When last you left your intrepid Sports Fan I had successfully unlocked the key to witnessing perhaps the most fan-shy tournament of all time, the U.S. Adult National Badminton Championships, and was settled into a nearly courtside seat for the action. I had arrived in time for the Men’s Singles finals and was anxious to see the action pitting… OK, I had no clue who was playing. I looked around for the scoreboard, thinking that maybe the names of the finalists would be listed there. Doh! No scoreboard. No presentation of player names or identities anywhere. I noticed that some of the competitors on other courts wore their name on the back of their jersey, but that was not the case with the athletes before me. And then I heard The Voice.

In a perfectly clipped British accent, an Indian gentleman sitting in the referee’s chair introduced the contestants and play commenced. And, after each point he updated us with the score in a formal manner befitting a National Championship. Now this was more like it.

Badminton plays just like tennis strategically, with a couple of key differences. First of all, the badminton serve is the least powerful shot in the game, and in some matches, it appeared that having the serve was actually a disadvantage. The rules require that the shuttlecock be fully displayed by the server, and indeed it was presented by holding onto it with thumb and forefinger – picture someone holding a dead mouse by the tail as they looked for some place to dispose of it. This was followed by a shot that, while I’m sure it has a more formal name, I can best describe as a dink over the net into the opposite court’s serving area. In the Men’s Singles match I saw, this pretty much assured a return dink, in turn forcing the original server to hit an underhand shot; either another dink or a high lob – the latter of which really set up the opponent for a smash shot.

In the doubles matches I watched it was a bit different, as the forward recipient of the serve tended to be much more aggressive in trying to return a hard, or at least quick return shot. This put even more emphasis on serve placement, often resulting in the serve being short and into the net when the server attempted a shot that the opponent couldn’t handle aggressively.

The other major strategic difference between badminton and tennis is that, because of the hang time of an airborne shuttlecock, you have almost too much time to think about your return shot. While tennis is a more or less equal combination of planning and reacting, a badminton rally often allows its players enough response time to change their mind several times before pulling the trigger. This of course would virtually guarantee that I would over-think the shot and whiff.

The game plays fast, with teams scoring on each “side out” as well as on the serve. The game is played to 21, and a match is best 2 of 3 games. After the initial serve is gained by coin flip, from that point on it is earned rather than rotated. There are few play stoppages, and the matches that I viewed zipped right through. And they’re fun to watch, as players alternate between knocking the bejesus out of the shuttlecock and deftly dropping shots just over the net. You can almost hear the wheels turning in each competitor’s head as they play, which definitely draws you into the action. I was genuinely disappointed to see each match end.

The award ceremony for each class of competition was held immediately after the conclusion of the respective match, and was so low-key as to be almost incidental. These were National Championships, mind you and had it been me I would’ve run a berserk victory lap, high-fiving everyone in the place. But that’s just me. At this event hardly anyone even paid attention to the ceremony. In fact, consolation matches being played on adjoining courts didn’t even pause to recognize the champs. So it was ironic against this backdrop of modesty that the trophies were almost as big as the competitors themselves. You win two of these things and you’re calling contractors about adding a room to the house.

The closing event of the tournament and day was the Mixed Doubles Championship, which I thought to be an odd choice for a capstone event. It was won by the team of Howard Bach and Eva Lee, both from Orange, CA and both members of the host venue, the Orange County Badminton Club. It was their fourth national title in the past five years, and they dispatched their rivals with relative ease in straights sets. Given the aplomb with which they accepted the customary XXXL-sized trophy, it was obvious that I was witnessing two legends of the sport.

My take on playing doubles, mixed or otherwise? Well, based on sketchy memories of the sport as it was taught to us in Longview Junior High School gym class, there wasn’t enough surgical tape in all of Central Connecticut to handle the head trauma that would have resulted from giving two kids carte blanche to swing rackets indiscriminately on the same side of the net.