Pickleball

[dhhume]

Hi;

I'm charged with creating a tournament for our area pickleball group.  In the past, we'd have 15-30 participants in two skill levels, with 8 courts available and about four hours to hold the courts.  We'd been using an excellent source from a local member that presumed doubles play only, each entrant playing five games in a preliminary sort of partial round robin, then a typical championship single elimination.  

Our problem is: we now are trying to play three skill divisions, still only 8 courts, and about four hours time limit.  Our current scheduling plans require each player to play five matches during rotation play.  We've alloted 10 minutes for each preliminary round, five minute rest between rounds.  Now, as the sport popularity grows, we're encountering greatly increased participation.  Last month we had 23 entries in one division and, though we had great competition, we also ended at nearly seven hours of play.

I suppose my real question is: can anyone direct me to resources to plan rotating play in which each player partners with another player each round, each player plays four matches during rotation play, only a maximum of three courts are available, ten minutes per rotation match, five minute rest period, and somewhere around three hours of play, allowing additional time, then, for champsionship single elimination play.  Obviously we can't achieve true round robin with this many players, but what is the most equitable way to treat players with these limits of courts, time, and near equalization of player experience at four matches in the rotation?  It appears we may have to deal with up to 25 players in one particular skill level division.

I hope this is not too convoluted, but I'm starting to feel the number of permutations rise fast!

Thanks for any help or advice.

Dave

[Ian Wakeling]

It is difficult to give advice without knowing the exact number of players, so you should probably look for some software for tennis doubles.  This is one free option.

24 players would be a good number to schedule for.  For example you could use the following:

  (15 11  9  7) ( 2  8 22 24) (18  1 21 17) (16 10  4  5) (12 19 23 20) ( 3  6 13 14)
  (13 12  7  8) ( 3  9 23 22) (16  2 19 18) (17 11  5  6) (10 20 24 21) ( 1  4 14 15)
  (14 10  8  9) ( 1  7 24 23) (17  3 20 16) (18 12  6  4) (11 21 22 19) ( 2  5 15 13)
  (17 19  7 14) (13 20  4 22) ( 3 15 12 21) ( 8 16  1 11) ( 5 18 24  9) (10  6  2 23)
  (18 20  8 15) (14 21  5 23) ( 1 13 10 19) ( 9 17  2 12) ( 6 16 22  7) (11  4  3 24)
  (16 21  9 13) (15 19  6 24) ( 2 14 11 20) ( 7 18  3 10) ( 4 17 23  8) (12  5  1 22)

where each round of 6 games could be split into 2 mini rounds played on the 3 courts available to you.  No matter how you assign each group of 4 players to
2 vs 2, you will always end up with each player having 6 different partners, and 12 different opponents, with no overlap between partners and opponents.

If there were only 2 courts available, you could just use the first four rounds, splitting each in to 3 mini-rounds.