The PickleMinton shuttlecock or “birdie” consists of a large corked “volant” with a skirt typically twice (2x) the diameter of a standard badminton birdie. The flight is significantly slower than a standard badminton birdie and a functional test hit from the PickleMinton baseline at approx. 80% strength will land at about 75% of distance into the opposing court side.
The PickleMinton racquet consists of a strung shorty racquet 53cm length or shorter. The racquet face, however may be up to 10cm wider than a standard badminton racquet. The combination of the short length, wide face racquet with a large slow shuttlecock make this sport easy for beginners to quickly engage in satisfying rallies. It also offers experienced racquet sport players a challenging, yet low impact sport with the “feel” of their favorite games, such as tennis, badminton and table tennis (ping pong).
The PickleMinton court consists of a badminton court up to the doubles service line (allowing for play on a racquetball court indoors) with only outside lines and a “short line” necessary – no center line is needed. The net does have a highly visible 2” demarcation in the center of the tape (often in the form of a “Pickle Clip”) identifying the boundary of the straight-court service. For example a serve from the left hand side must cross to the left of the center mark on the net and to the right the court side outer boundary on the straight side. During play, at no time shall a player have both feet in front of the short line (called the “barrel” area). The server must have both feet placed behind the barrel line while serving.
A Pickleball court is also an acceptable court.
Tournaments must designate which court format they are using for competition. For example PickleMinton -S indicates the standard court as described above up to the badminton doubles line in back. PickleMinton -P indicates a pickleball court, PickleMinton -R indicates a racquetball court,
Scoring: shall be the badminton standard 21 point rally system. Server continues to serve if point is won, otherwise service reverts to opposing player/team until 21 is reached, win by 2.