Just thought I would share my experiences from the recent badminton US Open tournament at the Orange County Badminton Club out in Cali.

I was invited to string by Yonex and the chief stringer Alan Kakinami. Let me put it out there, that in addition to working for Alpha, I also rep for Yonex here in Texas.

I arrived last Monday and there to greet me were Alan and Kevin Yamaguchi. Both have a wealth of badminton experience, with Alan having his own store in NorCal. Although I'm confident in my stringing abilities, I was quickly humbled by how quickly both of of these guys were. Thankfully both were patient and kind and provided useful tips in helping me out. Day 1 was a tough one for me. With badminton, there are shared holes to contend with, the string tips can become "mushy" pretty quickly. While the awl at times seems to be the only solution to help with a shared grommet, it can quickly become the ultimate nightmare. Yeah, I learned my lesson Another thing about these shared grommets is that it would take me anywhere from 10 seconds to 10 minutes to get the string through. I decided to toss the ego aside and ask for help, both Alan and Kevin shared their expertise and I rarely had these problems again. BTW, Kevin was a beast that first day, 32 badminton sticks.

We used two of the ES5ProTech and one ES5Pro. Okay, I'm a little biased but it was a sweet machine to use. Smooth all the way through, the clamps/clamp base combination was a pleasure to use. Never an issue at all with these components (on all three machines).

I was surprised to see that the players would drop off the racquets and did not need them later in the day nor the next morning. It was when we were able to get to them. As a courtesy, we made sure each player had a racquet strung for their next day matches, if we could do more for them we would. With this type of schedule it did take some of the pressure off but looking at the table, it was always full but we managed to finish them all. There was one "on court" request, we let Alan handle that as he smoked through it in 16 minutes, which in my opinion is pretty good for badminton.

Overall it was a great experience, I was able to watch some great badminton and get caught up in the atmosphere. The staff at OCBC and Eric Lee our badminton manager were great host and we were fed well.

On Sunday, Yonex hosted a small badminton stringing seminar. We talked about techniques and each of us were on separate machines at the same time, I was teaching beginner techniques, Kevin with intermediates and finally Alan with advance techniques. We also discussed different patterns as well.

Hope to go again next year!

Tim, I remember seeing that badminton exo at the Yonex booth and being amazed at how fast the game moved.  Made me glad I "only" played tennis.

I remember that court at the SS. I also remember the two hackey-sackers that would jump in there after the badminton players left. They did it every time haha.

Bob, racquets were pretty rough back then with all the shared holes. The Z-Slash is a new stick but it's still challenging to string too. Going to string one up today just to keep my chops up.

Mark, Thanks for sharing, sounded very demanding. Would you be allowed to share and enlighten us shared grommet tricks?

Thanks,  Jim

Thanks Mark for posting this.  We get about 20-30 Badminton racquets in shop each year and it's growing, as few other shops want to touch them.  I have to admit, every time one comes in I get that Home Alone face    I will look forward to talking more about this with you when I get to the symposium.

Cheers, Larry @ TennezSport  

Hi Mark

Glad you enjoyed your badinton tournament, I can honestly say that I would hate the thought of working a tournament with a load of badinton rackets. If we get a  cheap racket into the shop we often offer the customer a new  racket as some replacement rackets are  the same price as a restring.  

We sometimes use wires to get the string through a blocked hole.

What is the new tool like that is being launched?

Jackie


Jackie