What is the Best Badminton Racket For Beginners?

Yonex Arcsaber 10 is a very light badminton racket with a reinforced shaft, so even if you swing weaker, the shot could be strong. Very flexible and durable model, but expensive. Good repulsion power, which is again important for a beginner since they don’t have the skillset for counter shots.

What is the Best Badminton Racket For Intermediate Players?

Yonex Voltric Glan Z is a great badminton racket for players who prefer to stick to power in every shot. Hard hitters will probably love this model.

What is the Best Badminton Racket For Experts?

Yonex Voltric Lite Badminton Racket 2016 VTLTGE Racquets 4U5G allows better smashes and more momentum. Yet, it is expensive.

Any Cheap Badminton Rackets Recommended?

Wilson Attacker Badminton Racket is a solid choice for beginners who want to kick off their competition career. It costs only 40 dollars but has a graphite shaft, strung with half-cover and one-piece fused frame, which again leads to the ability to play aggressively at recreational or fun games.

Badminton vs Tennis: All You NEED to Know

By BadmintonBlaze.com January 28, 2020 News 0 Comments

Whether you are on the fence of choosing between badminton vs tennis, or you are just looking for the differences between the two, you are at the right place.

In this post, we are comparing badminton and tennis from a lot of aspects, including:

What Is badminton?
What Is Tennis?
Brief History Of The Two Sports
Pros And Cons Of Badminton
Pros And Cons Of Tennis
Scoring And Rule Comparison
Courts Comparison
Speed Comparison
Players’ Earning Comparison
Penetration Rate Comparison
Popularity Comparison
Equipment Comparison
Which One Is More Challenging?

Table of Contents

What is Badminton?

Badminton is a racket sport where players hit the shuttlecock over the net. It is one of the most dynamic games on the planet.

This sport demands fabulous reaction time, reflexes, coordination, stamina, and creativity. You’ll see a long rally from time to time, especially if two defensive players meet.

Indoor matches are more often because of the wind, but outdoor tournaments happen from time to time too. Both singles and doubles formats are available.

The plastic projectile (shuttlecock) is known for the greatest top speed in the world of racket sports (sometimes over 400 km/h). The umpire or service judge calls for the fault.

What is Tennis?

Tennis is also a racket sport, where the player hits the ball over the net. In tennis, you win the point when the ball hits the opponent’s field and touches the floor two times (of course, if he doesn’t return it).

If the fault happens, it is called by the umpire or the service judge. You can play at hard courts, grass, clay, or carpet (also known under the name synthetic turf).

There are singles and doubles formats, indoor and outdoor competitions, but the match is stopped if the rain falls. You can play a clay tournament at light rain.

When some tennis players, especially tall ones, serve the ball, it might go over 200 km/h, and it is very hard to return it.

Brief History Of The Two Sports

Tennis originates from the French game named “Paume”, which was played in the 12^th century, where the ball was hit with the hand. It later developed into “Jeu de Paume”.

The leather gloves were used in the first place. It was replaced with an adaptive handle later, which transitioned to rackets after some time.

Tennis balls appeared in the 14^th century, an English king Henry VIII built the first tennis court in 1530. The first tennis racket was made in 1583 in Italy. (source)

Badminton first appeared around 2000 years ago. Ancient European and Asian civilizations played the game known as “battledore and shuttlecock”, where the two players were hitting the shuttlecock with a bat as many times as possible until it fell on the ground.

Badminton suddenly started developing in British India in the 19^th century. The first badminton tournament was held in March 1898. (source)

Pros And Cons Of Badminton

Positive Sides:

Badminton is one of the most entertaining racket games for many reasons.

Great whole body exercise;
Safe sport, no contact between the players;
It boosts your reaction time and reflexes;
Your agility will rock;
Entertaining dynamic game.
It boosts your anticipation skills.

Negative Sides:

But there are some downsides too.

You need a partner to play;
You can hurt yourself during smash or return.
It might be expensive–playing outside is impossible if there’s too much wind, so you’ll need money.

Pros And Cons Of Tennis

Positive Sides:

It boosts your stamina.
Great anti-stress activity.
It activates every muscle in your body.
It boosts your agility, movement, reaction time, and reflexes.
You can play both indoor and outdoor, the wind doesn’t affect the game much.
You can meet new friends.
Weight loss effect.
Tennis boosts your mental health.

Negative Sides:

The sport is very difficult, you need a great level of strength and conditioning.
Tournaments and equipment cost.
Chronical injuries.

Scoring And Rule Comparison

In badminton, the point is scored when the ball touches the surface, while in tennis it can touch the ground once.

The point system is different too.

More details on this post >> Badminton Rules

In tennis, the player who scores four points wins the game. If you earn 6 games, you won the set.

Each point has the corresponding call. Here is how it works.

Number Of Points	Call
No points	0 (love or zero)
First point	15 (Fifteen)
Second point	30 (Thirty)
Third point	40 (Forty)
Fourth point	Game

To win the game, the player must win two points in a row. If the result is 40-40, the first point means an advantage for player 1 or player 2.

But if the player one scores a point, and then player two scores one, the umpire calls “deuce”. You need two points differential to win the game again.

When the result is 6-6, the players take part in a tie-break, where the referee calls the number of points for each player (example–1-0, 2-1, etc). You must earn a two-point lead to win the tie-break.

To win the match, you must earn two or three sets, depending on the tournament.

In badminton, you play three games. If a player scores (internal badminton scoring system) 21 points, he wins the game.

But, like in tennis, you need a two-point differential to win. It means that the result 22-21, for example, doesn’t bring a game victory.

When the result is 29-29, the player who wins the 30^th point has won the game.

Courts Comparison

Badminton’s overall court dimensions are 44 (13.41 meters) x 20 feet (6.09 meters). Long service lines are the limit for singles’ play, while the sidelines are the border for doubles. (source)

The net line creates a 22 x 20 feet area on each side of the court. The short service line is found at 6 feet 6 inches (some on 7 feet) from the centerline. The net stands at 5 feet 1 inch (155 cm).

In tennis, the court dimension is 78 (23.77 meters) x 27 feet (8.23 meters) for singles, and 78 x 36 feet (10.97 meters) for doubles, while the service line is 21 feet (6.40 meters) away from the net. The tennis’ net height is three feet (0.91 cm) in the center. (source)

It means the tennis court is longer and wider, but the badminton net stands higher.

We have a detailed post here >> Badminton Courts Measurement

Speed Comparison

In badminton, shuttlecock can travel over 400 km/h per hour, which gives it the title of the fastest racket sport (you can put internal link fastest badminton smashes but I will add links anyway).

The Danish giant Mads Pieler Kolding scored the greatest speed in the match–an impressive 426 km/h!

But if the shuttlecock doesn’t travel over the net, the speed is even greater! The Malaysian player Tan Boon Heong reached the impressive result of 493 km/h!

Samuel Groth scored the fastest tennis serve at the 2012 Busan Open Challenger Series. The ball’s speed was impressive 263 km/h. (source)

Yet, John Isner holds the fastest serve recognized by ATP, with a score of 253 km/h.

When the two players take part in a rally, the shuttlecock often travels over 400 km/h.

In tennis, when both players stand on the baseline, the ball rarely goes over 150 km/h. Some believe that the fastest return was clocked at around 200 km/h.

The shuttlecock travels 2-3 times faster, plus the tennis field is bigger, which means badminton demands better reflexes and reaction time. It’s undoubtedly a faster racket game.

Players’ Earning Comparison

Both badminton and tennis players can earn a lot of money. Look at the table comparisons.

Badminton Player	Earning	Tennis Player	Earning
Jan Ø. Jørgensen	$5 million	Andy Murray	$100 million
Wang Yihan	$5 million	Maria Sharapova	$135 million
Chen Long	$8.2 million	Pete Sampras	$150 million
Taufik Hidayat	$11 million	Andre Agassi	$175 million
Peter Gade	$18 million	Serena Williams	$180 million
Saina Nehwal	$24 million	Rafael Nadal	$180 million
Lin Dan	$26 million	Novak Djokovic	$200 million
Lee Chong Wei	$35 million	Roger Federer	$450 million

Overall, tennis players earn more money, but you can become a millionaire in badminton too!

Penetration Rate Comparison

Both tennis and badminton are among the top 10 most popular participation sports in the world. (source)

Two hundred and twenty million people around the world play badminton (2^nd place), while the number of men and women who play tennis is estimated at 60 million!

The total world population is estimated at 7.8 billion, so around 3% of people in the world play badminton, while tennis is played by less than one percent of people on Earth. (source)

Popularity Comparison

Overall, tennis is more popular than badminton due to better promotion. You can call tennis a global sport for a good reason – it is played everywhere in the world.

Badminton is very popular in Asian countries–Malaysia, Indonesia, India, South Korea, Japan, China, Thailand, Vietnam… In Europe, most great players come from Denmark, while other areas of the world rarely have a name in the top 100. (source)

Tennis has reached global levels. If you look at the list of the top-ranked tennis players, you’ll find the names from every single continent! (source)

Equipment Comparison

There are similarities between badminton (internal link badminton equipment) and tennis equipment, but some things are different too. This table will guide you through the differences.

Equipment name	Sports (Badminton, Tennis, Or Both)
Racket	Both (differences)
Ball	Tennis
Shuttlecock	Badminton
Shoes	Both
Net	Both (differences)
Strings	Both
Grip tape	Both
Towel	Both (optional)
Supporters	Both (optional)
Ankle tape	Both (optional)
T-shirt	Both
Shorts	Both
Bag	Both
Stencil ink	Both (optional)
Bottle of water	Both
Socks	Both

Tennis is played with the ball, badminton with a shuttlecock.

Another significant difference is rackets. Badminton racket’s handle is thinner, just like the head frame. The head of the tennis racket is much larger, and the string tension is higher.

Badminton net is higher, so there are setup differences between the nets.

You can play tennis both indoor and outdoor, so you might need a different pair of shoes (internal link), while badminton shoes are designed for one type of surface.

Other than that, not much difference.