How to run a single elimination tennis tournament

When you set out to run a tournament, the first call is single or double elimination. As the names suggest, single elimination sends first-round losers home, while double elimination gives them a second bracket to fall into. Although, we don't want to call players losers at all, but oh well.

If all you want is a champion crowned by the end of the day, go for the single elimination draw. It's plain knockout: little drama, runs quickly, winners keep playing until one is left standing. Just know going in that half the field loses in the first round and goes home, so say it plainly before the tournament starts.

What single elimination is

An entry is a single player in singles, or a fixed pair in doubles (locked partners for the whole event), same as any bracket. The entries play down until one is left standing: the champion. With N entries there are N − 1 matches to play, because every match knocks exactly one player out. The rounds stack up in powers of two.

As the table shows, 4 players is 3 matches over 2 rounds; 16 players is 15 matches over 4.

The draw is powers of two

That clean rounds-and-matches math only works when the field is a power of two: 4, 8, 16, 32. In reality sign-ups land on 6, or 11, or 13. You need a way to handle a count that isn't a power of two.

The answer is a bye. The generator rounds the draw up to the next power of two and fills the empty slots with byes. A bye is a free pass through the first round: the player paired with one sits out round one and walks straight into round two. 6 players rounds up to an 8 draw, which leaves 2 byes: 2 players skip round one, the other 4 play, and by round two you're back to a clean field of 4.

Then you decide who gets them. The generator follows the tennis world here: byes go to the top seeds, on the assumption the seeding reflects skill. When the sign-ups don't carry any play history (say the top seed just goes to whoever entered first), seed by hand where you know the players and go random where you don't.

And you don't need backup players on standby the way some social events do. A short field just means a few more byes.

Seed it so the final isn't decided in round one

Seeding is tricky. Drop the entries into the bracket in whatever order they signed up and it could land the two best players in the very first match, and one of them goes home after the first round. That can leave lower-quality matches for the next few rounds.

Ideally you want to keep the strong players apart so they meet late instead of early, or not until the final. The generator uses standard tournament seeding to do it: the top seed goes to the top of the draw, the second seed anchors the opposite half, and the rest slot in so the best players sit in different quarters. The highest seed always draws against the lowest, on down the line, so the round-one matchups are the most lopsided ones on purpose. Rank the players by hand if you need to.

Rules and scoring

Match length is the thing to manage against the courts and the clock:

• a full match, 2 out of 3 sets
• a pro set: first to 8 or 9 games with a tiebreak
• a regular set: first to 6 games, win by 2, tiebreak at 6-all
• a short set: first to 4 games, tiebreak at 3-all

Here's the move a knockout gives that a round robin doesn't: the rounds don't all have to run at the same length. Start short and finish long. Run short sets in the early rounds when the draw is fat and you've got a lot of matches to clear, then stretch to a full match for the semis and final. Big field, quick opening, and still a final worth watching. That's the best of it.

When building the draw in Brackets, pick the scoring option to match: Standard for a set-by-set score like 6-4, 6-3, Flexible for a straight games count like 8-5. Then you just enter what the players actually played.

Whatever you land on, settle it before the first ball: match length, no-ad or regular deciding points. Print it, hand it out. Save yourself time.

On the day

The good news about a knockout is that it barely cares when someone flakes. In a round robin a single drop-out means rebuilding the whole grid. In single elimination, a no-show is nothing: the opponent advances. The bracket rolls on as planned, no need to change anything during the tournament. Give latecomers a short grace window, and if they miss their first match, it's a walkover to the other player and the day keeps moving.

Single elimination is brutal on early losers, and you don't want that to put players off signing up. Even after a first-round loss, there's a way to keep them playing. Three fixes, in rough order of effort:

• Turn on the consolation bracket. In Brackets it's a single checkbox, "Enable consolation bracket (first-round losers keep playing)." Everyone who loses in round one drops into a second draw and gets more tennis out of the trip. Cheapest possible fix, and it's built in.
• Run a compass draw instead. It's a format designed from the ground up to guarantee everyone several matches no matter when they lose, at the cost of being a bit more to explain. If second chances are the whole point of your day, start there; the format page lays it out.
• Give everyone a full second life with double elimination. Nobody's out until they've lost twice, so a first-round loss just sends a player to a second bracket, not home. It's the fairest answer and close to double the matches; worth its own guide.

Crown the champion

Get the draw right and the knockout runs itself. Size it to the next power of two, seed it so your best players meet late, hand the byes to the top of the sheet, pick a scoring format that fits your court times, and give the early losers somewhere to keep playing. After that it's just playing tennis.

And that's the part you set the day up for. Let Brackets size the draw, seed it, and sort the byes. Let the paperwork run itself, and you get to watch the tennis with a coffee in hand.