97 Fun Facts About Badminton

In badminton, what happens if one side hits the shuttle twice?

They lose the rally: since 2006 that also gives the other side a point, whereas a serving side's fault used to cost only the serve.

Under 2025 badminton rules, what happens at 29-29 in a game?

A golden point decides it at 30: from 20-all a side needs a two-point lead, so 30-29 is the only game score won by a single point.

Badminton is said to take its name from a country estate in which English county?

Gloucestershire: the dukes of Beaufort's estate there is said to have lent the sport its name, although the game itself grew up among British army officers in India.

At the London 2012 Olympics, eight women's doubles badminton players were ejected for what?

Trying to lose on purpose: the pairs had already reached the knockouts and wanted a more favourable quarter-final draw.

Which ruler did an 1814 British cartoon show as a shuttlecock, mocking him as a plaything for the Allies?

Napoleon Bonaparte: exiled to Elba within weeks of the print, he escaped the next year and briefly retook power.

Thomas Cup founder Sir George Thomas also reached a Wimbledon quarter-final and was twice British champion at what?

Chess: at Hastings in 1934–35 he beat both José Raúl Capablanca and Mikhail Botvinnik, past and future world champions.

Which racquet brand began in 1946 by making wooden floats for fishing nets?

Yonex: when plastic floats wiped out that trade, founder Minoru Yoneyama switched to making badminton racquets, starting in 1957.

Which paddle sport did a future US congressman and his friends improvise in 1965 on a badminton court?

Pickleball: the Pritchard family dog, Pickles, often gets the credit for the name, but the Pritchards said the dog was named after the game.

In 2019, who became the first Indian to win gold at the BWF World Championships?

P. V. Sindhu: she had lost the 2017 final to Nozomi Okuhara after 110 minutes, then beat Okuhara 21–7, 21–7 in the 2019 final.

Where has the Badminton World Federation been headquartered since 2005?

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia: yet none of the nine nations that founded the federation in 1934 was from Asia.

At which Olympics did badminton become a full medal sport?

Barcelona 1992: China, winner of three world titles the year before, left there without a single gold.

Which former Olympic badminton singles champion led the sport's world governing body from 2013 to 2025?

Poul-Erik Høyer: at the Games after his gold he went out in the opening round, and he later sat on the International Olympic Committee too.

In badminton doubles, what happens when the serving pair wins a rally?

Same server, other court: the serve stays with that one player until the opponents win a rally, so partners don't take turns.

Why did badminton's first Thomas Cup take place years later than planned?

The Second World War: Sir George Thomas, then the federation's president, had won backing for the event and donated the trophy in 1939.

Which country had won the Thomas Cup most often, 14 times, by the end of 2024?

Indonesia: in its very first Thomas Cup, in 1958, it beat holders Malaya, the only champion until then.

Badminton's women's world team championship is named after which former British champion?

Betty Uber: she donated the trophy herself, though the first contest for it was not held until 1956–57.

What is badminton's mixed-team world championship, held every two years since 1989, called?

The Sudirman Cup: it was staged alongside the World Championships until the federation made it a separate event from 2003.

What is a shuttlecock also commonly called?

A birdie: even a light breeze blows it off course, which is why competitive badminton is played indoors.

About how much does a regulation feather shuttlecock weigh?

About 5 grams: its feathers create so much drag that a very high serve falls almost straight down at the back.

Which animals usually supply the feathers for shuttlecocks?

Geese or ducks: because feather shuttles break easily, tougher synthetic ones were developed.

How must a badminton serve be hit?

Underarm, sending the shuttle upward: in top doubles most serves are low backhands, meant to stop the receivers attacking at once.

In badminton, what decides whether a player serves from the right or the left service court?

Their own score: it sets the receiver's court too, since the two always stand in diagonally opposite service courts.

Besides being wider, how does a badminton doubles court differ from the singles court?

A shorter service court: its inner back line counts only on the serve, so in a doubles rally the shuttle may land right up to the back boundary.

What is a let in badminton?

A stopped rally replayed with no change in score: a common cause is a shuttle from the next court landing on yours.

What is a shot that travels flat and fast just over the net called?

A drive: in doubles, flat drives let a pair fight for the attack instead of lifting and waiting to defend.

In badminton, when may a player's racquet pass over the net?

On the follow-through after a hit: the shuttle must be struck on the player's own side, and an opponent who blocks that follow-through commits a fault.

In badminton, when a high shuttle arrives in the midcourt, which shot is usually the best choice?

A smash: from the midcourt it can win the rally outright or force a weak reply.

What did the BWF try to make female players wear in 2011 'to ensure attractive presentation'?

Dresses or skirts: drawn up with marketing firm Octagon, the rule was dropped before it could take effect in 2012.

Which Chinese player became the first man to retain an Olympic badminton singles title, at London 2012?

Lin Dan: as top seed at Athens 2004 he lost in the first round, before winning gold in Beijing and London.

Which Malaysian won three straight Olympic silver medals from 2008 to 2016?

Lee Chong Wei: a positive test at the 2014 World Championships cost him that silver medal and an eight-month ban.

Which player won the All England men's singles title a record eight times?

Rudy Hartono: he also won the men's singles at Munich 1972, but badminton was only a demonstration sport there.

Who won badminton's first Olympic women's singles gold, and later married the men's champion from the same Games?

Susi Susanti: four years later, Bang Soo-hyun, whom she beat in that final, knocked her out in the semi-finals and took gold.

Which Chinese doubles player was the first to win four Olympic badminton medals?

Gao Ling: seeking a last gold at the 2008 Beijing Games, she and Zheng Bo, the second seeds, were upset in the first round.

Who won the men's badminton singles gold at the Athens 2004 Olympics?

Taufik Hidayat: four years earlier, at his first Olympics in Sydney, he had gone out in the quarter-finals.

Which Dane won the 1999 All England men's singles title?

Peter Gade: yet he never won an Olympic medal, coming fourth at Sydney 2000 after losing the bronze-medal match.

Who became the first non-Asian woman to win Olympic badminton gold, in Rio 2016?

Carolina Marín: she swapped childhood flamenco dancing for badminton and went on to win three world titles.

Which Dane won back-to-back Olympic men's singles golds in Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024?

Viktor Axelsen: in 2021 he moved his family to Dubai, citing no allergies there and shorter trips to Asian events.

Which Taiwanese player, retired in 2025, spent a record 214 weeks as women's singles world number one?

Tai Tzu-ying: for all those weeks on top, she never won Olympic or world gold, taking silver at Tokyo 2020 and the 2021 Worlds.

Which Chinese player won the Olympic women's badminton singles gold in both 2004 and 2008?

Zhang Ning: after retaining her title at 33 in Beijing, she carried China's flag at the closing ceremony.

Which country beat Malaysia 3-2 in the 2014 final to become the fourth men's world team champion?

Japan: in the semi-finals it had stunned defending champions China 3–0, reaching its first final.

Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen's giant 'Shuttlecocks' stand outside an art museum in which US city?

Kansas City: the artists cast the Nelson-Atkins building as the net, with the four shuttlecocks landed on the lawns on either side.

At badminton's first official Olympic tournament, what did beaten semi-finalists receive?

A bronze medal each: from the next Games onward, the two beaten semi-finalists have instead played off for a single bronze.

Which Bollywood star played competitive badminton as a teenager before switching to modelling?

Deepika Padukone: she had followed her father, badminton star Prakash Padukone, into the sport.

What do Germans call the casual backyard version of badminton?

Federball: it means 'feather ball', after the shuttle whose feathers give the game its distinctive flight.

Before carbon-fibre composites, badminton racquets were made of which light metal?

Modern frames go further still, adding nanomaterials such as carbon nanotubes and fullerenes for durability.

What is the steep downward stroke played when a high shuttle is met in the forecourt?

A net kill: the earlier a player meets the shuttle high above the net, the steeper and more decisive the kill can be.

Which badminton offshoot, first developed in Berlin, is played without a net using a heavier shuttle?

Crossminton: its inventor, Bill Brandes, wanted a racket game that could be played outdoors on almost any surface.

Which film characters gave the fast, undersized badminton pair Marcus Gideon and Kevin Sukamuljo their nickname?

The Minions suited a pair who stand below average height and bounce around the court like the henchmen of Despicable Me. The Indonesian duo reached world number one in men's doubles in March 2017.

Ball badminton, first played in Tanjore in the 1850s, replaces the shuttlecock with a yellow ball made of what?

Wool balls were being hit over a net by Tanjore's royal family as early as 1856. British players at first swapped one in for the shuttlecock on windy or wet days.

Besides naming the racquet sport, the Badminton estate has been famous since 1949 for staging which annual event?

Horse trials came to Badminton in 1949 to help British riders prepare for international competition. It is one leg of eventing's Grand Slam, alongside the Kentucky and Burghley events.

Racketlon runs through four racket sports from smallest racquet to biggest: which comes straight after badminton?

Squash comes third, with table tennis first and tennis last, one set of each. The sport grew up in Finland and Sweden, modelled on combination events such as the triathlon and decathlon.

Which ball-tracking system, familiar from tennis and cricket, did badminton adopt in 2014 to settle line calls?

Hawk-Eye was formally introduced at the 2014 India Super Series, after the BWF had trialled other instant-review systems. Its cameras also measure how fast the shuttlecock is travelling.

Which badminton event joined the Olympic programme at Atlanta 1996, later than the sport's other four events?

Mixed doubles made its debut in Atlanta, where two South Korean pairs met in the final and Kim Dong-moon and Gil Young-ah took gold. It is the one Olympic badminton event where men and women share a court.

Badminton made its Paralympic debut in which host city, 29 years after joining the Olympic programme?

Tokyo's delayed Games in 2021 staged 14 para badminton events, nearly three times the five on the Olympic programme.

The All England Open, badminton's oldest tournament, left Wembley in 1994 for an arena in which English city?

Birmingham has staged the championships since 1994, after 37 years at Wembley. The first edition, in 1899, had doubles events only; singles were added a year later.

Which formation does a badminton doubles pair normally adopt to defend after lifting the shuttle high?

Side by side lets each partner guard half the court's width against a steep attack. Once the pair wins back the initiative it switches to front and back, with one player hitting down from the rear.

Which early name for badminton came from a British garrison town in India where army officers took up the game?

Poona, the modern Pune, lent the game its first name, and rules named after the town governed play until an English club revised them in 1887.

Badminton grew out of the old pastime of battledore and shuttlecock: what was the battledore?

A small racquet of parchment or gut stretched over a wooden frame was the battledore. Players simply batted the shuttlecock to and fro, counting the hits before it fell.

Which country won the first three editions of badminton's women's world team championship, from 1957 to 1963?

The United States beat Denmark in the 1957 and 1960 finals and England in 1963, with Judy Devlin winning all three of her matches each time. No American team has lifted the trophy since.

Badminton was first seen at the Olympics as a demonstration sport in which city, twenty years before its medal debut?

Munich staged badminton and water skiing as its two demonstration sports in 1972, with 25 players from 11 countries taking part.

Which badminton player won a record 11 men's singles titles in the 2019 season, weeks before a serious road accident?

Kento Momota earned a Guinness World Records certificate for the feat, and his haul that year included the world title, which he retained in Basel.

Which badminton player became the youngest women's singles world champion in 2013, when she was only 18?

Ratchanok Intanon of Thailand beat the reigning Olympic champion Li Xuerui in a three-game final. Four years earlier she had been the youngest world junior champion, at 14.

American David Freeman, unbeaten in badminton singles for fourteen years, left the sport to pursue which career?

Neurosurgery drew Freeman away in 1950, a year after he won the All England singles title. He made a brief comeback in 1953 and kept his unbeaten record intact.

Which Central American country's Kevin Cordón reached the Olympic badminton semi-finals in 2021, aged 34?

Guatemala's Kevin Cordón knocked out the eighth seed in his group and became the first Central American to reach an Olympic badminton semi-final.

Which country celebrated its first badminton world champion when unseeded Loh Kean Yew won the 2021 men's singles title?

Singapore's Loh could not walk after his semi-final and needed a wheelchair, yet he returned to beat Srikanth Kidambi in the final in Huelva, Spain.

Mia Audina won Olympic badminton silver for two countries: her birth nation in 1996 and which European one in 2004?

The Netherlands became her home in 2000, when she moved there with her Dutch husband. As a teenager she had helped her birth country retain the women's world team title.

Which soft overhead stroke in badminton lands the shuttle in the opponent's forecourt, close to the net?

A drop shot starts with the same overhead action as a full-power stroke, so a good one deceives the opponent about both power and direction before the shuttle dies near the net.

Which outdoor variant of badminton is played with a modified shuttlecock on surfaces that include sand?

AirBadminton takes the game out of the sports hall and onto non-conventional surfaces, a derivative that needed its own redesigned shuttlecock.

Badminton shoes are lightweight, with thin high-grip soles made so that they avoid doing what to a sports hall floor?

Leaving marks is what the rubber soles are built to avoid. The soles are also kept very thin, which lowers the player's centre of gravity and results in fewer injuries.

In badminton the umpire runs an individual match, but which official is in overall charge of the whole tournament?

The referee outranks every umpire: the umpire reports to that official, and unresolved appeals on questions of law are passed up the same way.

At the start of every badminton rally, how are the server's and receiver's service courts positioned?

Diagonally opposite courts mean every serve crosses the net at an angle, as in tennis. Unlike tennis players, both must stand inside their service courts until the shuttle is struck.

Badminton House, the country seat that gave the sport its name, has belonged since the 17th century to which dukedom?

Beaufort's dukes moved there from Raglan Castle, which was ruined in the Civil War. Why and when the game took the house's name remains unclear.

Which team won the first Thomas Cup in 1949, beating Denmark 8-1 in the final in Preston?

Malaya was the only entrant from the Pacific zone, so it reached the knockout stage without playing a qualifier, then won a tie in Glasgow on the way to the title.

What do badminton players call a forehand overhead stroke played on the backhand side of the body?

Round-the-head forehands spare players the backhand overhead, which is weaker because of the shoulder joint and forces them to turn their back on the opponent.

Badminton's lawmakers permanently banned which trick delivery in April 2025, after temporary bans dating from 2023?

The spin serve is ruled out by a law requiring the server to release the shuttle without adding spin. An earlier version, the Sidek serve, came and went before being outlawed in 1982.

Which 2001 All England champion later founded a Hyderabad academy that produced Olympic badminton medallists?

Pullela Gopichand reportedly mortgaged his own house to open the academy in 2008. He was only the second Indian to win the All England singles title.

The first badminton World Championships, in 1977, were played at an ice hockey rink in which Swedish city?

Malmö staged the event at its Isstadion, an ice stadium built in 1968. The championships were then held only once every three years until 1983.

Which badminton serve is lifted towards the back of the court but lower than a high serve, so that it falls sooner?

A flick stops the receiver from anticipating a low serve and attacking it decisively. Singles players often open a rally with one.

Which South Korean teenager won Olympic badminton gold at Beijing 2008 alongside Lee Hyo-jung?

Lee Yong-dae was 19 when he and his partner upset the field in the Beijing mixed doubles, making him the youngest Olympic badminton champion up to then.

Which player won the Olympic men's singles badminton gold at Rio 2016, four years after finishing third in London?

Chen Long had won his first world title two years earlier in Copenhagen, ending a seven-month run without a trophy.

Which South Korean won the Olympic women's singles badminton gold at Paris 2024, aged 22?

An Se-young had become the first Korean women's singles player to win the World Championships a year earlier.

Badminton's world governing body, founded in 1934 with nine member nations, was first based in which English town?

Cheltenham was the first base of what was then the International Badminton Federation. Its nine founders included Canada and New Zealand but no Asian nation.

Under badminton's old scoring, what was it called when a player chose to extend a game tied near the finish?

Setting was the choice of whoever reached the tied score first: play straight through, or reset to 0-0 and race to a few extra points.

Lene Køppen won two titles at badminton's first World Championships while studying for which profession?

Dentistry ran alongside her badminton: she took the women's singles and a doubles title in 1977 as a student, then kept winning as a practising dentist.

When a singles match is played on a full-size badminton court, where do the net posts stand?

Over the doubles sidelines is where the posts stay for every event. A singles match simply uses the narrower lines drawn inside the same court.

In a badminton rally the shuttle lands exactly on the back boundary line: what is the correct call?

It is in, because a shuttle is out only when it lands neither on nor within the boundary lines. A line judge signals the call for whichever line they have been assigned.

A badminton serve clips the top of the net yet falls into the correct service court: what happens next?

Play continues: a serve that touches the net on its way over has not been a let for more than sixty years. It is a fault only if the shuttle then fails to land in the receiver's service court.

After the opening game of a badminton match, who has the right to serve first in the next one?

The side that just won serves first in the next game, and in doubles the winning pair may choose which of them delivers it.

A hard-struck badminton shuttle catches a defender on the shoulder, then lands out of court: who wins the rally?

The attacker wins the rally, because a shuttle that touches a player's body or clothing is a fault against that player, wherever it would have landed.

Once the serve has been returned in badminton doubles, which member of a pair is allowed to hit the shuttle?

Either partner may hit it, from anywhere on their side of the net, for the rest of the rally. Only the serve and its return are tied to particular players.

In badminton doubles, the receiver's partner steps across and returns the serve: what is the umpire's ruling?

It is a point to the servers, because only the designated receiver may return a serve. A serve hit by the receiver's partner is a fault.

During a badminton rally the cork base flies completely off the shuttle's feathers: what does the umpire call?

A let is the call when a shuttle disintegrates and its base separates completely from the rest. Deliberately damaging a shuttle to change its speed or flight is a separate offence.

A badminton receiver protests that she was not ready, yet she swung at the shuttle: what is the ruling?

The serve stands, because a receiver who attempts a return is considered to have been ready. Had she left the shuttle alone, the serve would have been taken again.

A badminton pair realise mid-game that they have been serving from the wrong courts: what happens to the score?

Every point is kept: a service court error is simply corrected the next time the shuttle is out of play, and the existing score is left alone.

A badminton server swings and misses the shuttle completely on a serve attempt: what is the result?

The receiver scores, because the serve counts as delivered once the server swings and misses. Missing the shuttle on a serve only became a fault in the early 1990s.

In a hall with a low roof, a badminton shuttle brushes the ceiling during a rally: what is the standard ruling?

A fault on the striker is the standard ruling, though local authorities may write bye-laws for halls where the building's structure gets in the shuttle's way.

The side that wins the toss before a badminton match may serve first, receive first, or instead choose what?

An end of the court is the alternative, and whichever of the two choices the winners pass up goes to the losers of the toss.