BUT CAN HE DO THE MINUTE WALTZ IN 40 SECONDS?:

Badminton, Anyone?: The Game Moves Out of the Back Yard and Into the Arena, As Americans Play Catch-Up on a Global Sports Favorite (Laura Sessions Stepp, November 5, 2002, Washington Post)

[Y]ou'd be hard-pressed to find a Weber grill anywhere near a real badminton competition in the indoor season that is just beginning. Shuttlecocks have been clocked coming off a strong player's racket at close to 200 miles an hour. Players compete indoors, year-round, on a court that's 17 feet wide and 44 feet long. They use rackets blended from aluminum, steel and carbon-graphite and shuttlecocks made of feathers from the left or right wing -- but not both wings -- of a duck or goose, to ensure specific flight characteristics.

The tip of a tournament-quality shuttlecock, also called a bird or shuttle, is made of cork wrapped in leather. When hit by ranked players, it sounds more like a gunshot than the ping of childhood play. Good players go through three shuttles in a 15-minute game.

Everything about badminton is fast: the thinking, reflexes, footwork. A world champion player turned neurosurgeon, Dave Freeman, once boasted that he could perform in 12 hours an operation that took most surgeons 16 hours, a pace honed over years on the badminton court.

Such speed leaves virtually no margin for error. "If you get flustered for even a minute, you lose," says Amy Nguy, 19, Howard's national collegiate champion.

They show it every once in awhile during the Olympics and it's astonishing how hard the hit the birdie thing. Posted by Orrin Judd at November 10, 2002 12:35 PM