Named after a duke's house
People have hit a feathered SHUTTLE back and forth with bats for thousands of years, in China, Japan, India and Europe, in a game called battledore and shuttlecock, where the aim was to keep it in the air as long as possible. The modern game with a NET took shape among British army officers in India in the 1860s and 1870s. It was often called POONA, after the city (now Pune) where some of the first rules were written.
Its name comes from Badminton House in Gloucestershire, home of the Duke of Beaufort, where the game was played at a party around 1873. Guests went home calling it the Badminton game, and the name stuck. The Badminton Association of England wrote the first official rules in 1893.
Sixteen feathers from a goose's left wing
A top-level shuttle, or BIRDIE, has sixteen goose FEATHER quills fixed into a rounded CORK base covered in thin leather. The feathers usually all come from the same wing of the goose, so that they curve the same way and make the shuttle spin steadily in flight. A shuttle weighs about five grams, and players at big tournaments may use dozens in a single match, because feathers break.
The feathers make the shuttle behave like no other ball. In 2023 the Indian player Satwiksairaj Rankireddy hit a SMASH measured at 565 kilometres per hour, the fastest ever recorded, faster than a racing car. Yet the feathers act like a brake: the drag is so strong that the shuttle slows dramatically in a fraction of a second and drops almost straight down near the back line.
Speed, footwork and deception
Because the shuttle slows so fast, badminton is about reaching it in time. Players use a deep LUNGE and quick FOOTWORK in the FORECOURT, and a match can involve hundreds of rapid changes of direction. DECEPTION is a big part of top-level play: a player shapes up for a powerful OVERHEAD but turns it into a gentle FLICK or drop at the last moment.
A CLEAR sends the shuttle high to the back of the court; a DRIVE is fast and flat; a LIFT is played from near the net to send it high and deep. The NETKILL punishes a shuttle that floats too high over the net. The inner and outer side lines, the TRAMLINES, mark the court for SINGLES and for doubles.
Scoring and the Olympics
Since 2006, every RALLY scores a point, whoever served, and a GAME goes to 21, with a match the best of three games. Players change ends after each game, and again when the leader reaches 11 in a deciding third game. In doubles, pairs attack in a front-and-back formation and defend side by side. Badminton has been an Olympic sport since Barcelona in 1992, and teams from China, Indonesia, Denmark, Japan, South Korea and Malaysia have dominated. In Indonesia, badminton stars are national heroes, and the country's first ever Olympic gold medals came in badminton in 1992.
A legal SERVE must be struck below a fixed height of 1.15 metres and travel diagonally into the opposite service court.