Serving Patterns of Women’s Badminton Medalists in the Rio 2016 Olympic Games

The aim of the present study was to describe and identify the serving performance profiles of medalists during an elite women’s badminton tournament taking notational and temporal variables into account. The sample was composed of the 14 matches (n = 1,052 rallies) played by the three medalists during the 2016 women’s singles Olympic Games badminton event (Rio, Brazil). The independent variable studied was serving player (medalist/opponent); while the dependent variables were related to notational analysis: serve type, set, and point won by the server/receiver; and the time-related variables: number of strokes per rally, rally time, rest time, and frequency of strokes. The main results showed that: (i) temporal parameters were similar for total match duration but shorter for rally time, and longer for rest time and with more strokes per rally than found in previous research; (ii) the serve effectiveness showed neutral values when analyzing serving by all the players, medalists, and opponents (around 50%); (iii) the two-step cluster analysis identified how successful players used the serve when playing short rallies with backhand short and flick serves (cluster 1), and forehand long serves (cluster 2); and during long rallies with the use of the backhand short serve, forehand short serve and forehand long serve (cluster 3). On the other hand, medalists and their opponents used forehand long serves during set 1 with durations of 8.80 s (cluster 5); and the opponents showed an independent performance using the forehand short serve during sets 1 and 2 (cluster 4); and (iv) the classification tree analysis (Exhaustive CHAID) identified the importance of different serving patterns with the gold medal player using more backhand and forehand flick serves, and the main use of backhand short serves during sets 1 and 2 in all the tournament stages. The bronze medalist used more forehand long serves during all sets, and the silver medalist showed a mixed performance of serves using the forehand short serve, the backhand short serve and the forehand long serve. The current findings may help coaches and players to manage different serving and playing patterns during training and matches according to the serve and rally requirements.