Can Players Play Both Singles And Doubles?

Have you ever wondered if professional players play both the singles and doubles disciplines? We have seen some examples of this but only in the context of exhibition matches. The Yonex Legends badminton initiative has shown us glimpses of singles players such as Taufik Hidayat and Peter Gade playing doubles matches.

Back in 2017 Lee Chong Wei and Lin Dan also took on Fu Haifeng and Cai Yun in a doubles match. Full video below if you have 45 minutes to spare!

These events are obviously a great promotion for the sport and great fun for the spectators. However, the question that I think is relevant for this article is: “can professional players be successful in both disciplines?”

Can Players Be Successful In Both Singles and Doubles?

Both singles and doubles are usually played by most aspirational young players. Nearly all players have their roots in singles in some form or another. The reason being that footwork is often taught through training in the singles discipline. A singles court is also often used to train fitness and to improve retrieving skills. In the same way, playing doubles is often a method of training used for singles players to develop certain skills such as reactions.

Therefore, professional players can play both disciplines to a very high standard. However, it’s my opinion that players cannot easily change disciplines and achieve the same success in an area that is not their primary strength.

For example, Lee Chong Wei’s double’s game is extremely good. However, if he swapped to doubles midway through his career, he might have some success, but it unlikely he would be as successful as he is as a singles player. Likewise, many doubles players would struggle to reach the same heights if they switched to singles.

There are many reasons for this so I’ll go through a few below to explain why this is the case.

Natural Ability

All people have natural talents. In badminton terms, a player’s natural affinity for the sport will lie in doubles or singles. Of course, this is subject to the coaching you receive and how you are guided by your coaches. Given the right age, support, training and environment someone who is naturally a good singles player can become a world-class doubles player. So it’s not set in stone. It’s just what the player is naturally drawn to.

But at the most basic level, if a player shows promise in singles, it is logical to nurture that talent as their potential is greater than in doubles. Likewise, their peers might have the equivalent potential in doubles. Therefore the singles player may not be able to reach the same standard as their peers in doubles and vice-versa. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

Lee Yong Dae is a great example of this. Early in his career, he played singles but never really made an impact. After he specialised in doubles, history was made. His natural badminton affinity towards doubles is clear for anyone to see, having been so successful over the years.

Specialisation

If we go back a few generations, it was common to see players playing both singles and a doubles discipline. Sometimes all three! Park Joo Bong, for example, currently holds the South Korean national record of 103 consecutive wins in men’s singles from 1981 to 1984 (Wikipedia), and also is a doubles legend both in mixed and men’s. However, nowadays, it’s much rarer (if ever!) to see players play both singles and doubles in professional tournaments.

This likely to be because the game has evolved so much from those days, becoming faster, with the demands of each discipline being very different. Now we see players specialising in one or the other. This is likely to be based on the natural ability each player possesses as above.

When you specialise in one discipline over many years, it’s probably going to be difficult to break into a different discipline that other players have been putting the same effort into. It’s similar to learning an instrument. If one person plays the piano and the other violin, and they swap instruments, they might be able to read the music but it will be difficult to replicate the quality that the other can produce on their respective instrument. It would take time to get to a decent level. Something athletes simply don’t always have given the age factor in sports.

Fitness

Part of how badminton has evolved that is the fitness levels required of both disciplines is drastically different. Singles requires a higher level of endurance than doubles. Conversely, doubles requires greater stamina. In either case, both require extremely conditioned bodies tailored to each discipline. This is part of the reason playing doubles and singles in the same tournament is not really seen.

We’ve seen what happens when doubles players try to play singles. It’s exhausting! It’s a completely different game. The rallies are longer, you have to cover the whole court and opponents seem to get everything back. At the professional level, even though they are incredibly fit, the top doubles players would struggle to play singles against lower ranked singles players as their fitness is tailored to a completely different game.

Conversely, it might be a little easier for singles players to play doubles as they are covering a little less of the court. However, are they able to maintain the pace and explosiveness consistently for potentially three games? This is something they won’t be used to. The game is much faster and requires a more conditioned anaerobic system.

So all in all, whichever discipline they play, they, of course, are going to have an excellent base level of fitness. However, the fact that their fitness becomes tailored to their preferred discipline means that players might struggle to be successful in both singles and doubles.

Skill Set

Both doubles and singles require significantly different skills. Although the basic skills of both singles and doubles players will be very good (for example, footwork), some skills that singles players possess might not be constructive to doubles and vice-versa. For example, singles players often have very precise net shots. It’s relatively rare that their opponents will take the shuttle off the top of the tape as they have to consider the rest of the court.

However, in doubles, the frontcourt player can take these half chances much more often because they can rely on their partner in the rear court to cover any replies. For this reason, nets shots are far less common in doubles. Therefore the singles players strength here can’t be utilised in the same way.

On the other hand, doubles players might struggle with the footwork required of singles. They are so used to playing on a “smaller” court as their partner covers half the court in theory. If you watch the above video again of Peter Gade and Lee Yong Dae, notice how Lee Yong Dae struggles on his backhand and at the front of the court, while Peter Gade always seems to have much more time to play the shot. Peter’s footwork, at least from a single’s perspective is superior, as that’s his speciality.

Partnerships

The hardest thing about playing doubles at the highest level is probably building chemistry with a partner. It would be difficult for a singles player to move into doubles and find that relationship with another player. Often it can take several years of playing with each other before the partnership becomes established. Even if the singles player had all the necessary skills to play doubles, this would be a barrier for them.

It would be easier if we took the opposite scenario and had a doubles player who had the skills to play singles as they do not need to consider anyone else.

Tactics

This is probably not as important as the above as tactics can be learned. It’s how those tactics are implemented which might be restrictive when combined with the other factors above.

Conclusion

It would not be easy nowadays for a professional player to play both singles and doubles at an elite level. Although there’s no doubting that players are capable of playing both at a high level, it’s probably not likely that they could play one to the same standard as their primary discipline. The fact that so many players now specialise, signals to me that the differences between the two disciplines have become so great, to a point where the training, fitness levels and skill set no longer compliment both due to how the game has evolved over the years.

Please consider subscribing to my blog for more great badminton content and make sure to follow me on Instagram and Facebook for other posts and updates!

If you want 15% off Alien Pro’s awesome looking badminton grips – click here and use the code “shuttlesmash” at check out! It will help support this website and enable me to provide you with more badminton content!