All About Badminton

By Christy Flom on July 18, 2015

Summer is the perfect time to hang out with friends and have a backyard barbecue. From hotdogs and hamburgers to music and games, barbecues are always a great option for unwinding after a long week of work or a busy day.

While some may choose to sit around and chat, I love to play backyard games during a good summer barbecue. One of my absolute favorite games to play with friends while relaxing on a Saturday afternoon is badminton.

Badminton was always a fan favorite where I grew up with all of my friends and our families. We even started an after school league with friends when we were younger. The league was open to anyone, but as word spread it was surprising to see how many people knew next to nothing about the game.

While badminton is an Olympic sport, the popularity and knowledge of the game can vary greatly from person to person. As a mixture between volleyball and tennis, badminton is great because it can be played casually in one’s backyard or as an intensely competitive sport.

The set up for badminton is relatively simple. All one needs is a net that is slightly shorter than a volleyball net in length but around the same height. Then, badminton rackets are also needed, which have a longer handle and a slightly smaller net than a tennis racket. Finally, there is the ball, which is called a birdie. The birdie is also commonly known as the shuttlecock or shuttle and resembles an open cone shape with a ball at the point.

Image by Dave Dugdale via flickr.com and www.learningDSLRVideo.com.

The birdie is more difficult to hit than a simple ball like a Ping-Pong ball. It also does not always go in a straight line and can fly through the air faster than a ball.

As for players, when one is playing for fun anyone can play if there are enough rackets. The most I have played with on each team is four people. In the Olympics there are only singles and doubles tournaments in a much smaller court than a backyard.

There are a couple of rules unique to badminton, which separates the sport from tennis and volleyball. Whereas in volleyball a team is allowed three hits to send the ball over the net, in badminton only one player per side can hit the birdie. In casual games we never implemented this rule since it was much more fun for us to pass the birdie like we were playing volleyball to set up a grand spike over the net. As a competitive sport badminton is only played inside because the birdie can be easily affected by wind and weather.

Matches consist of the best of three games, with each game going up to 21 points. Rally scoring is used in badminton, meaning that every time one wins a rally, they receive a point. While the games go to 21 points, it is win by two. This means that if it is 21-20, the player with 21 points must earn one more point in order to actually win, making the score 22-20.

For the majority of people, badminton is most commonly known as a backyard game. It is not one of the most anticipated competitions in the Olympics and to be honest I did not even know it was an event in the Olympics until high school. However, the difference in skill and the speed of the game between amateurs playing around in someone’s yard and professional badminton players is astronomical. I urge everyone to watch a YouTube video of badminton players in the Olympics because aside from making you realize how awful you actually are at playing the sport, it is very entertaining to watch.

(Image via flickr.com)

The small birdie whips back and forth over the net in a small rectangular court. Similar to how your head is constantly moving back and forth while watching a table tennis match, the same thing occurs while watching a badminton match. All it takes is a blink of the eyes to lose track of the birdie.

Even though badminton is not a hugely popular sport in the Olympics it is a great pickup game during the summer. At the beach, in a backyard, or at a park are all great places to start a pickup game. Badminton is also a great game to play as an intern with coworkers. At a small barbecue, it can be a relaxing way to get to know one another outside of the office without enduring a long game of golf or an awkward dinner.

With such an easy set up and simple rules, badminton is on track to take over the world of sports. While I don’t see it making national news any time soon of the same caliber of the women’s USA soccer team who just won the World Cup, it will always be a top game to play outside with friends.

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