[tennisbiz] Re: Suggestions for determining mixed doubles pairings?
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Daniel, As already suggested it will be difficult to use a 2-3 hour fun
session with just 2 courts and 16 players as a good guide for selection
purposes. I believe that in general it is better to focus such a session on
the FUN aspect as unfortunately that is the first thing that goes out the
window when a competitive element is introduced.
One thing you could do though is to make sure the matches you schedule for
your fun tourney attempt to match up players by skill level. Presumably you
already have some idea of the skill levels of the players. By making sure
that your matches are relatively even you will at least get an idea of how
players are performing against others of similar skill. Similarly you will
get some feel for partnerships. The best part is that evenly matched games
are also the most FUN which is what everyone wants. Too many lopsided
matches are the quickest turn off for most players.
However, running a mixer style event that takes into account skill levels is
not easy. You may like to take a look at a program that I have written
called Double Happy which is specifically designed for mixer events. It has
a feature that allows you to group players by skill and then ensures that
the players generally play with, or against, other players of similar skill.
You can see and try it at www.promato.com/doublehappy
Chris Raynes
Topspin Systems
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Received on Mon Jun 02 2003 - 08:53:32 CDT
