I've been trying to find this out for a while now, but I can't find any info on it. I understand the service rotation fine for the serving team, but what I don't understand is which court your opponents stand in after your team wins a point. For example:My team is Player A and Player B. My opponent's team is Player C and Player D. My team is 5-2 ahead. It's my serve. I serve from my left court diagonally across to Player D. The rally ensues and my team wins a point. Now I serve from my right court diagonally. But which player am I serving to? Do I have to serve to Player C again? Or do my opponents have to switch so that I serve to a different player on each point won? In that case I would be serving to Player D. Or is it just whoever happens to be in the relevant court at the end of the rally? What if both players end up in the same court at the end of the rally? Basically, what are the rules on the movement of the players not serving in doubles? I hope I explained that properly
if you served to D and won that following rally, you would switch sides and serve to C. the opponents would not move in this case. you switch sides only when you score a point off your own serve.
The receiving players always stay on the same side until they win a point on their own team serve making them switch sides. So the ONLY time you should move from one side to the other is when your team serves and wins a point, after you lose your serve you stay where you are until you win a point on your own teams serve again.
So at the start of the game, each player has to decide which side they will be on as a "default". And they only change this when their own serve requires it. Is that correct?
The service courts are changed by the servicing side only when a point is scored . The diagrams in the link below explain with examples; http://www.internationalbadminton.org/page.aspx?id=11165 .
I see. In that link, it was the second from last example that I didn't understand. I thought the receiving team had to revert to whatever court they decided on at the start of the game. But it's whatever court they were in at their last serve. I think I have it now. Still, I'm not sure the word "simplified" is appropriate. It's not exactly that simple, is it?
Indeed not! The scoring system is really easy to use once you've practised it, but quite hard to understand initially. It's not my core area of interest, but at some point I'll see if I can create a genuinely simple explanation.
