How to Umpire a Badminton Match: Calls and Scoresheet

Last checked: August 2026 · Written by the player-led team at Badminton House

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Pre-match checks before you call "play"

Before any rally starts, the umpire runs four checks in order: conduct the toss and record the choices, confirm which side serves and which end each side starts on, test a shuttle for correct speed, and write the scoresheet header (both scores at zero, S for server, R for receiver in doubles).

Conduct the toss before the warm-up starts. Law 6 gives the side that wins the toss a choice: serve or receive first, or pick which end to start at. The side that lost the toss takes whichever choice remains, and both decisions are final once made. BWF Laws of Badminton

Know your own jurisdiction before you sit down. A referee has overall charge of a tournament, a service judge calls service faults, and line judges call shuttles in or out on their assigned lines, but most club matches will not have any of those roles filled. The Laws already account for that: where another technical official is not appointed, the umpire is responsible for making sure that official's duties still get done. BWF Laws of Badminton In practice, if you are the only official on court, every service fault and every line call is yours to make, not a gap someone else fills.

Test a shuttle for speed the same way every time rather than guessing by eye. Law 3 specifies a full underhand stroke that contacts the shuttle over the back boundary line, hit upward and parallel to the sidelines, and a shuttle at the correct speed lands 530 mm to 990 mm short of the far back boundary line. Land shorter than that and the shuttle is too slow for the room's air; land past it and the shuttle is too fast. Either way, ask the players to try a different one before you start the clock.

Fill in the header before the first serve. The umpire's own instructions call for writing "0" for both sides' scores and "S" next to the name of whoever serves first, and in doubles, "R" next to the receiver standing diagonally opposite. BWF Instructions to Technical Officials That one line tells you, and anyone who reads the sheet afterward, exactly who started serving and receiving without relying on memory.

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The six calls that run a club match

BWF's standard umpiring vocabulary for in-play calls is six words: service over, fault, let, out, interval, and change ends, plus love all and play to start each game. Club umpires who memorize these six can call almost any situation clearly, loudly, and consistently, which is most of what players actually need from the chair.

Start each game the same way: name both sides, state who serves, then call "love all" and "play". During the match, the score is always announced with the server's score first, and a score of zero is called "love" rather than "zero" or "nil", so 1-0 is "one, love". BWF Vocabulary

• Service over: the serving side lost the rally and the right to serve. Call it, then the new server's score, before the next rally starts.
• Fault: one of the Laws' listed violations just happened (the shuttle landed out, a player touched the net, a double hit). Call it immediately and clearly; when a service judge is on court, a service fault is their call to make, not yours.
• Let: play stops and the point is replayed with no score change; the player who served last serves again. Used when a server catches the receiver unready, a shuttle sticks in the net, or something accidental interferes with the rally.
• Out: a line judge's call when the shuttle lands outside a boundary line. Where there is no line judge, the umpire makes this call.
• Interval: called with the score once either side first reaches 11 points in a game, and again between games.
• Change ends: called with the score at 11 points in the third game (or a one-game match), and applied automatically after the first and second games end.

Two more calls close out the story. "Game" is called the instant the final rally of a game is decided, followed by the score and which side won it, and "Match won by" names the winning side once the match is over.

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Filling in the scoresheet row by row

A club scoresheet needs four things before the first serve: both scores at zero, an "S" beside whoever serves first, an "R" beside the doubles receiver, and the match start time. After that, write the new score after every rally, so the sheet becomes a complete, checkable replay of the match.

In singles, the server's own score tells you which court to serve from: right court on zero or an even score, left court on an odd score, and the receiver stands diagonally opposite by the same rule. BWF Laws of Badminton Two branches follow every rally, and the table below shows both starting from 0-0.

Doubles rows carry more information because the correct service court and the identity of the server both depend on which of the four players is currently up. The serving pair's own score decides right or left court exactly as in singles, and a receiving pair does not swap service courts until they win a point while serving. Track server and receiver by initials next to each score, not just the number, or a mid-match dispute over who served a particular point becomes unresolvable.

Two situations get their own mark instead of a score. If play is stopped for any reason, call "Play is suspended," write "S" on the sheet, and note how long the stoppage lasted once play resumes. For anything else worth remembering, a short code works: "I" for an injury, "W" for a misconduct warning, "F" for a misconduct fault, and "Ret" if a player retires. BWF Vocabulary

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Three moments club umpires get wrong

Three situations account for most club-umpiring mistakes: calling "Fault" instead of "Service over" when the serving side simply loses a rally, mistiming the 11-point and change-of-ends breaks, and forgetting to record why a match ended early. All three are fixable with one habit each, not more training.

"Fault" and "Service over" sound similar and get mixed up constantly, but they mean different things. A fault is a rule violation: an out shuttle, a net touch, a double hit. "Service over" is simply the serving side losing a clean rally with no violation at all, so the right to serve passes to the other side. Call "Fault" only when a Law was actually broken; otherwise it is "Service over," then the new server's score.

The 60-second interval starts the moment either side's score reaches 11 in a game, not when a player asks for it, and the 120-second break between games starts the instant the umpire calls "Game". In the third game, or in a one-game match, the 11-point interval doubles as the change of ends. Call the score, then "Interval," so both sides know the clock has started. Our interval rules guide covers what players may do during that time in more detail than one section here can.

A match rarely just stops on its own. If a player wants to retire from injury or illness, ask them directly: "Are you retiring?" Only announce the retirement and the match result once they confirm it themselves; do not assume it for them. Write "Ret" on the sheet with a one-line reason, in the same plain style the Laws use for other on-court notes.

Banner photo: Sandro Halank, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped from the original).