Badminton
Authority: BWF Laws ยง1
A regulation badminton court measures 13.40 meters (44 ft) long by 5.18 meters wide for singles and 6.10 meters wide for doubles. The net is 1.55 meters high at the posts and 1.524 meters at the center.
| Parameter / Specification | Standard Value | Unit |
|---|---|---|
| Court Length | 13.40 | m (44 ft) |
| Singles Width | 5.18 | m (17 ft) |
| Doubles Width | 6.10 | m (20 ft) |
| Post Height | 1.55 | m (5 ft 1 in) |
History & Origin
Badminton traces to a game British army officers encountered in Pune (then called Poona), India, in the 1860s -- a local pastime using a shuttlecock and simple paddle called battledore, to which the officers added a net and formal rules around 1867. Soldiers carried the game back to England, where the Duke of Beaufort introduced it to guests at a lawn party at his Gloucestershire estate, Badminton House, in 1873, and the sport took its name from that estate.
The Badminton Association of England, formed in 1893, standardized the rules and equipment, and the International Badminton Federation -- now the Badminton World Federation -- was founded in 1934 to govern the sport globally.
Why the Court Narrows for Singles
Badminton's court dimensions create a counterintuitive pattern: the singles court is narrower than the doubles court, but the doubles service area is shorter. Singles play uses the full 13.4m court length for both rallying and serving, but drops the width from 6.10m down to 5.18m since one player alone can't cover the wider doubles alleys.
Doubles, by contrast, adds back the width but shrinks the legal serve depth with a short service line just 0.76m short of the back boundary -- because a deep serve in doubles is easy for two receivers to smash, so the shorter service area encourages the fast, low serves and aggressive net play that define doubles badminton.