Badminton
Diagram of a badminton court
The game of badminton is similar to that of tennis. Players are supposed to hit a shuttlecock over the net so that it lands inside the marked court, before the player or players on the other side of the net can react. However, due to the nature of the object hit and the smaller size of the badminton court, it depends more on stealth and reaction play, and less on power, than does tennis.
There are typically five events: men's singles, women's singles, men's doubles, women's doubles and mixed doubles (each pair is composed of one man and one woman).
Each player or pair takes position either side of a net, on a rectangular court marked on the floor, as shown in the diagram below.
The object of the game is to hit a shuttlecock (more colloquially, "bird" or "birdie") using a racquet, over the net such that the opposing player or pair cannot hit it back before it hits the floor and the shuttlecock does not land outside the marked court. For every time this is achieved, the player or pair scores one point, if they were serving. If the opposing team was serving, there is a change of server. The first player or pair to reach 15 points (11 points for women's singles) wins a game. If the score reaches 14-all (10-all for women's singles) the side not to serve can chose to extend the game by 2 points, ie. the first to reach 17(13) points wins.
A badminton match can be made up of any odd number of games (usually 3). The winner of the match is the first to win more than half the number of games (e.g. the first to win 3 games in a 5 game match).
In both singles and doubles, there is a change of service when the server loses a point. In doubles, the first team to serve has one player serve. All other times, both players on the team serve in succession.
Badminton was invented by British soldiers in Pune, India in the 19th century. As the city of Pune was formerly known as Poona, the game was also called Poona then.Playing the Game
History
