Adapting competition formats
(By James Newman - ITF)
Adapting for Teams
Team events are recommended for starter players, especially for those aged 9 years and under.
It may be easier to choose pre-prepared team formats for your players, visit http://www.tennisplayandstay.com/competitions/team-formats.html to find team formats you could use. Team leagues that run over a number of weeks or months can be especially popular with players young and old.
CREATING TEAMS
Depending on the format, you can have any number of teams so long as you have enough players and courts. You can have any number of players in each team, though some formats are best suited to between 4-6 players per team.
Quick Cones (see Example A below) can be run with just two teams with as many players as you want. Team Round Robin (see Example B below) works best with 4 players per team and usually has 4-6 teams.
With most formats you should ensure each team is as even as possible in terms of ability – avoid putting all the best players in one team and all the lowest ability players in another.
If you have a wide range of skill levels, you could consider running 2 events side-by-side with the lower ability players in one event and the higher ability players in another.
Match Formats
There are 2 main ways that team matches can be played:
1. Players play alongside their team-mates
Players play with their team-mates against other teams, for example Reds v Blues could feature Red players playing all or a selection of the Blue players and the team who win the most matches wins. See Quick Cones (Example A) for an example of this type of format.
2. Players play individually, away from their team-mates
Players play matches individually but earn points or wins for their team. This could be a series of singles or doubles matches against players from other teams and each player records individually how many points or wins they earn. This gets added to their teams total. The team with the most combined points wins the event. See Team Round Robin (Example B).
How to Win
There are a number of ways a team can win, most common ways of deciding the winner are:
- Team with most matches won (eg Reds won 7 matches, beating Yellows and Blues)
- Team with most points won (eg Reds won 39 points in 3 matches, Greens won 33 in 3 matches, Yellows won 21 in 3 matches and Blues won 19 in 3 matches)
Points and wins can be based on players earning points alongside their team mates or by playing individually and having their total added to their team’s total at the end (see MATCH FORMATS above).