Tennis round robin formats for 4 to 16 players

Give each player a number before the first ball. Any order works, including a draw from a hat. In singles, if you want the two strongest players to meet in the last round, number them 1 and 2: in every singles table below, 1 v 2 comes last.

You don't need a round robin generator for these group sizes. The tables below are what a generator would print, already checked.

Find your player count, print the table, and post it by the courts. Rows are rounds and columns are courts. When a round ends, players look at the next row and head to their court. Nobody has to work out who plays next. Nobody ends up booked on two courts at once, either.

An odd group gets a bye column in singles and a sits out column in doubles. Each player rests once. Hand the resting player the scorecard.

These tables use the circle method. Player 1 stays put, and everyone else moves one place around a circle after each round. For an odd count, add an imaginary player: whoever draws the imaginary player that round has the bye.

Singles round robin for 4 players

Singles round robin for 5 players

Singles round robin for 6 players

Singles round robin for 7 players

Singles round robin for 8 players

Singles round robin for 10 players

Singles round robin for 12 players

A count that isn't listed works the same way. For 9 or 11 players, add an imaginary 10th or 12th player, use the 10 or 12 table, and treat every match against that number as a bye. Past 12 singles players, one evening won't hold it: split the group into two round robins by level.

Doubles takes more planning than singles. A doubles round robin with rotating partners has a stricter target: every player partners every other player exactly once. The tables below hit that target and one more: each player also faces every other player exactly twice.

Not every group size allows it. Each doubles game uses up two partnerships, so the number of possible partnerships has to be even. Six players can form 15 different partnerships. That's an odd number, so no rotation can pair everyone once. Seven and ten fail the same way, with 21 and 45. The counts that work are multiples of 4 and one more than a multiple of 4. Thirteen works too, but this page tables 4, 5, 8, 9, 12 and 16:

Read a cell like 1 & 2 v 3 & 4 as players 1 and 2 partnering against players 3 and 4. For 16 players, the program confirmed that each of the 120 possible partnerships appears exactly once, and that each player meets each of the other 15 across the net exactly twice.

Doubles rotation for 4 players

Doubles rotation for 5 players

Doubles rotation for 8 players

Doubles rotation for 9 players

Doubles rotation for 12 players

Doubles rotation for 16 players

What to do with 6, 7 or 10 doubles players

Switch to fixed pairs and treat each pair as one entry. Ten players make five pairs: use the 5-player singles table, with each number standing for a pair. Six players make three pairs, which takes three rounds on one court: pair 1 v pair 2, then 1 v 3, then 2 v 3, with the third pair resting each time. Seven players can't split into pairs at all. Play singles that night with the 7-player table, or call an eighth.

Mixed doubles round robin for 4 men and 4 women

In mixed doubles, each team is one man and one woman. Number the men 1 to 4 and letter the women A to D.

Each man partners each woman once. Every man faces every other man across the net at least once, and every woman faces every other woman.

Four rounds can't balance everything. A schedule can have each man face each woman exactly once, but then some players never meet a same-gender player across the net: we checked all 46,656 schedules where everyone partners each player of the other gender once. This one keeps the same-gender meetings, so each man faces one woman twice and one not at all.

For five or six couples, use fixed mixed pairs and the singles table for that number of entries, with each number standing for a pair. Three couples follow the three-pair pattern above.

If you play no-ad scoring, the ITF rules settle who receives the deciding point in mixed: the player of the same gender as the server. The receiving team can't swap positions for it.

Before you print a table, check that it fits the evening. The time is the number of slots times the length of a slot. A slot runs from the start of one round to the start of the next, so it includes warm-up and walking time. The rule: slots equal the rounds, or the matches divided by your courts and rounded up, whichever is larger.

When you have enough courts for every match in a round at once, the slots are simply the rounds. That means one court for every two singles players, or every four doubles players, rounded down. With fewer courts, the slots become the total matches divided by your courts, rounded up. Some players will wait a slot between matches.

The tables below use a 30-minute slot as the worked example. Use your own number. At 45 minutes a slot, multiply every time by one and a half. Each slot count in the "on 2 courts" columns matches a real schedule the program built.

Singles: time and courts

Doubles: time and courts

Look at the eight-player rows. Eight singles players on two courts need 14 slots, seven hours at 30 minutes. The same eight people playing doubles on the same two courts finish in seven slots, three and a half hours. Twelve singles players take five and a half hours even on six courts. For one evening, cap singles at six or eight players, or switch to doubles.

Which scoring formats fit a 30-minute slot?

A full best-of-three match won't fit a 30-minute slot. Pick a short format and announce it before the first ball. Tournaments have to: the ITF rules require an event to announce its set format in advance, and the USTA requires notice for no-ad scoring, short sets and pro sets.

A timed match fits a fixed slot best, because it can't run over. When the time runs out, record the games each side won. A game still in progress doesn't count. That number feeds straight into the ranking below. Short sets and pro sets give cleaner results. They also finish at different times, and the slot has to fit the slowest court.

Decide the ranking rule before the first ball and print it under the schedule. There are two common ways to do it.

A three-way tie is harder, because it can go in a circle: player 1 beat 2, 2 beat 3, and 3 beat 1. The USTA works through these steps in order, and breaks as many ties as it can at each step before moving to the next:

The same regulation covers three situations that cause arguments. A match tiebreak played instead of a third set counts as one set and one game. A player whose opponent withdraws, retires or doesn't show up gets the win, but only completed sets and games count toward the percentages. And the player who withdrew, retired or didn't show finishes below everyone with the same match record.

A round robin starts with a fixed group and ends when the last round does. For a club night, that's what you want. It becomes a problem once the group wants to keep playing next week. Nobody can join halfway through, and a player who misses the evening leaves holes in everyone else's results.

A ladder doesn't end. Players sit on numbered rungs and send a challenge to someone up to five rungs above them. The player challenged has five days to respond, then the two have thirty days to play. New players can join while it runs, and the whole group never has to be on court at the same time. How a ladder works explains the full sequence, and the rules list the deadlines. Three of the short formats above are among the six formats a ladder on Deuce Ladder can accept: short sets to four, the eight-game pro set, and best of three with a match tiebreak to 10 as the third set. No-ad scoring is an option inside any of them.

Group size matters too. On one evening, a round robin handles four to about a dozen players. A ladder starts at ten players you can name. With fewer than that, a round robin or a hitting group serves you better, and the ladder application says so. To see the match volume a ladder of your size would produce, try the ladder simulator.

Deuce isn't the right fit in two common cases. If your group rotates doubles partners every week, a ladder on Deuce is the wrong shape: doubles ladders rank fixed pairs, and rotating partners aren't built. For that group, the doubles tables above do the job better. If every player needs a defined opponent list, a box league supplies one. It still cannot guarantee that everyone plays; our box league rules guide explains the unplayed-match policies. Our comparison sets the formats side by side.

If your Tuesday round robin has ten or more regulars who'd also play between club nights, a ladder can run beside it.

Start a ladder

Rules documents, checked October 14, 2026:

• ITF Rules of Tennis 2026, Rules 5 and 6 and Appendix VI, alternative procedures and scoring methods
• USTA Friend at Court 2026, Regulation I.E.4 (pro sets), Regulation II.B.6 (round robin), and the glossary

Every schedule on this page was generated and checked by our program on October 14, 2026: each singles pair meets once, each doubles player partners every other player once and faces each one twice, and each player in an odd group rests once.

Last verified: October 14, 2026. Next check: January 2027, when the USTA publishes the 2027 Friend at Court.