San Diego Housing Bubble News and Analysis

We played badminton a lot as kids. You've intrigued me, Scaredy... I may have to go get a set for our yard.

(Our already heavily multitasking yard - already have ping pong and basketball vying for space.)

I used to play competitively in HS. If you want to build a professional court, it has to be enclosed (can't have any wind at all). So, you'd need at least 1 acre of land. It's definitely is fun if you play competitively. They have open court almost everyday in Balboa Park if you want to pick it up.

well, i played maybe 1.5 hours today and im beat. i dont think im ready to play in a public setting. we tried tennis last year but it was a bust because the racquets are heavy and there's just too much technique. badminto seems to have ashorter learning curve for volleying so we were having fun pretty much within the first hour.

I was a badminton animal in college and won a few tournaments. Great game but like mentioned you CANNOT have any wind to play it correctly and it helps to have a wood court for fast acceleration.

It's fun to play but the wind makes it impossible at my house.

OX
...can we say shuttle cock here?

Just what I don't need - an indoor activity in San Diego. Maybe in Alaska or something .... ?!

true, wind is bad, but for messing about a very light wind is ok.

Maybe you have to be indoors to play badminton "correctly," but it's plenty of fun outside. My wife is really good at badminton, so it's a fun challenge to play her. Sometimes friends will join us. Doubles is fun. Sometimes we'll have a few drinks and play. That's fun, too.

I'm with you, scaredy. Fun stuff. (BTW, scaredy, you're a marvelous original and I really enjoy your posts.)

You can play in the wind, but it's quite frustrating when you run to a point where you'd expect the birdie to be, only to get the wind blow it somewhere else. But if you want to build a "professional" court to play at a competitively level, you can't have any, even if it's 100+ degrees outside.

Scaredy, I grew up watching my father play badminton - he was on a team and my mom and I went to "support" him every week. It definitely kept him in great shape! I think it's a fabulous sport. And you have definitely gotten me thinking. We're moving to a farm-let (just 1.3 acres) later this month, and I think a badminton set would be an excellent activity for my family, and we will ahve lots of space to play it.

the other thing to check out is speedminton when it's too windy for badminton....

just serach speedminton

my little one was flicking the lightweight racket around deftly and was actually doing as well as his older brothers, which was startling and great. the net we bought is simple to put up and down (esp. w/ the dirt so soft from rain, but even so, it's just 4 stakes).

Badminton is a very physical sport... The US Badminton Olympics team is unfortunately being outsourced (just like my job) to the Southeast Asian countries. Here is the list of the US players which won a major tournament last time:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Gunawan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Bach

here is the list of all US Badminton players (mostly foreign born):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Am...

The training system and competition and in those countries is just very intense and the Top Badminton Players have status of the soccer star in Europe or NFL football player in the US. Thus most their best athletes choose to play Badminton.

Pup,

Croquet would be another good game for the farm. It is old fashioned, but it is fun for all ages.

Howard Bach can hardly be considered outsourced. He grew up in SF since he was 2. Badminton is decently popular in California. So it wasn't too surprising that Howard grew up in SF. If you go to high school badminton tournaments in Cali, you'll see that most of the players are Asian.