Organizing a company tennis tournament, advice needed

calamansi

New User
First, the relevant parameters:
  • We will have 6-8 courts for around 4-4.5 hours.
  • We will also have 3 distinct skill levels, e.g. beginners (first-timers), intermediate (few-timers), and advanced (competitive experience).
  • In terms of number of participants, anywhere from 50 to 125. We can limit the number of signups as necessary.
  • We do need to foster 'teaming' and 'networking' so we will have to embrace some kind of team tennis format.
Very preliminarily, I'm thinking:
  • For each skill level, we'd split players into teams.
  • We'd then have a round robin phase, followed by a knock-out phase.
  • For each match-up, we'd have something like 1 singles line and 2 doubles lines.
  • Each line would play something like 6 games max, no ad.
  • Team members can sub themselves in and out during each line, similar to WTT, but only to an extent, so as to avoid a situation where only the best players on a team are playing all the matches.
Any thoughts, suggestions, and/or red flags? How many participants do you think we would be able to accommodate if we adopt the above format, given the number of courts we have and how much time we have them for? Ultimately, we want the pace of the day to be just right, so that participants don't feel they have to rush through their matches, but conversely, also so they aren't sitting around for too many long stretches of time.

Thanks in advance!
 

kingcheetah

Hall of Fame
I think it'd be fun if you had teams with players from each skill level, but with enough so that they can sub... would let people intermingle more.
 

tennis_ocd

Hall of Fame
hmmm. interesting. Off the top of my head I like the idea of the organizer creating teams and playing a tourney based on WTT set-up.
 

calamansi

New User
Timed matches, no-ad scoring

I think it'd be fun if you had teams with players from each skill level, but with enough so that they can sub... would let people intermingle more.

hmmm. interesting. Off the top of my head I like the idea of the organizer creating teams and playing a tourney based on WTT set-up.

Thanks, guys.

awjack -- Can you expand a little on how you would enforce timed matches? I'm assuming you're suggesting we give each 'match' a time limit within which to finish, but what happens if time runs out and they're still playing? The other thing I would like to avoid is having to police/monitor each match to make sure they are keeping pace. I have a small team of 4-6 people helping and I'm sure they will already be pulled in multiple other directions on the day of.
 

awjack

New User
Essentially what we did is try to divide the large group up into 4 teams. From there, try to put similar level doubles pairs together and have TEAM A play TEAM B. TEAM A Top pair play TEAM B Top Pair down to the weakest . Matches are 30 minutes. At the end of time, finish your up your game. Pace isn't typically and issue. So if TEAM A wins 5 courts and TEAM B wins 2 courts, TEAM A Wins. There is an issue if a court is winning 3-2 but is on serve but we decided that since its for fun we'd be ok with that. TEAM C plays TEAM D, and so on. The extra court can be a couple of courts playing 31 or some fun drills that don't require much oversight. The down time can be used to eat, drink and socialize.

You can also do a single point tournament which is always fun. Put everyone in a bracket. Spin for serve, play one point, winner advances.
 

calamansi

New User
Essentially what we did is try to divide the large group up into 4 teams. From there, try to put similar level doubles pairs together and have TEAM A play TEAM B. TEAM A Top pair play TEAM B Top Pair down to the weakest . Matches are 30 minutes. At the end of time, finish your up your game. Pace isn't typically and issue. So if TEAM A wins 5 courts and TEAM B wins 2 courts, TEAM A Wins. There is an issue if a court is winning 3-2 but is on serve but we decided that since its for fun we'd be ok with that. TEAM C plays TEAM D, and so on. The extra court can be a couple of courts playing 31 or some fun drills that don't require much oversight. The down time can be used to eat, drink and socialize.

You can also do a single point tournament which is always fun. Put everyone in a bracket. Spin for serve, play one point, winner advances.

Ahhhh, thanks awjack. I don't know why I never thought of that particular angle for enforcing time limits before. Definitely an option for us to consider.
 

Dags

Hall of Fame
Can you expand a little on how you would enforce timed matches? I'm assuming you're suggesting we give each 'match' a time limit within which to finish, but what happens if time runs out and they're still playing? The other thing I would like to avoid is having to police/monitor each match to make sure they are keeping pace.
I've played in club tournaments where there was a buzzer - egg timer or app on your phone - that sounds when time is up. It was loud enough for everyone to hear it, but the organiser would also call out to make sure. We played games - no sets - until the time was up, and discounted any part-finished game (a bit harsh if you're 40-0, but them's the rules). Total games were then used for overall scoring.

There's also a couple of handicap systems if required.

i. If you know the relative strengths of players, you can put them into three grades, say advanced, intermediate and beginner. If two players of the same grade play each other, games start as normal. If an advanced player is up against an intermediate, the intermediate starts each game at 15-0. Advanced vs beginner and the handicap is 30-0. Intermediate - beginner 15-0.

ii. Matches start with the first game as normal. If player A wins the first game, they start the second game 15-0 down. If player A loses the second game, the third game is back at 0-0; if they win the second game, the third game starts 30-0.

In both cases, we tend to cap it so that 30-0 is the biggest handicap; 40-0 is a bit tough unless you have any pros in the ranks!
 

anubis

Hall of Fame
I play in a company sponsored league. All matches are 8 game prosets. if it is tied at 8 games all, play a 10 point tie breaker. Full ad scoring.

Simple.

As to levels, organize one or two "practice" sessions with everyone. Observe their skills. Rank them appropriately and pool together like for like rankings so everyone has fun. Don't stick a 4.0 with a 2.0. If someone is holding the racquet upside down, then put them in the "I don't care what you do, I don't care if you're even playing tennis" court. Let everyone else have fun.
 

Dags

Hall of Fame
Theres 4 hours of court time, these formats will extend the length of a match massively if you dont go timed.
Ye, those formats were all things we did within the timed constraints. With that many participants, I think timed is far easier to manage as all courts start and stop simultaneously. Players know when they'll be on, and everyone gets equal court time. If competition was the main goal I'd have a different opinion, but it sounds like the aim is more business interaction.

As to levels, organize one or two "practice" sessions with everyone.
If it's anything like the companies I've worked for, good luck with that! My experience is that people will turn up for an event, but anything more is optimistic.
 

tennis_ocd

Hall of Fame
I read 100 sign-ups as being more a social event vs. anything resembling a tennis tourney. As such I'd lean drastically on the side of fun, social interactions vs. any type of real match play.
 

stapletonj

Hall of Fame
Think of creative contests like golf tourneys do, closest to the pin, longest drive, longest putt, etc.

fast serve competition, hit the cone target with 10 tries from the ball machine, fun stuff that is tennis related. even who can stack the most balls on their racket!
 

goran_ace

Hall of Fame
I've run socials at the club I used to work at for adults and children, but we'd have a staff of like 10 people for these things because you may only need 2-4 pros on the court but you need other people behind the scenes and in the clubhouse to keep things running smoothly - e.g. food, keeping time, clean up, etc. Do you have anyone to help you run the event?

If you want organized matchplay the format you gotta go doubles to get as many people on the court as you can at a time. Also, forget about playing out a whole set, keep it simple like play x games with your partner or set the timer for 30 minutes and then either rotate partners on the court or have winners move up and losers move down so everyone gets to play a bunch of different people. We would split the group into 2 by skill level and only have them play people within their group so teams are relatively close. You just want to avoid situations like pairing a 4.0 player with a 2.0, or worse 4.0 against 2.0 - that's no fun for either player even in a social environment. The A group would play on 3 courts, and the B group would play on the other 3 courts. It's hard to do a tournament format and keep everyone engaged so we might do things like track total # games won and hand out prizes for top 3 and something for the person who came in last.

Another format you could do is run it like a junior clinic for the first half with some warm up drills of people moving court to court with light instruction, then get into some games like around the world, finish up with some doubles king of the court or beat the pro. Then there's a snack break and leave the second half for open doubles play, pick your own partner, any format, no prizes. The competitive people will always find each other, the hit and giggle people same thing, and the non-tennis players can just socialize off court and aren't forced to have to be on court.

hit the cone target with 10 tries from the ball machine

Cones can actually be tough to hit for even advanced players. Like the idea, but give them bigger targets like lay down multiple hula hoops all over the court and put a prize in the middle of the hoop. So the people who are less skilled still have a chance at winning something even if you have a bunch of small prizes out there and then maybe a couple big ones that will bring out the competitive juices (e.g. throw in a couple 'mystery envelopes' as the prize knowing that they may contain gift cards of varying value all the way up to PTO days).
 

stapletonj

Hall of Fame
Bigger targets are a great idea.
My coach used to set up 4 or 5 big cones side by side to approximate this.
I even made a board with bells on it that would ring when you hit it.
 

LetsPlayFBI

New User
I'd do a clinic court and no ad round robin play on the other courts so people can mix and match depending on their playing levels and needs.
 
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