On Day 1 (qualifying round) of the 2013 All England champs, I had the experience of dealing with a "double fault" for the first time in my umpiring career! What, might you ask, is a "double fault"? Well, that's not its official name, neither is it used in general badminton speak, to the best of my knowledge – unlike in tennis, where a double fault is the well-known and commonly occurring situation where a player commits a fault on both of their serves for a single point.
In badminton, there is only one situation where a FAULT can be called twice at the same time, and it is this situation that I am labelling a "double fault" in this article! The situation arises when an umpire calls a fault for the receiver of a serve at the same time as the service judge calls a fault for the server. It is a surpirsingly rare occurrence, although we had it happen twice in 2 days of the 2013 All England champs!
It happened to me when I was umpiring a mixed doubles match during the qualifying round of the champs. I've always known what the law says about this situation, but it has never happened to me before! But how do you deal with it? There are no recommendations to court officials that relate to this incident, and although I didn't flounder or hesitate in my decision, in retrospect I realised that there was one obvious statement that I missed out—I called "FAULT RECEIVER", and heard my service judge call "FAULT" at the same time, so immediately said "LET", without including the words that I should have said before that, which were "SERVICE FAULT CALLED".
While it wasn't a major problem, and the players quickly grasped what had happened anyway (I think!), the pair that were serving at the time did query me briefly about the let, and I realised at this stage that all they may have heard was my receiver fault call (me being miked up!), and not the less voluminous service fault call. At this stage I indicated that both sides had been faulted, which they were happy with, but the query would have been (potentially) avoided had I said the following, in order:
- FAULT RECEIVER
- SERVICE FAULT CALLED
- PLAY A LET
Something to add to the "experience" box!
P.S. The lovely lady in the picture is not me! It's Trish Gubb, BWF umpire from New Zealand. We started our umpiring careers together in the humble little Waitakere International in Auckland, New Zealand!