Tennis Tournament Bracket

How a tennis draw works

Club and junior tournaments are single elimination: lose once and you’re out. Draws come in powers of two, so 12 players play in a 16 draw with 4 byes, and 20 players play in a 32 draw with 12 byes. Byes always go to the top seeds, who start in the second round. A draw of n players takes n − 1 matches: 15 for a full 16 draw, played over four rounds, from the first round to the quarterfinals, semifinals and final.

If every player should get at least two matches, run a double elimination draw instead: a first loss drops a player into a second bracket, and they’re only out after a second loss.

Seeding the draw

A common rule of thumb is one seed for every four players: 4 seeds in a 16 draw, 8 in a 32 draw. The seeds are placed so they meet as late as possible. Seed 1 goes at the top and seed 2 at the bottom, so they can only meet in the final, and seeds 3 and 4 go into the other two quarters.

The generator places everyone by the order of the list, standard bracket seeding all the way down: 1 plays 16, 8 plays 9, and so on. For an official-style draw, put the seeds at the top in order and the unseeded players below them in random order; the shuffle button and a drag of the seeds back to the top do it in seconds.

Sets, tiebreaks and match tiebreaks

The tennis preset is best of 3 sets. A set goes to 6 games with a 2-game lead, and at 6–6 a 7-point tiebreak decides it, written as 7–6. Many club, league and doubles events replace the third set with a 10-point match tiebreak: first to 10, win by 2. Enter it as the third set, like 10–8.

The score sheet takes whatever you type, so short formats work too: pro sets to 8 games, Fast4 sets to 4, or one set for a quick social event (choose 1 set under More options). In round robin standings, game difference counts the numbers you enter; if your league counts a match tiebreak as a single game, enter it as 1–0.

Tennis round robins: flights and social doubles

“Round robin” means two things at tennis clubs, and the generator does both.

• Flights: players of a similar level play everyone in their group. Pick round robin and groups for flights of 4 to 6; a group of 4 means three matches each, a group of 6 means five. Players are ranked by wins, then head-to-head, then set and game difference, and the top of each flight can move on to a playoff bracket.
• Social doubles: four players per court, a new partner every round, and everyone ranked on their own results rather than as a pair. Pick the rotating partners format: with 8 players on 2 courts, 7 rounds pair everyone with everyone else exactly once. It’s the same format as a pickleball round robin.

Doubles and mixed doubles

For a doubles draw, enter one pair per line, like Garcia / Okafor, and seed the pairs the same way as singles players. Mixed doubles works the same, and a club day with men’s, women’s and mixed events is simply one draw for each event. Every draw gets its own link, and players can follow all of them from the same phone.

Club box leagues

A box league puts players of a similar level into boxes of 5 or 6, and everyone plays everyone in their box over a few weeks, arranging the matches themselves. Make the boxes as groups of a round robin (up to 8 boxes and 40 players in one league), enter scores as players report them, and each box keeps its own table. At the end of the round, move the top players up a box and the bottom ones down when you set up the next league.

Courts, times and the draw sheet

Allow about 90 minutes a court for best of 3 sets with a match tiebreak. Courts & times gives every match a court and a start time, gives each player the rest you choose between matches and never schedules a match before the ones that feed it. Mark a match as now playing and everyone following sees which matches are on court.

Print makes a landscape draw sheet, up to 64 players on one page, with a QR code to the live draw. For a blank tennis draw sheet to fill in by hand, use the bracket templates.