Tennis handicap tournament rules

What a handicap is

A handicap is a starting score. It applies to every game of the match, and it is written as a signed number that the player carries into each of those games.

Plus means receive. A player on +30 starts every game at 30 and needs two more points to win it, so the bigger the plus, the bigger the head start.

Minus means owe. A player on -30 starts every game at -30 and works up through -15, Love, 15, 30 and 40. Zero is scratch: ordinary scoring from Love.

The reason to bother is the first round. Draw the club champion against an improver at scratch and the match is over in twenty minutes. Give the improver a handicap and it becomes a contest both of them want to play, which is why a handicap draw fills when an open one does not. If you are still choosing a format, how handicap tournaments work covers that side of it.

One thing to hold on to throughout: only the difference between the two handicaps matters. Two players on +30 start at Love all, exactly as two players on -30 do.

A note on vocabulary. "Owe" and "receive" come from real tennis, where the Tennis and Rackets Association's handicap system has run for over a century and the lower handicap marks the better player. ClubChamps uses the opposite sign: here the better player is the more negative one. This guide uses the ClubChamps convention throughout.

The handicap scale

ClubChamps runs nine values, from -50 at the strong end to +50 at the other. Each sits one step from its neighbour, and a step is 15 points, which is one point on a tennis scoreboard: Love to 15, 15 to 30, 30 to 40, 40 to game.

The gap between 40 and 50 is ten rather than fifteen, because a scoreboard has no number above 40. It is still one step and still worth one point.

These nine values are the whole scale in ClubChamps. There is no half-step and no fractional handicap, so if your club's paper system uses finer gradations, round each player to the nearest of the nine before you enter them.

How a game starts

Count the steps between the two handicaps. The receiving side moves up from Love, one point per step. Once it reaches 40 it stops, and any remaining steps push the owing side below Love instead.

Two limits fall out of that table, and both are worth saying out loud before a draw goes up. The receiving side never starts above 40, so nobody is handed a free game. The owing side never starts below -50, so eight points is the most anyone ever needs to win one game.

That is also why the last row covers two gaps at once: seven and eight steps apart produce the same board, because the scale has run out of room at both ends.

The first point is served from the deuce (right) side when the two starting scores add up to an even number of points, and from the ad (left) side when they add up to an odd number. ClubChamps shows the starting scores and the serving side on the match card, so nobody has to work it out courtside.

Setting handicaps

There is no rating feed. The organiser, or a coach, sets each player's value by hand from the nine, and ClubChamps will not publish a draw until every entrant has one.

1. Rank the entry from last year's results, the club ladder or a coach's list.
2. Put the top two or three at -30 to -50.
3. Put the bottom group at +30 to +50.
4. Spread everyone else across -15, 0 and +15.
5. Check that no first-round match is more than five steps apart. If one is, move the stronger player a step towards scratch.
6. Publish the handicaps with the draw, so players see them before they play.

The values are stored against each entry, so once the draw is made every starting score is worked out for you. That is the whole job of the format when you run a handicap knockout on ClubChamps.

Doubles

Each pair carries one handicap for the pair. The organiser enters a single value, both partners' entries carry it, and the two pairs are then netted exactly as two singles players are.

Some clubs reach the pair's number by averaging the two partners' individual handicaps, and some take the stronger partner's. That is a club convention, worked out on paper before the value is typed in. ClubChamps stores the pair value and nothing else.

Serving order and ends are unchanged. The receiving pair starts each game with points on the board, the owing pair starts behind, and either partner may serve first as usual.

Tiebreaks

The handicap is a per-game starting score, so in a tiebreak it has nothing to apply to.

Set and match tiebreaks are played level from 0-0, and ClubChamps does not adjust them. A club that wants a handicapped tiebreak can write its own rule on the rules sheet and score it by hand.

Final-set options are the same as in a normal knockout, and you pick one per draw:

• a full final set
• a 7-point tiebreak at 6-6 in the final set
• a 10-point match tiebreak in place of the final set

Adjusting between rounds

Adjusting between rounds is allowed, and after round one you know more than you did when you set the numbers.

Change a handicap after the draw is published and ClubChamps recalculates the starting scores for that player's unplayed matches. Completed results are left alone.

Two things are worth watching for:

• a 6-0 6-0 in either direction
• a player winning two rounds without dropping a set

Either is a reason to move that player one step towards scratch. Tell both players before their next match: a starting score that changes without warning is the quickest way to lose their trust in the format. Over a whole season the same judgement applies to seeds and events, which how to run a club championship covers.

A worked game and a worked set

The game

Richard Moore is on -30 and Adam Playle is on +40, which is five steps apart. Adam starts every game at 40 and needs one point. Richard starts at -30 and needs six points.

The first point is served from the ad (left) side, because the two starting scores are worth two points and three points, and five is odd.

Here is Richard taking the game:

1. First point: -15 to 40.
2. Second point: Love to 40.
3. Third point: 15 to 40.
4. Fourth point: 30 to 40.
5. Fifth point: deuce.
6. Sixth point: advantage Richard, and the game on the next one.

If Adam wins any point before deuce, the game is his. The points-to-win column counts against an opponent who wins nothing, in the same way that four points wins a game in level tennis; once both sides reach 40, the usual deuce and advantage rules take over.

The set

Every game starts the same way, at -30 to Adam's 40. The set score column reads Adam first.

Richard took two games from six points down, and Adam had to hold his nerve on a single point eight times. That is the format doing its job. Had the set reached 6-6, the tiebreak would have started 0-0.

Printable handicap chart

Print this and pin it by the court. Find the row for one player and the column for the other: the cell gives the row player's starting score first and the column player's second.

ClubChamps handicap scale

• Values: -50, -40, -30, -15, 0, +15, +30, +40, +50
• One step = 15 = one point on the board. Only the difference matters.
• 0 steps apart: Love all
• 1 step: receiver 15, owing side Love
• 2 steps: receiver 30, owing side Love
• 3 steps: receiver 40, owing side Love
• 4 steps: receiver 40, owing side -15
• 5 steps: receiver 40, owing side -30
• 6 steps: receiver 40, owing side -40
• 7 or 8 steps: receiver 40, owing side -50
• Tiebreaks are played level. Doubles: one handicap per pair.

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