Rocking Rackets

Intro - Tournaments

There is a large variety in tournaments that players can join. The more important the tournament the more points can be won by winning it.

TypeMax PtsSinglesDoubles Grand Slam100012864 Masters5006432 International Series Gold3003216 International Series2253216 Challenger100/70/553216 Futures24/18/123216 Amateur66464

Challengers and Futures come in three types, marked as CH_, CH1 and CH2 resp. FT1, FT2 and FT3. The former always gives more points.

Not all tournaments have a power of 2 as numbers of entrants. In this case, the top players are given a free win (Bye) in the first round.

Most tournaments take one week, except the grand slams and some of the larger masters tournaments. If a player reaches far in such a tournament he can not play a tournament in the next week because he is still active.

Seeding

The top entries are given a protected position in the pairing. These are called the "seeds". They are marked in square brackets behind the player name.

The number 1 can not meet the number 2 before the finals, the numbers 1 till 4 cannot meet before semi-finals etc and so on. Usually 1/4th of the players are seeded.

The non-seeded players are put randomly on the remaining places.

The [Q] seed indicates that a player reached the main tournament by winning the qualification tournament. Such players are paired as a non-seeded player (randomly)

Masters Cup

The Masters Cup is a special tournament. It is the last major tournament of the year and only the top 8 players of that year are allowed to participate.

It is not a fully knockout tournament as the 8 players are divided over 2 groups of 4 players. In the groups, each player plays each other player. The best two players from each group go on to the semi-finals.

Olympic Games

Once every 4 year tennis is part of the Summer Olympics.

The Olympic games have some slightly different rules:
- All matches are best of 3 sets except the finals which is best of 5
- No tiebreak will be played in decisive sets (also no tiebreak in best of 3 matches)
- No qualification tournament is played.

For the ranking, this tournament is put in the 500 category, with the winner getting 800 points.

The real ranking rules for the olympic games of 2012 are not yet announced, the points in this game are taken from the 2008 tournament and changed roughly according to the 2009 ranking changes.

World Team Cup

The World Team Cup is (very) freely based on the Davis Cup, the tennis tournament for country teams.

Countries confront each other playing 2 singles matches, one doubles match and then two more singles matches with the players reversed.

Matches in the World Team Cup are a best of 5 sets without tiebreak in the 5th set, unless the winner is already clear: then only 3 sets with final set tiebreak are played. The doubles match is played with the same rules as the singles match.

In the senior tournament 64 countries participate in this tournament, in four levels of 16 countries. The best four countries go to a playoff with the weakest four of the higher level, for a chance to play the next year in the higher level. In the junior tournament only 32 countries compete in two levels of 16 countries.

Ranking
The World Team Cup counts for the individual singles and doubles ranking of a player. All WTC results are counted as a single tournament.

Each win gives points:

level 1 win: 45 points

level 2 win: 15 points

level 3 win: 5 points

level 4 win: 1 point



playoffs 1-2 win: 25 points

playoffs 2-3 win: 8 points

playoffs 3-4 win: 3 points

Practise Sessions

The top 100 players can also participate in "practise sessions". These are no real tournaments since they give no ranking points and players are never eliminated.

They serve only training purposes, for example when there are no major tournaments to join or not in your players preferred surface.

A practise session consists of 6 rounds. Each round a player is given a random opponent to play against. If a player has more than 300 fatigue he is given a rest, unless he is needed to make an even number of participants. If a player has more than 500 fatigue he is always given a rest. If this makes the number of participants odd then one other player is given a rest too.

There is no fixed number of players that can or must participate. Only a minimum of 2 is needed for singles and 4 for doubles.

Matches in a practise session count as tournament matches for the purpose of calculating experience.

Even though these matches don't give ranking points to the players, each win gives 15 points to the manager of the player, making them roughly equivalent to CH+ tournaments.