I am looking for information on how to run a tennis tournement for our
yacht club at weekend events.  Most are 50 yrs plus.  We usually have
12 to 16 players. I need to know how to decide who plays who etc.

Hi shadow2:

Thanks for the interesting question. 

The following website provides excellent support for tournament design
between 6 and 24 players.

Tournament Designs
http://www.jdawiseman.com/papers/tournaments/tournaments.html#all-play-all

It supports two tournament types:

"All-Play-All: each of the players plays each of the others exactly
once"

"Carry-Over: Sometimes it happens that there are too many participants
for an all-play-all to be attempted within the allotted time. An
alternative is for the competition to be split into two all-play-all
leagues, with the top so-many from each league going through to the
second round."

If you click on the number-link that represents how many players you
actually have, you will be taken to a page containing all the
information you need to set up the tournament - including:

* Tournament Schedules
* Scoring Sheets (in several different forms)

Please have a good look at this website and let me know if there is
any more information you need. If these types of tournament do not
match what you are planning, then please provide more information
about what you are intending and I will find you more relevant
information.

Thanks. 

websearcher-ga

Search Strategy:

tournament design players
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=tournament+design+players

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Request for Answer Clarification by shadow2-ga on 22 Sep 2002 11:48 PDT

Great information.  I should have mentioned originally that we play
doubles in out tournements.  Is the same info available for doubles?

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Clarification of Answer by websearcher-ga on 22 Sep 2002 11:57 PDT

Hi shadow2:

Do your players play with the same doubles partner throughout the
tournament or do they rotate partners?

Thanks. 

websearcher-ga

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Request for Answer Clarification by shadow2-ga on 22 Sep 2002 13:22 PDT

I should have clarified that, sorry.  It is very social, so we play
with a different partner each time.

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Clarification of Answer by websearcher-ga on 22 Sep 2002 14:15 PDT

Hi shadow2:

First things first. What you are proposing is typically called an
"individual pairs" tournament. (Sometimes also referred to under the
umbrella of "Round Robin".)

I had a good look around and I couldn't find anything that "spelled
out" exactly how to arrange an "individual pairs" tournament (at least
not to the level of detail I was able to find for all-play-all and
carry-over).

The same page I sent you to before: 

http://www.jdawiseman.com/papers/tournaments/tournaments.html

has a good *mathemtatical* explanation of individual pairs tournaments
- but no detailed schedules or scoring sheets.

Basically, what that page says is that individual pairs tournaments
are very challenging to set up. Since you can't "self partner" (that
is, play by yourself in a double tennis match), this type of
tournament will only work when you have the following number of
players in total:

4,5,8,9,12,13,16,17,20,21,24,25...

and will work best if your number of players is directy divisible by
4.

Another consideration you need to keep in mind is how many courts you
want to play on at the same time. Obviously, if you stick to one
court, that would be the simplest.

I wasn't able to find a page that would show me exactly how to
organize all these different numbers of players into an individual
pairs tournament. I was, however, able to find one example of matches
played in this type of tournament (in another sport).

The 3rd CUTwC Bar Billiards Championship
http://www.cus.cam.ac.uk/~mf205/bb.html

This tournament assumes 8 players on two "courts" simultaneously. That
means that each row of the table lists all 8 players (no overlap).

What you could do with your tournament is make sure that you have 8,
16, or 24 players and then split them into sets of 8. [You could
choose some parameter to split them by - e.g., age, talent, random.]
For each set of 8 you could substitute your names for those in this
table.

Driscoll -> player #1
Hopgood ->  player #2
Sage ->     player #3
Horton ->   player #4
Barrrie ->  player #5 
Fayers ->   player #6
Barrie ->   player #7
Garrard ->  player #8

After the sets of 8 finish their schedules, you might want to pit the
winners of the various sets against each other in a finals.

That's all the suggestions I have for you on this type of tournament
layout. I hope that this helps you out.

Have fun!

websearcher-ga

Search Strategy:

tournament "individual pairs"
://www.google.com/search?q=tournament+%22individual+pairs%22&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&start=20&sa=N

tournament design "round robin" doubles
://www.google.com/search?q=tournament+design+%22round+robin%22+doubles&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&start=10&sa=N

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Request for Answer Clarification by shadow2-ga on 22 Sep 2002 18:14 PDT

Thanks, Great job.  I should be able to work something out.

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Clarification of Answer by websearcher-ga on 22 Sep 2002 18:17 PDT

You're most welcome. :-)

websearcher-ga

Great help.