ABSTRACT
In an individual and competition sport such as badminton, where the spaces for game related activity are independent and separated by a net, the strokes and techniques that lead to winning points and, consequently matches, become crucial to study due to their importance as the means mostly used by the player to achieve the objective of the game. In fact, most of the scientific studies focus on the analysis of these kinds of strokes and, more specifically, on the overhead strokes called the clear, drop and smash. These analyses have mostly centered on the biomechanical study of the movements in each of the stroke’s phases (Carazo et al., 2001; Gowitzke, 1979; Gowitzke and Waddell, 1986; Gowitzke and Waddell, 1991a; Gowitzke and Waddell, 1991b; Hong 1993; Luthanen and Blomqvist, 1996; Tang et al. 1995), but very few of them have studied the statistical influence of the clear, drop and smash strokes on the final result of a match.
