Badminton serve rules: legal serves, service courts, and faults

Under the badminton serve rules, contact has to be underhand: the whole shuttle below 1.15 m off the floor, the racket meeting the cork first, and both feet stationary inside the correct service court. Even score, serve from the right. Odd score, serve from the left.

What the badminton serve rules require

BWF Law 9 lists the conditions, and a serve has to satisfy every one of them.

• No undue delay. Once the backward swing of the racket head is complete, any hesitation counts as a delay.
• Both players in diagonally opposite service courts, with no part of either foot touching a boundary line.
• Both feet stationary and in contact with the floor from the start of the service until the shuttle is struck — no step, no hop, no dragging the front foot.
• The racket hits the base of the shuttle first — the cork, not the feathers.
• The whole shuttle below 1.15 m from the court surface at the instant of contact.
• The racket head stays below the hand. At contact, the racket shaft must point down far enough that the whole racket head is discernibly below the whole hand — a separate check from the height limit, not replaced by it.
• The racket keeps moving forward from the start of the service until delivery: one continuous motion, no stop and restart.
• The shuttle flies upward off the strings, over the net, into the receiver's service court.
• No misses. Swing and miss while attempting to serve and it's a fault. Badminton gives you one serve, not two.

The 1.15 m figure is newer than a lot of club coaching. The old test measured shuttle height against the server's own body — below the lowest rib, roughly waist level — and BWF swapped that reference point for a fixed 1.15 m in 2018 so tall and short players are judged the same way. The racket-head-below-the-hand check wasn't part of that change — it's separate, and still applies today. Recreational leagues and older material still describe the waist version, and on court the two land in nearly the same place. At BWF events a service judge lines the contact up against a marker set at 1.15 m; at club level nobody measures, so serve visibly low rather than at the limit.

Can you serve overhand in badminton?

No. No clause says "no overhand serve" in those words, but four requirements combine to rule it out: the shuttle must be under 1.15 m at contact, the racket head has to stay below the hand at that instant, the racket has to strike the base, and the shuttle has to travel upward off the strings. A tennis-style toss and smash breaks all of them at once, which is why it's the most common illegal serve among players arriving from tennis or squash. Sidearm serves fail the same way — as soon as the contact point climbs toward shoulder height, the shuttle is above 1.15 m and the racket head is no longer below the hand.

Which service court to serve from

The service court follows the server's own score — not the rally count, not the opponent's score.

Singles

Even score (0, 2, 4, 6…) means you serve from the right service court; odd score (1, 3, 5…) means the left. The receiver stands diagonally opposite. Lose the rally and the serve passes to your opponent, who picks their side from their own score. Because every rally is worth a point under badminton scoring, the side you serve from flips each time you score.

Doubles

Same parity rule, applied to the serving side's score, and whichever partner stands in the correct court serves. Partners swap courts only after winning a rally while serving; when you lose the serve, nobody rotates — you stay put and receive. The old side-out system with a "first server" and "second server" left the laws when rally scoring arrived in 2006, though you'll still hear it called at social sessions.

Most service-court mistakes at club level are bookkeeping rather than technique: someone forgets a point, and two pairs end up arguing on the wrong diagonal. Since the correct court is purely a function of the score, whatever you keep score with settles it — Badminton Scoreboard is a badminton scoreboard app for iPhone and Apple Watch that tracks match scores, so even-or-odd has one answer instead of three opinions.

Service lines and where the receiver stands

The short service line sits 1.98 m from the net, and a serve landing in front of it is a fault. The far edge is the badminton serve line that changes between formats: in singles the service court is narrow, bounded by the inner side lines, and runs back to the rear boundary; in doubles it's the full 6.10 m width but stops at the doubles long service line, 0.76 m inside the back line. Deep serves in doubles have much less room than singles players expect.

The receiver is bound by the same footwork rule as the server: stationary, both feet down, inside the diagonally opposite court, not touching a line, no movement until the shuttle is struck. In doubles the two uninvolved partners may stand anywhere in their own court so long as they don't block either player's view of the serve.

Badminton serve types

Four serves cover almost everything.

Serve	Flight	Target	Mostly used in
Low (short)	Flat, skimming the net tape	Just past the short service line, usually at the T	Doubles; singles against a strong attacker
High (deep)	Steep and high, dropping vertically	Back of the singles service court	Singles
Flick	Begins like a low serve, then quick and flat	Over the receiver's reach, to the back	Doubles, and against a receiver standing tight
Drive	Fast and flat, low over the net	The receiver's dominant shoulder or hip	Doubles, as a surprise

A backhand grip is standard for low serves and flicks because the short swing hides which of the two is coming. The high singles serve is normally forehand and underarm, played from a step or two behind the short service line.

Faults that cost club players points

• Double motion — pausing or re-cocking the wrist mid-serve breaks the continuous-forward-movement requirement.
• Moving feet — the small shuffle just before contact, easy to do and easy to spot.
• Contact too high, usually on a rushed drive serve.
• Serving before the receiver is ready. If the receiver attempts a return, they're deemed to have been ready.
• Serving from the wrong court, which under the badminton serving rules is a service court error rather than a fault.

Court dimensions, lets, and everything that can go wrong once the rally is live sit in the full badminton rules.

FAQ

How high can you serve in badminton?

The whole shuttle has to be below 1.15 m from the court surface at contact. It's a fixed height for every player, replacing the older test based on the server's waist. Above that is a service fault, and the receiving side wins the rally.

Which service court do you serve from with an odd score?

The left one. Under the badminton service rules the parity of the serving side's score decides the court — even from the right, odd from the left — in singles and doubles alike.

Is the backhand serve legal?

Yes. Nothing in the laws specifies which face of the racket you use, so the backhand low serve is legal and is the standard delivery in doubles. It's a fault only if contact drifts above 1.15 m or the swing stops partway.

What happens if you serve from the wrong service court?

The error is corrected and the existing score stands; rallies already played are not replayed. Learning how to serve in badminton therefore includes keeping the score straight, since the score decides the court you belong in.