Where am I going? 

To be fair, I don’t know where I’m going. There are a few ideas that I would like to pursue, but I’m not sure how to proceed. Most of December and January was spent preparing for my National Championships earlier this month, and now that it’s out of the way, I hope I can start to focus more on finishing the final assignments for KIN 572 and KIN 516. I think I will be retiring from international competition at some point this year, so hopefully I can focus more on my coaching and completing the tasks I need for this degree program.

Despite not really knowing where I’m going, I do have a solid research question which I am curious about. The problem is that I don’t know how much actual research exists, or if it is something that has been researched before. In badminton, especially in men’s doubles and mixed doubles, it is common knowledge about the importance of the “first three shots” of each rally. This refers to the serve (1st shot), the return of the serve (2nd shot), and the “return of the return” (3rd shot). Or, as I prefer to call it, “serve”, “serve return”, and “3rd shot”. My research question would simply be to test the hypothesis of whether this part of the game is as important as we might think. So the null hypothesis would be that there is no significance in this part of the game, and the alternative hypothesis would be opposite (there IS a significance).

Most likely I will have to go through a lot of badminton footage accessible, and currently I’m thinking of just using the World Championship/Olympic finals from approximately 2006 – 2017, the All England Championships from a similar timeline, and possibly a third event. I would also only be looking at Men’s Doubles to narrow down my focus. The reason I have picked the timeline of 2006-2017 is because all matches are rally point to 21 points, whereas before 2006 it was a different scoring system.

Some questions I have to decide on is whether to include a “4th shot”, which allows each team 2 shots each per rally. Perhaps I can collect the data and do a bunch of different analyses. One of the main ideas from having an answer to this research question would be for coaches to determine how much time should be spent training the “first three shots” of a rally. If it is important, then for men’s doubles players, more time might be spent training in this area. However, if it is not that important, then more time should be spent in other areas.

What have I learned in the other courses that might help my research or project interests? 

I think there will be some new statistical tools that we have covered in KIN 572 which will help me in analyzing data. Additionally, JASP, a statistical tool that we use in the course, has been very easy to use. Although I am also slowly learning R programming on my own time, for future data analytics needs, at least I will have something to use depending on how slow/fast my progress is learning data analytics. Despite whether or not the research question can be used or not, I would like to have my own answer to the question eventually.

How does this relate to one of the four themes?  

I think this can relate to a few of the four themes, including Coaching Effectiveness, Performance Planning, and even Training and Competitive Readiness. Having fairly extensive knowledge in this area by personal experience, intuitively it feels like there are certain patterns that are most effective in gaining an advantage in the rally in this area of play. Understanding how important this part of the game aids Coaching Effectiveness by being able to maximize time spent with athletes in developing the most important parts of the game. With Performance Planning, this may affect how much an athlete needs to train physically. This is especially important for many Canadian badminton athletes, because it typically takes a lot longer for a Canadian badminton player to get to a competitive international level of play. Generally, it’s not the physical ability of our athletes, but rather the technical and tactical skills which are not as proficient as other athletes from other countries that can afford to train all of the time. From personal observations, physical training can be overemphasized in Canadian badminton players because players don’t know what to do. And if they don’t know what to do, the easiest thing to do is to do physical work until the athlete is tired. Then the athlete associates being tired with progress. This observation would relate to Training and Competitive Readiness, because athletes would have a better idea on how to prepare for their events.

But again, this is very event specific, so for a singles player, nothing in the previous paragraph should apply to them.

Is there evidence that I can add to my portfolio that demonstrates a particular theme?

As preparation for my National Championships included video analysis, I began to model a world-class doubles player from China, who happened to have won the 2016 Olympics and the 2017 World Championships in Men’s Doubles. I meticulously counted his serve & third shot, and also his serve return & fourth shot, and after sorting out all his shots in this area over a few matches, there were a few patterns that became evident to me only after sorting the data. Although he is only one player from one country with a unique playing style, it would be interesting to compare different athletes across different tournaments over a decade of badminton.

My only concern is that the Badminton World Federation is looking at changing the scoring system again, turning it from 3 sets of 21 points, rally point, to 5 sets of 11 points, also rally point. With the change in scoring, there may be differences in the style of play, but a part of me feels that these “first three shots” will actually have an even greater significance.

I wonder if there may be something to be found in chess, because it’s a similar type of question: How important is the opening game in chess, in comparison to the end game?