Positions in Badminton

Positions in Badminton Doubles

Tactics depend on skills

Your range of tactical options will be heavily influenced by your hitting skill, your movement skill, and your physical fitness.

For example: if your smash is weak, then it will be a much less effective choice of shot. Or if you are unfit, then you will miss out on many attacking opportunities.

This guide is written with the assumption that you do not have any obvious weaknesses. I understand that’s an unrealistic assumption for most players!

You will need to adapt your tactics to cover your weaknesses — and also to exploit your opponents’ weaknesses!

And of course, you can train to eliminate your weaknesses.

Strategy before tactics!

At high levels of play, one basic strategy is completely dominant: aggressive attacking play! Attacking play usually beats defensive play — in the end.

Applying the principle

How you apply this principle will depend on the situation in the rally. In general, you should play the most aggressive shot possible, providing it does not expose you immediately to an even more violent counter-attack.

Here’s a summary of what you should do, in order of preference (best options first, worst options last):

1. Play a winning shot
2. Improve your current attack (create an opportunity for a winning shot)
3. Maintain your current attack
4. Gain a new attack
5. Prevent your opponents from gaining an attack
6. When your opponents are attacking, regain the attack yourself
7. When your opponents are attacking too fiercely, defend (lift) and wait for a better counter-attacking opportunity
8. When your opponents have a winning attack, do anything to stay in the rally

The Three Main Situations

At any given moment during a doubles rally, you are in one of three situations:

1. Attacking
2. Defending
3. Fighting for who gets the next attack

Each of these situations is associated with standard positional ideas.

THE BASIC POSITION

Attacking

When attacking, you should adopt a formation with one player in the rearcourt, and the other player towards the front of the court.

The rear player will cover most shots to the rearcourt, continuing to play smashes or drop shots; the forwards player will cover replies to the net or midcourt, either playing kills or shots that provoke another lift.

Defending

When defending, you must adopt a side-by-side formation so that you can cover the full width of the doubles court. If you can’t cover the full width of the court, then you will lose the rally immediately to any well-placed smash (or even a drop shot).

You should stand about one step back from the middle of the court, to give yourselves time to react to the smash. If either of you stands near the net, then he will be vulnerable to a smash.

Fighting for the next attack

When both sides are fighting for the attack, they both tend to start in a defensiveside-by-side position. As one side gains the advantage, one of their players will move forwards to claim the front of the court, and their attack will begin.