How to Serve in Badminton: A Technique Guide

Legal and effective are two different problems

Most players get a legal badminton serve down fast — underhand, contact below 1.15 metres, feet planted until contact. What takes longer is turning that legal motion into a serve that actually earns you something: a low serve that dies at the net instead of floating up for an easy attack, or a flick that genuinely surprises a receiver instead of getting smashed before it clears their shoulder. That gap between "legal" and "good" is what this guide covers.

For the full legal breakdown — contact height, the stationary-feet requirement, which service court you serve into, the let rule — see our badminton scoring and rules guide. This piece assumes you already know the serve is legal and focuses on the part that actually decides points: grip, the two core serve types, the mistakes that wreck them, and — because singles and doubles genuinely call for different serves, not just different tactics with the same serve — how to choose between them.

Grip: forehand for most of it, backhand for the modern low serve

Badminton serving splits into two grips, and which one you use depends on which serve you're hitting:

Forehand grip — essentially a relaxed handshake grip, racket face slightly open — is the traditional choice for the low serve and is still the more common option in casual and recreational play. It's also the only grip used for the high serve in singles, since a high serve needs more racket-head speed and a forehand grip generates that more naturally.
Backhand grip — thumb pressed flat against the back of a narrower handle position, shuttle held by its feathers between thumb and forefinger — has become the standard low-serve grip at the competitive doubles level, because it produces a shorter, tighter swing path that's easier to control and harder for a receiver to read early. Both grips are legal for either serve type; the backhand low serve is simply the technique that's taken over at the top of the game specifically because of that control advantage.

If you only learn one non-obvious thing from this section: the backhand low serve isn't a beginner mistake or a shortcut — it's the deliberate technique most competitive doubles players use, precisely because a shorter backswing is both more accurate and harder to read than the larger forehand motion.

The low serve: badminton's most important shot you'll never see highlighted

The low serve is a soft, controlled push that clears the net by the smallest legal margin and drops as close to the front service line as possible, on the receiver's side. It's the dominant serve in doubles and a common choice in singles for players confident in their net game, for one structural reason: it denies the receiver a full-power smash before the rally has even started, since there's no height to attack.

The mechanics. Hold the shuttle by the feathers, base pointing toward the racket. Keep the backswing short and the motion flat and controlled — a push through the shuttle's base, not a swing with any real acceleration. The racket face should be angled just enough to clear the net with the smallest possible margin, then drop; too much height and the shuttle becomes an easy target for the receiver's own attacking shot; too little and it hits the net or gets called for touching the net.

Where to aim. Two targets dominate at every level: the T — the intersection of the center line and the short service line — and the body (the receiver's chest or racket-side hip). Both make the receiver play the return from a cramped position rather than a comfortable one; a low serve angled wide toward the sideline gives the receiver more room to swing and is rarely worth the extra risk of missing the service court boundary.

Why doubles leans on it so heavily. Doubles rallies are fast and net-dominant by nature — the serving pair's partner is standing right at the net ready to pounce on any loose return, so a low serve that forces a weak, upward reply sets up an immediate attack. Combined with the doubles serve box being shallower than singles' (a legal doubles serve can't land in the back 2.5 feet of the court, per the scoring guide), the entire doubles serve game is built around this one shot.

The high serve (clear serve): singles' default, and a doubles rarity

The high serve — also called the clear serve — is hit with real pace and height, sent deep to land near the back boundary line on the receiver's side. It's the most common serve at recreational and intermediate singles, and for good structural reasons that don't apply to doubles at all.

Why singles uses it and doubles almost never does. In singles, the server has the entire depth of a longer, narrower court to defend after the serve, and a serve that lands short gives the receiver an easy net attack with no partner to help cover. A high, deep serve buys the server time to reset into a ready position before the receiver's return arrives, and forces the receiver to hit downward from deep in their own court — a weaker, more defensive shot than an attacking net return. In doubles, that same deep serve simply hands the returning pair a free smash from a comfortable position, which is why the low serve dominates there instead.

Mechanics. Use a forehand grip and a full, accelerating swing — the opposite of the low serve's short push. Drop the shuttle from a consistent height and point, contact it below waist height as required, and drive up and through with real racket-head speed, aiming for a trajectory that peaks well above the receiver's reach and drops steeply just inside the back boundary. Aim high serves toward the middle of the court, not a corner — a serve hit to a corner gives a competent receiver an easier angle to attack back, while a central serve limits their angles on the return.

The flick serve: the low serve's disguise

A flick serve starts with the exact same stance, grip, and backswing as a low serve, then accelerates sharply at the last instant — a quick snap through the wrist and forearm — sending the shuttle just over the receiver's reach and deep, rather than low over the net. Its entire value is deception: because it looks identical to a low serve until the very last moment, a receiver who's crept forward anticipating another low serve gets caught flat-footed and out of position to defend the sudden depth.

Use it sparingly. A flick serve only works because it's a surprise. Hit it too often and an alert receiver starts anticipating it, at which point it becomes an easy attacking target — a mistimed flick that doesn't clear the receiver is one of the simplest points to lose in the sport. Treat it as a change-up, not a primary serve.

The drive serve: rare, and mostly a doubles tool

A drive serve is hit flat and fast, aimed at the receiver's body or into a gap, with minimal height — a deliberate contrast to both the low serve's softness and the high serve's arc. It shows up occasionally in doubles, more often from stronger servers in mixed doubles, as another way to disrupt a receiver who's settled into reading low serves and flicks. It carries real risk: a flat, fast serve that doesn't clear the net legally, or clears it with too much height, is an easy target. Most coaching guidance treats it as a situational surprise rather than something to build a serve game around.

Common mistakes that cost points before the rally even starts

Telegraphing which serve is coming. If your stance, grip, or backswing visibly changes between a low serve and a flick, an experienced receiver reads it in the first split second and adjusts before the shuttle's even moving. Keep the setup identical for both — the whole point of the flick is that it's indistinguishable from the low serve until the very end of the motion.

Serving too high on the low serve. This is the single most common fault-adjacent mistake at the beginner and intermediate level. A low serve that clears the net by six inches instead of two is not just legal — it's a gift, an easy attacking target the receiver can smash before it's even reached its peak. The margin should feel uncomfortably thin.

A flat, non-accelerating high serve. Without real racket-head speed generated through the swing, a high serve either falls short of the back boundary (handing the receiver an easy attack from mid-court) or lacks the steep, hard-to-time drop that makes a deep serve genuinely difficult to return.

Inconsistent shuttle drop or hold. Both serve types depend on releasing or holding the shuttle from the same position every time. A drop that varies forces the rest of the motion to compensate on the fly, which is the most common root cause of mis-timed contact and legal-height faults alike.

Building a reliable serve

Work through this roughly in order rather than trying to fix everything at once:

Groove the low serve first, with no target. Get a repeatable, short push motion landing legally and consistently before worrying about precision.
Add the T and body targets. Track how often the serve actually lands in that tight zone near the net, not just anywhere legal.
Add the high serve, aiming only for depth. Get it consistently landing near the back boundary before worrying about pace.
Layer in the flick, disguised from the same setup as your low serve. Practice it only after the low serve itself is automatic — the disguise doesn't work if your low-serve motion isn't already consistent enough to copy.

Where to go next

Technique gets your serve legal and useful; the full rules — contact height, the stationary-feet requirement, and the singles-vs-doubles service court differences — are covered in our badminton scoring and rules guide. If your grip still feels unnatural through the swing, our badminton grip technique guide covers hand position for every shot, not just the serve. And once the serve is reliable, our badminton doubles strategy guide picks up from there — what to do with the point your serve just set up.

Sources

This guide is written and fact-checked against BWF's current Laws of Badminton and established badminton coaching resources, consistent with the legal serve mechanics laid out in our own badminton scoring guide:

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