Similarities between Tennis and Badminton

This is nice to think of. On the one side is a high power sport where a ball much heavier than shuttle is used and graphite rackets are employed to whack them to all corners.

On the other side is a feather touch shuttle played with gentle rackets in a much smaller court. Similarities between the two? I must be kidding. But there are certain similarities between tennis and badminton, which we will start enumerating one by one.

The first obvious similarity is both games use rackets, how much ever different they are in looks and performance. Tennis strings are much stronger and thicker than badminton racket strings but why bother about the subtle difference in the face of such overwhelming similarity?

Sure enough, both games use nets in between players to challenge them play their shots. Of course, badminton scores over tennis in this aspect as the net is tied at the height of 5 feet, much taller than tennis nets.

Now I can sense that you are becoming interested. Right, the next similarity between tennis and badminton is both games have men's singles, doubles, women's singles, doubles and mixed doubles. Although the women's events have less sex appeal in badminton thanks to the regulations in outfits, hopefully in future the regulations can become as lenient as the flapping skirts of women playing tennis.

Well, coming to the more serious issues, both the games feature in both Olympics and Asian games and the badminton players vie with each other to uphold the honor of their countries as much as their tennis counterparts.

In both games, players serve underhand. Now don't get me wrong. Although tennis players always serve overhand, they are permitted to serve underhand if they want to. Only they don't want to because, the opponent will pummel it. In spite of the limitation and disadvantage, tennis ace Michael Chang, afflicted by severe fatigue and cramps, served underhand to Ivan Lendl in a French open match on his match point...and won it!!!

In enumerating about the similarities between tennis and badminton, one cannot fail to mention that the major event for both these games happen to occur in England, the Wimbledon and All-England respectively. Kudos to the Englishmen for keeping it so even in the postcolonial era.

Both badminton and tennis are played and followed all over the world, albeit with different success and failure ratios. Western world rules tennis and the eastern world rules badminton in general.