Backyard Games: Badminton

By Steven Boga

Easy-to-follow diagrams show beginners how to set up a court, hold a racket, and hit the shuttle correctly. Advice on technique, strategy, and training.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stackpole Books
• Release date: Feb 1, 1996
• ISBN: 9780811750684

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

Ultimately, fitness and health are related to everything we do, think, and feel.

—George Leonard

Badminton. Quieter than bowling and stock-car racing, less violent than football and boxing, and almost as fast as a speeding bullet. It rewards power, reflexes, quickness, and intelligence. And it’s only as competitive as you want to make it.

If it’s a workout you want, badminton fits the bill. It’s a faster game than tennis, allowing players with even moderate skills to maintain a heart rate sufficient for aerobic conditioning, while burning 600 to 1,000 calories per hour. Play for an hour three times a week, and you will see a marked decrease in body fat and an increase in cardiovascular fitness. Plus, you’ll have heaps of fun.

Astudy was done that measured the speed and activity levels of badminton and tennis, with astonishing results. Researchers compared a men’s singles tennis match between Bjorn Borg and John McEnroe to a men’s singles badminton match between two Indonesians. The Borg-McEnroe match lasted just over five hours, but the ball was in play— and the players running—for only eighteen minutes of the match. The badminton match lasted just over two hours, but live action consumed one and a half hours of that time. Moreover, the badminton players changed directions up to twenty-nine times in a single rally, and six hundred to one thousand times in a match.

The United States Badminton Association has a promotional video entitled Badminton: Sports’ Best Kept Secret, and ain’t that the truth? Although thirteen million Americans reportedly play badminton at least once a week, top-flight badminton gets almost no news time. No reporters cover the badminton beat. The sport did get a boost in 1988, when it became an exhibition event at the Seoul Olympics, and again at the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, when it became a full-medal sport. It was the first sport to sell out at Seoul, yet virtually no badminton action, live or taped, was beamed back to the United States from either Olympics. Badminton has a PR problem.

In Europe and Asia, on the other hand, badminton players get the attention and accolades accorded professional ballplayers in the United States. In Indonesia, top badminton players are financially secure for life, their pictures appear on giant billboards, and kids clamor for their autographs. Before the Barcelona Olympics, twenty-one thousand spectators attended a preliminary badminton match in Malaysia.

In Malaysia, where badminton is something of a religion, irate fans have been known to throw objects on the court during matches. Extra security is sometimes required for players. And it’s not uncommon for spectators to take two shirts—light and dark—to matches. Because background is so important in badminton, with its white, darting shuttle, the fans (short for fanatics) don the dark shirts when their favorite player is facing them, and the light shirts when the opponent is facing them.

As an indication of how different it is in the United States, Sports Illustrated’s Sports Almanac appears to have records and statistics from just about every sport—except badminton! Want to know the slow-pitch softball champs of 1981? How about the women’s national archery champion of 1879? (Mrs. S. Brown, in case you didn’t know.) Year-by-year champions are listed for chess, squash, lacrosse, fishing, and rodeo. You can even find curling results.

Until you see top-flight badminton, you have no idea how beautiful the game is.

—Leonard Hill, coach and lover of badminton

My first thought was that badminton is virtually ignored because it’s a poor TV sport. With shuttle speeds up to 200 miles per hour, I reasoned, the sport must not adapt well to television.

Not so. Poring over videotapes of several top-flight matches, I saw that the power and quickness of the sport transfers well to the 19-inch screen. Cameras placed above the action can capture much of the exhilaration and intensity of a badminton match. It succeeds at least as well as tennis, a sport that’s enjoyed huge success on television.

I’m afraid that Andre Agassi has it right on this one: Image is everything. And badminton’s image for so many people—especially men—is of a dainty sport. But nothing could be further from the truth.

RULES

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In the chapters that follow, you will learn about badminton strategy and technique. Before you can make sense of that, however, you have to understand the basics of play.

The complete rules of badminton are given in chapter 8, but here are the basics of the game:

Badminton is a racket sport for two or four players. As in tennis, two play singles, four play doubles.

The first serve of the game is from the right half court to the half diagonally opposite. If the receiving side commits a fault, the serving side gains a point and continues to serve. If the serving side commits a fault, no point is scored. In singles, the serve shifts to the opponent; in doubles, one partner serves until his side commits a fault, then his teammate serves. The exception: At the start of a doubles game, the serve shifts to the receiving team as soon as the serving side commits a fault.

In both singles and doubles, the serve is made alternately from the right half and left half sides of the court, as in tennis. In doubles, the players on the receiving side do not shift half courts between serves.

Opponents change court ends after each game. The winning side serves first. In doubles, either partner may serve first and either opponent may receive first. The winner is the first side to win two games. If a third game is necessary, opponents change court ends again when one score reaches 8 in a game to 15, or 6 in a game to 11.

Figure 1. The server always serves diagonally to the receiver, alternating between the right and left sides of the court.

Games are played to 15 in men’s singles and all doubles, and to 11 in women’s singles. In a 15–point game, if the game is tied at 13–13, the side that first reached 13 has the option of extending it to 18 points. If this option is declined, the game may be set at 17 points when the score reaches 14–all. In women’s singles, the game may be extended to 12 points if the score becomes 9–all or 10–all.

A one-game match, usually to 21, can be extended to 24 at 19–all and to 23 if tied at 20. Extending a game is a strategic decision that sometimes gives the player receiving serve a chance to come back and win.

The main faults in badminton occur in the following ways:

1. The server a) strikes the shuttle at a point higher than his waist, b) holds the racket head higher than his hand, or c) fails to serve the shuttle in the proper court.

2. The shuttle a) passes through or under the net, b) lands out of bounds, c) hits the ceiling or side walls, or d) touches the clothing or body of a player.

STROKES

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The basic strokes are the serve, clear, drive, drop, and smash. The clear is a shot deep into the opponent’s court. The drive is a fast shot hit with the racket about hip height. The drop is a finesse shot that causes the bird to fall near the net. The smash is a high-speed overhead shot. Clears, drives, and drops may be used on service.

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My everlasting gratitude to the people everywhere who love this game and made this book possible. Special thanks to the accomplished players and coaches who gave generously of their time, especially Leonard Hill, Mike Walker, Sunny Kim, and Russ and Meiling Okuno.

Thanks also to the staff at the U.S. Badminton Association. Director Jim Hadley, Kate Spence, Barbara Juba, and others always came through when I needed them.

HISTORY

The deep roots of badminton are poorly defined. Some