World Shuttlecock Accuracy Championships – Jakarta

The sport of badminton is incredibly popular in Indonesia with tens of thousands of participants in contests and competitions each year. Teams from Indonesia have won many international events such as the Thomas Cup, Uber Cup, and All England Championships and they are renowned for the accuracy of their play.

This accuracy is honed at events such as the World Shuttlecock Accuracy Championships in Djakarta each January. Since 1957, badminton players have been assessed in a number of badminton-related disciplines such as serving, smashing, smash returns, and drop shots.

In the serving tests a glass two inches in diameter and six inches high is placed at each of the four corners of the receiving court. The server has four shuttles and tries to land a shuttle in each of the glasses, scoring 3 points per shuttle that lands in a glass and an extra 3 points for landing all four. If the shuttle hits the glass the server scores 1 point. Each contestant serves two sets of four shuttles to both the forehand court and backhand court, so a maximum of 60 points is on offer. Hendra Budiarto scored 50 points in 2008, which was a record score for the serving section, and he dominated for the next three years after that with scores of 48, 45, and 47 respectively.

In the smashing event the contestant has to smash twenty shuttlecocks from mid-court back over the net in one minute. A small two-inch wide gutter is laid around the edge of the singles court and for each shuttle landing in the gutter the contestant receives 2 points – if all 20 shuttles land in the gutter the smasher receives 5 bonus points. There are five rounds of smashing and the person with the most points wins. Rexy Kido has won this contest most often with 7 wins between 2000 and 2012 including a record score of 191 in 2004 – his approach is straightforward: “The most important aspect is accuracy not speed – there’s no point in hitting a 160mph smash if you hit it at someone’s racquet – I’d rather hit a 130mph smash on the line, where the player has to reach to play their shot and can’t really control their shot too much.”

Excerpt from the book Sports the Olympics Forgot