per point)
Victor Service (1.4 pence per point)
Forza FZ S-6000 (2.1 pence per point)
Yonex Aeroclub AC7 (2.3 pence per point)
Carlton GT2 (3.1 pence per point)

So there you have it, from now on Mereway Badminton Club Northampton will be using Yehlex Tournament shuttles. Obviously in a club setting with lots of different types of players, our test couldn’t be 100% scientific, but it’s an improvement over anything we’ve done before to choose shuttlecocks. The next step is to monitor our shuttle spend with the Yehlex Tournament over the course of the Badminton season to see if there is any change. If any Badminton clubs are interested in our results, or have done similar tests with different results, please get in touch using the contact page or leave a comment below.

Our club recently enjoyed a racket demonstration night where our members were given the opportunity to try out a variety of rackets to see which suited their different playing styles. Some of the rackets brought along by the organizer included the Yonex Arcsaber Z-Slash, the racket responsible for producing the fastest ever smash in the Guinness Book of Records, at 421km/h (262mph) and the Arcsaber FB, the lightest racket ever produced by Yonex.

Allowing our members to use the rackets in actual games represented a much more effective way to successfully choose a new racket, in comparison with the limited testing that you can do in a shop.

Different players favoured different rackets from the 10 different types brought along, but the sheer power of the Arcsaber Z-Slash won it many admirers, even if they won’t be breaking any world records themselves any time soon!