Badminton is a Time Honored Backyard Game For All Ages to Enjoy

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Playing Badminton in Your Backyard is a Time Honored Tradition Shared By Many Families

Badminton is a great family game that can be played in your own backyard.

Whether you are looking for a loose and casual game with the kids or a ultra competitive game with the adults, all can have fun with this game. The best part is this game can be played with doubles as well as singles so more people can be involved at one time. This also is a game that is played indoors at a very competitive pace.

Actually for those games the court is laid out very specifically, with a number of different zones, as you can see in this picture.

For our purposes though, I doubt that anyone would be marking their backyards up to look like an actual court that is set up for competitive play, so our court dimensions will be paired back a bit.

The basic court

The basic court is a rectangle that is 44 feet long and 20 feet wide. The net should be 5 feet high and the posts should be placed on the outer lines of the court.

The net also divides the court in half. In addition to that, you could put a line lengthwise down the middle of the court to divide each side into halves again for playing doubles. Check out the picture again.

Of course if we were discussing a serious and competitive game here, we would have additional lines on the court as well, for serving and additional boundaries.

Most people don't play that serious so there is no need to go there.

Having said that though, if you do want to get that technical, you can always go to the Badminton World Federation (BWF) for more serious and specific badminton rules.

Basic badminton rules

A rally is when you serve the shuttlecock and it is volleyed back and forth until it hits the ground or goes out of bounds.

Players win the rally when they strike the shuttlecock over the net to the other side and it hits the ground in bounds.

The game is played to 21 points and you score one point each time you win a rally.

A match is the best of three games.

When you serve, you hit the shuttlecock to a receiver. If playing doubles that person should be the one who is diagonal to you.

You must hit the serve from below your waist and your racket shaft should be pointed downward.

If you want to get really technical, the server should stand on the right side of the court when the score is even and the left side when the score is odd, but hey, if the game is just for fun who is going to say anything?

When playing doubles and the serving side wins the rally, the same person continues to serve, but changes which side of the court they serve from. This way they to get serve to each opponent.

If you are playing on a fully marked court when you do serve, the shuttlecock must pass over the short service line of the opponents court. This would be about 6 1/2 feet from the net.

When the serving side loses a rally, the serve passes to the other team.

If the score reaches 20 all, the game then continues until someone wins by 2 points.

To start the game you can use a coin toss to decide who gets which side and who serves the first game. The winner of a game always goes first from that point forward.

Side Note: You could always use the shuttlecock to determine who serves first as well. Just hit it in the air and which ever side the corked end points to goes first.

Faults

Failing to return the shuttlecock over the net inside your opponents court.

A server fault: Hitting the shuttlecock above the waist at contact or the racket hand is not pointed downwards.

Neither the receiver or server should lift a foot until the shuttlecock has been served.

Striking the shuttlecock more than once on your side of the court. You can only hit it once to get it over the net.

So you see, the game of badminton is not a hard game to learn and I can attest that it is a fun backyard game to play so do enjoy.

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SBI!