Badminton Equipment

Playing a good game of badminton requires a player to have the right badminton equipment on hand. While you can have any kind of badminton equipment for casual games, there are certain rules and regulations that have to be followed for an official game of badminton. Since the game of badminton is both a casual sport and a tournament sport, there are different kinds of gear that you can purchase to be able to play. There are lightweight racquets that can be bought along with different shuttlecocks in different compositions that can be used with it.

Some official badminton equipment that players have to use for tournaments includes racquets that come in the right measurements, compositions and designs. The rules for the official sport state that the racquets that the players use should be in the right size and weight. Rules also state that the shuttlecocks to be used in these tournaments should be a certain weight and should be tested before hand to ascertain this. There are even rules pertaining to how these shuttlecocks should be tested to promote fair play and an unbiased game.

A typical badminton racquet should weigh between 70 to 100 grams without the addition of the strings. These racquets are often made of certain composite materials that make these racquets rather light yet durable. There are also aluminum badminton racquets available to players, although these are mostly used for recreational play these days.

The strings are also lightweight and measure between .65 to .73 millimeters. The majority of badminton players prefer thinner strings to the thicker ones. The differences in string tensions also have a few specific followers, with lower tension strings having a stronger following among the recreational badminton players and professional badminton players going for the tighter tensioned racquet strings for their games. Professionals also favor the feathered shuttlecock over the plastic ones while recreational players prefer it the other way around. The reasoning behind this is actually the rate of deterioration of one against the other with feathered shuttlecocks getting damaged easily as compared to their plastic counterparts.

Also included in the badminton gear that should fit the regulations for tournament play are the net and pole measurements. These measurements should meet the specifications that are set by the governing body of badminton tournaments, the BWF or Badminton World Federation. While you can play a casual game of badminton by using a recreational set of equipment that you can purchase from any sports equipment store, if you have plans of breaking into the professional world of the sport, you would be better off buying regulation gear from the start.