Not a successful debut (Issue 1)

The latter half of 2022 marked the time I came back to badminton. Before that, I had played badminton for around 13 years in Vietnam. When I came to Korea in 2018, I switched to play tennis instead. I continued to play for about 3 years. Since Covid-19 forced every tennis court here to shut down from time to time, I could only play tennis intermittently.

By the time Covid restrictions were lifted, all sport activities here were back to normal. I could have play tennis frequently but I did not have that desire much. Instead, I missed badminton a lot. The sport that I had played for half of my life. Around that time, I moved to live near Ewha Womans University. Via Naver (Korean equivalent of Google), I found a nearby badminton club at Ahyeon Station: Sky Badminton Club. In October 2022, I came to the club for the first time. I felt welcome and there were many good players. I then registered and  have been a member of the club ever since. (I will introduce Sky Club in detail in another post. )

Back to the topic of this post: in March 2023, I participated in a tournament in Korea for the first time. I played men's doubles 20B category. Hey, here I am talking about amateur tournaments, not professional ones! I will also explain the Korean tournament system elsewhere. The one I attended was Mapo District Badminton tournament, held at the Mapo sport center (마포구민체육센터). Spoiler: I ended up competing frequently in that hall afterwards.

Korea well documented all  tournament and player data. You can easily browse the match records of any registered player. Since it was my first tournament, I was eligible to enter the E level. In Korean it is called 초심, category for beginners. But that would be a blatant cheating to do so. As I had already mentioned my long experience in my home country, I was definitely not a beginner. At Sky club, I always match up with A-level members and can beat them fair and square. Hence my ego told me to register A level. Well, from the title of this post, you could probably tell how lucky I was to not do so. 

My close friend LDU, who is also an executive member of Sky Club, strongly recommended me to register B level instead. "Mapo district in Seoul is notoriously known for high-level badminton players", he warned. "You should start with a lower level, definitely not A, to feel the atmosphere of the tournament. Also, once you start with A level and get overwhelmed, you cannot drop to a lower level later - it is against the rule." That was a wise advice. "And you could team up with AJH", LDU added.

That is how I found my teammate. Overall, AJH is a solid B-level player. However I could quickly noticed several issues. The first issue was that we had roughly similar skill sets. We could both defend, drive and play well at the net, but neither of us was dangerous at attacking and smashing. In short, we couldn't intimidate opponents with agressive shots. It is a huge disadvantage in Korea, where attacking style is very popular, and all the matches are decided in only one 25-point set. Only one set, no second chance! 

Still, I entered the tournament with confidence. I practiced with AJH a lot beforehand. My girlfriend came to the sport hall to support... And we lost straight 2 games in that tournament. 

It was hella painful and my confidence was shattered. In the first match, we lost against a young pair. Our opponents are typical Korean duo: an agile front player and a powerful hitter. The powerful hitter's name is PMG. I remember that name clearly because later, we participated in the same moim* based in Mapo district. His smashes were super heavy - some of the heaviest that I have ever faced. Several times in the match we were so frustrated because he punished our poor lifts very well with full-power body smashes. Meanwhile, the front player did quite well for his role. He was quick at the net and forced us to lift the shuttle many times. And that increased the chance for PMG setting up his smashes. It is quite a popular strategy in badminton for every level. We trailed behind the whole game and didn't have a chance to catch up. We lost fair and square, 25-16. They eventually won the 20B catergory and were promoted to A level.

We took the lost as motivation for the second match. Observing our second opponents warmed up, I could tell that they were not as skilled. And yet, that match was even more disappointed. At one point, we led 19-15 but I did not have much in my tank. I moved slower and my smashes lacked power. I then made an embarrassing mistake: I switched racket. 

As a rule of thumb, you should never change to a different model racket midgame, unless a string breaks. My substitution racket was a completely different model: more flexible and was strung with higher tension. I was tired and just wanted to end the match quickly with risky smashes. I hoped the flexible racket would help. The plan backfired. I lost my touch because I had little time to adjust my swing. I should have not changed to the backup racket. Along the way I made several unforced errors and let our opponent comeback. I remember that we lost 21-25. Essentially, we threw the match away.

That was my disastrous debut. Stay tuned to see how I overcame it in future posts.