Organising a Tournament

 

Club Tournaments

 

If you are planning to organise a Tournament in your Club for the first time they are a few things you should take into consideration:

  • How many courts are available?
    This number may not necessarily be all the Club courts, because they may be other activities on like coaching, leagues or social nights.

  • How long will the tournament be?

  • What type of draw will you use?
    Although the ideal type of draw is one that provides more than one match per player, like the round robin or compass draw, you may have to use a knock out draw if the number of entries is high, the number of courts available is low or you are running it in only 2 days. The ITF has produced a very good book called ITF Competition Formats Manual (1999 Crespo and Miley) with a wealth of information on tournament formats and types of draws. You will also find some useful information in the ITF Play & Stay website.

  • What format will the matches be?
    If time and court availability are a problem it may be better to have third set champion tie-break or shorter sets.

  • How much help will you need?
    If you are running a junior tournament you will need much more than if you are running a senior one.

You may find some useful documents in the downloads link on the RESOURCES PAGE.

 

 

Tennis Ireland Sanctioned Tournaments

 

T.I. sanctioned tournaments have to be run under the Tennis Ireland Rules and Regulations for Tournaments (document available on the Rules and Regulations link on the left panel of this page). They are graded and count for player ranking points. The organizers have to send results to Leinster Branch within 3 days of the completion of the tournament.

If you wish to run a T.I. sanctioned tournament you will have to apply for a permit to the Leinster Branch of Tennis Ireland before the 31st of August of the previous year using the Tournament Application Form. You will find it and extra resources in the download link.

 

Levels of Tournaments

T100

  • Entry level tournament
  • Players must be ranked outside the top 50
  • entry accepted by time of entry
  • Compass Draw
  • One Day Event
  • 4 Matches with a draw of 16
  • Each match is one SHORT SET (First to 4 and win by 2, full games, Champ tiebreak at 4-4)

T200

  • Players must be ranked outside the top 30
  • Entry accepted by time of entry
  • Compass Draw
  • Two Day Event
  • 4 Matches with draw of 16
  • Each Match is best of 3 FAST FOUR sets (First to 4, tiebreak to 5 at 3-3, first point after deuce, Third set champ tiebreak to 10 with sudden death at 9-9)

T500

  • Entry accepted by ranking
  • Elimination Draw
  • Max of 2 matches per day
  • All matches 2 sets and Championship tiebreak for the deciding set

 

T1000

  • Entry accepted by ranking
  • Elimination Draw with Plate event
  • Max of 1 match per day
  • All matches best of 3 full sets

 

T1500

  • National Event
  • Entry accepted by ranking
  • Elimination Draw with Plate event
  • Max of 1 match per day
  • All matches best of 3 full sets