02 · Rules
Start the rally, win the point
Every point in badminton is a rally and every rally starts with a serve. Get the serve right, keep the shuttle inside the lines, and avoid the faults — and the point is yours.
The serve
Underarm, into the box
Every serve must be struck with an underarm action — the racket head below the hand at contact — and must land inside the diagonally opposite service box. In doubles it must also clear the short service line.
Faults
What ends a rally
The shuttle lands out of bounds, is caught on the strings, the server misses it, or a player touches the net or the court with a racket or body while the shuttle is in play. Any of these loses the point.
Lets
Play it again
A let restarts the rally with no point scored — the shuttle clips the net on a serve and lands correctly, or the shuttle breaks mid-flight. The rally is simply replayed from the serve.
How it flows
Serve, rally, score
The serveer puts the shuttle into play. Players return it back and forth until someone fails, and the winner of that exchange takes the point. Then the serve changes hands if the point was won against a server, and the next rally begins.
Under the modern rules the serving side changes with every point won — a rally to 21 with no loss of service, keeping the game fast and even.
Now the numbers — how a whole match is won