How to run a tennis club championship

Which events to run

A club championship is a set of events, not one draw. Run the ones you can fill this year, and add the rest when the entry numbers justify them.

Three or four events in year one is plenty. Six draws of 8 are harder to run than three draws of 16: every extra draw is another set of deadlines to chase, another final to fit into finals day, and one more thin field that produces a champion nobody quite believes in.

Doubles pairs enter as a pair, with both names on the entry. Leave a line on the form for players who want a partner and match them up yourself before the draw is made. That is usually worth another four or five pairs.

A plate costs you almost nothing and doubles the tennis for everyone knocked out first time, so add one to every singles draw of 12 or more.

Set a minimum entry for each event and say so on the form. An event with fewer than six entries gets folded into another draw or dropped and the fees refunded, which is far easier to explain in April than a three-player event run out of politeness in July.

The season calendar

The calendar is the championship. Fix every date before entries open and publish it with the entry form, and you will spend the summer running matches rather than answering questions about when things are due.

Work backwards from finals day. Pick that date first, count the rounds your biggest draw needs, then give each round two weeks in spring and three across the school holidays.

Leave two spare weeks before finals day. Injuries, holidays and rain will take them, and a championship that has to move its finals day loses half its audience.

When a round slips, move the deadline for that round only and hold every later date. A calendar that moves once moves again, and it is the players who did play on time who end up waiting.

Club championship format

The standard club championship format is a single-elimination knockout for each event, with a plate for the players who lose in the first round. Draws are 8, 16 or 32: the bracket is the next power of two at or above the number of entries, and the lines left over become byes. Byes go to the seeds first, then spread evenly through the rest of the draw.

One event runs like this:

1. Entries close and the field is counted.
2. Seeds are set.
3. The draw is made and published, with a deadline on every round.
4. Each round is played by its deadline, with the two players arranging the date between them.
5. First-round losers drop into the plate, which runs alongside the main draw.
6. Both finals are played on finals day.

A men's singles with 22 entries therefore goes into a 32 bracket: 22 players, 10 byes, and the ten highest seeds each begin in round two.

The plate is not a lesser draw. For a good number of your entries it is the reason they entered at all, so publish it in the same place as the main draw, give it the same round deadlines, and play its final on finals day.

Two alternatives are worth knowing. An event with only 5 to 7 entries runs better as a round-robin group feeding its top two into a knockout, because a draw that small gives half the field a single match. A club that would rather have regular tennis all season than one match a fortnight can run a box league as its championship and crown the winner of the top box.

Read the club championship explainer for the format on its own terms. To run a knockout on ClubChamps you set the seeds in tiers and the byes are placed for you, each round carries its own deadline with reminders, and the plate is a toggle on the draw rather than a second event you have to build. For a one-off event that is not the championship, how to run a tennis club tournament covers choosing a format and running it end to end.

Seeding the draws

Seed about a quarter of each draw. Seed more than that and you are predicting results; seed fewer and your two best players can meet in round one.

Take your evidence in this order: last year's championship results, then a coach's ranking, then the club ladder or a rating. Any of them beats a committee argument, and writing down which one you used ends the argument next year as well.

Draw the unseeded lines by lot, in public if you can manage it. Byes go to the seeds in order, so seed 1 takes the first bye, seed 2 the next, and any left over are spread evenly. In a 16 draw with 13 entries that means three byes, one each to seeds 1, 2 and 3, with every other line drawn out of a hat.

Entry fees

The fee pays for balls for the finals, engraving the trophies and the tea on finals day. Whatever you charge, publish what it buys on the entry form.

Collect it before the draw is made, not after. Chasing £5 from a player who has already lost in round one is the worst job in the club, and it is the job that puts people off organising next year.

Online entry takes the fee at registration, so nobody chases cash and you know the field is real before you seed it. A knockout on ClubChamps carries a small per-player entry fee, paid by card at the point of entry.

Match rules

Publish the match rules with the draw, on one page, and there is nothing left to argue about in August. Pin the same page in the clubhouse for the members who never open the email.

Pick one final-set rule for the whole championship. Two draws playing different lengths is the quickest route to a disputed result and a committee email.

Shorter formats are legitimate for an event that has to fit a fixed window. Fast4 and timed sets are both covered by the LTA guide to running internal club competitions, and either will get a full round played in one evening.

On ClubChamps the final set is set per draw: a full set, a 7-point tiebreak, or a 10-point match tiebreak.

Walkovers and withdrawals

Publish this rule set before round one, and apply it the same way every time.

1. A match not played by its deadline is decided by the organiser on evidence of effort, and messages count as evidence.
2. The walkover goes to the player who offered at least two dates.
3. If neither player offered dates, both are scratched and the next round has a bye.
4. A withdrawal after the draw is published gives the next opponent a walkover, and the draw is never reshuffled.
5. A withdrawal before round one has been played lets the organiser put a reserve into that line.
6. A retirement during a match is a win for the opponent at the score reached.

Put all of this in the entry email as well as the rules sheet. Nobody minds losing a match to the calendar if they knew the rule in April.

ClubChamps records walkovers and retirements against the match, so the bracket moves on the day you decide rather than the day someone gets round to redrawing it.

Finals day

Finals day is the one day of the championship that looks like an event. Treat it as a club day: an order of play people can read, somewhere to sit, and food at the end. Publish the schedule a week ahead and tell every finalist their time twice.

1. Plates first, then mixed, then the doubles, with the singles finals last.
2. Two courts and staggered starts, so no final waits on a court that is still in play.
3. A scorer or an umpire for each singles final.
4. New balls for every final.
5. The presentation immediately after the last final, while everybody is still there.
6. Food.

Ask two members who are not playing to run the day: one on the order of play and the courts, one on the food and the presentation. An organiser who is also in a final can do neither job well.

The honours board

Record the winner, the runner-up and the score for every event, every year. A championship with ten years of names on the wall is a different thing from one that starts again each April.

• Winner and runner-up, named as members would recognise them
• The final score
• The event and the year
• The plate winner, on the same board or beside it

Keep the same list on the club website. The board is for the clubhouse; the website is where a member checks who won in 2019. ClubChamps keeps a public honours page for every event, so last year's champions are a link you can send rather than a photograph of a wall. Photograph the physical board each September as well, and the record survives the next refurbishment.

Season calendar template

Copy this into your committee minutes or the entry email, fill in the dates, and the championship is published.

[Club name] Club Championship [Year]

• Events: men's singles, ladies' singles, men's doubles, ladies' doubles, mixed doubles, plate
• Entry fee: £[amount] per event, paid at entry
• Entries open: [date]
• Entries close: [date]
• Draws published: [date]
• Round 1 deadline: [date]
• Round 2 deadline: [date]
• Quarter-finals deadline: [date]
• Semi-finals deadline: [date]
• Finals day: [date], from [time], courts [numbers]
• Match format: best of three sets, match tiebreak to 10 at one set all
• Unplayed matches: walkover to the player who offered two dates, both scratched otherwise
• Organiser: [name], [phone]

Copy