BWF extends ban on ‘spin serve’ until end of Paris Olympics

The Badminton World Federation (BWF) has decided to extend the ban on the new ‘spin serve’ until the conclusion of the Paris Olympics and Paralympic Games next year.
The ruling will be applied from the Thailand Open Super 500 tournament starting in Bangkok on Tuesday.
Ahead of the Sudirman Cup, the BWF had put an interim ban on the use of the experimental serve until May 29, 2023.
“After consultation with the badminton community, BWF Council believed it best to forbid the ‘spin serve’ for another 15 months so as to not impact the Olympic and Paralympic qualifying periods and the Games themselves,” the BWF said in a statement.
The experimental spin serve had caught the attention of the world’s top badminton players with even the Indian doubles shuttlers putting in the hard yards to master this latest skill, which many believe can give “unfair” advantage to the players.
It was first started Danish doubles player Marcus Rindshoj, who accumulated a bunch of points with this innovative spin serve at the Polish Open last month.
This is a kind of serve where the shuttler holds the cork of the shuttlecock in between his or her thumb and middle finger and tries to put a spin to it with a carrom strike motion before sending it across the net with the racquet.
BWF secretary general Thomas Lund reiterated that the “BWF welcomed innovation in badminton” but added that “more evidence was needed on the potential effects” of the serve before introducing it on a full scale.
“The BWF Laws of Badminton under 9.1.5 of Section 4.1 now reads that the server shall release the shuttle without adding spin, and the server’s racket shall initially hit the base of the shuttle,” the statement said.