How to Serve in Badminton Doubles?

Before going into the game tactics, let us first look into the basic rules of playing badminton doubles.

There is not much of a difference in the Badminton Rules of Doubles and Singles. However, let us look into the rules of playing badminton doubles. There are different types of serves in badminton, read more about them here.

The badminton scoring system is commonly known as the 21-points system. It is played for 21 points.

While playing doubles, the most common questions that arises are:

Where should I serve?

Who’s serving? Me or my partner?

A Badminton game always starts from your right-hand side.

Image Courtesy: Master Badminton

Suppose that both pairs have decided that your team gets to start the game.

You and your partner decided that you deliver the first serve, initially as the score is 0-0 and since 0 is an even number, you will serve from the RIGHT side of the court.

Let’s consider two other scenarios,

Let’s assume you are Player A; your partner is Player B.

Scenario 1

You win the first rally and obtained 1 point. Your opponent’s score remains at 0. Since you have been serving and haven’t lost a rally, you will continue to serve. And since 1 is an ODD number, you will move to the left-hand side of the court to serve.

Scenario 2

If you start serving and lose the first rally, you will be at 0 point and your opponent is at 1 point. As you lost the rally, the service is over for you and the serving is passed on to your opponent.

Below is a list of some common faults in Badminton Doubles:

Double Hit:

Only one racket can hit the shuttlecock for one receive you get. If your partner touches the shuttle and you hit it, it’s considered a fault.

Only the Receiver Can Return the Serve:

If you are to serve on the receiver’s end for a particular rally, only you should return the serve, your partner cannot.

Now, let’s get into the tactics of serving in Badminton doubles.

The server in badminton has only one objective, which is to gain the first attack, you need to be tricky to not make your serve obvious and restrict your opponent to give a weak shot or give a full trajectory for you to hit.

If you get your opponents to lift the shuttlecock, you have succeeded as a server.

If you are being the first server and starting the rally, your duty is to make the receiver to lift the shuttlecock high and your partner should be in a position to give a hard hit in order to not lose the rally.

As we have also discussed about types of badminton serves in our other articles, we know that low serve is the best type of serve for doubles players. It enables the shuttle to fall below the net height immediately after crossing the net and gives the opponent lesser time to react.

Also, you can concentrate more on playing the low serve straight, doing this has two advantages:

1)     It takes the least time to cross the net

2)     It limits your opponent’s angles to hit back immediately

The straight low serve has the shortest distance to travel, and therefore, takes the least time to cross the net, this means. It gives a shorter time for the opponent to react and helps them lose the rally for you to gain a point.

Also, serving straight limits your opponent’s angles of reply as the place where the shuttlecock falls is right behind the net.

Many players prefer the wide low serve, because they feel they are attacking the empty space.

But this doesn’t favor us much as attacking the free space will give the opponent more angles of reply and you might not be able to hit back. But you can play a wide low serve here and there just to trick the mind of the opponent.

While using the low hand serve and the wide serve, you can occasionally use flick serve as a variation as it goes as a surprise to the opponent and gives them almost no time to react.

So basically, from what we get to hear from the professionals is that, badminton doubles is mostly about the surprise serves you give in to win the rally.