So, for 3 lines of doubles, is the norm that weakest plays 1, middle plays 2 and strongest plays 3, or.....
Weakest plays 1, strongest plays 2 and middle plays 3?
The wildcard is that one captain has no way of knowing which pairs are going to play at which lines on the opposing team.
No, the process of deciding lineups if you are a serious captain is as follows:
- You look up the dynamic ratings of your opponent on tennis record.com or tls and rank them.
-Then you look at all the previous matches of your opponents in that season (or previous season if early in the season) and try to guess what kind of lineups orders they played in home and away matches. You try to guess what lineups they played against weak teams, strong teams etc.
- You have to keep track of what lineups you played for your team in the season as the other captain is likely analyzing it and trying to guess what you will play. So, his lineup will depend on what he thinks you will play to some extent and also based on what he likes to play. Since he doesn’t know your players actual strengths, he is likely looking at tennis record rankings and so, you have to keep track of not the actual lineup you played in each match, but the ‘perceived lineup order’ you played based on tennis record rankings.
- You try to guess the two most likely lineup orders they will play against your team.
- Then, you have a spreadsheet tool to come up with all the possible combinations you can play against those two likely lineups that give you the best possible chance of winning. For instance if all players at each line are somewhat equal in abilities, a stack will beat straight up, a double stack will beat a stack etc. Then, you can play other lineups like reverse stack, reverse-double stack etc.
- You have to make guesses based on the strength of the other team. For instance if we are playing a weak team and I guess they will play straight up or stack, I might just mirror their lineup and assume my line 1 will beat their comparable 1, my 2 will beat their 2 etc. But, if I’m playing a strong team, I might want to find a way to sacrifice my line 3 against their line 1 and win the other two lines. For the last 4.0 team I captained to Sectionals, I was successful pairing myself and my usual partner against the other team’s Line 1 in 75% of matches which is what I wanted as we were a super-strong pair at that level and we won all our regular season matches. It took a lot of guesswork to do this and it was an unconventional strategy but it worked and we won a lot of matches 3-2.
- All the above is for the three doubles lines. Unless I know for sure the other team will play straight up (based on prior record) in singles, I usually will always stack the two singles lines and hope to get at least one singles win.
- Then, you come up with the lineup order. You also have to communicate with your team throughout the season that the lineup order in each match is not an indication of what I think of each player’s playing level. If players are used only to playing for captains that play straight up, strong players might be upset about playing line 3. The weakest players may not like being sacrificed against a strong line and again you have to talk to them about it being best for the team.
- In my case, I organize doubles within the team and a singles ladder within my team a couple of days during the week and my teams have more fun playing these than our league matches where we are ’all-Business’ and focused on winning. I publish an internal list of my perception of singles and doubles ranking order within my team based on the practice matches every week. So, I’m very transparent about where I think each player ranks within my team.
- But, we have beer together after home matches and sometimes go to Pubs/bars after away matches and the socializing is fun. So, my weak players get good competition throughout the season against their team-mates and they don’t mind if they play only a few league matches and get sacrificed.
It takes me a couple of hours of preparation to do the opponent research and come up with the lineup order for each match. There are at least two or three other captains in each season who go about it the same way and it is always fun to try to out-strategize them with lineup order. I like game theory.
