The Spring Draw Tournament has 3 events that partners are drawn to set up teams. It is not a totally blind draw, but rather an effort to balance teams to give all players a chance to win the tournament. The tournament committee looks at the USTA rankings of the players and personal knowledge to handicap the entries. There are 2 different scenarios. The men’s and ladies draws work pretty much the same. The Mixed is a bit more complicated.
For the men’s and ladies, the procedure is to first assign numbers to each entrant. Then look at the entrants and take out the best 25%. Shuffle the cards removed. Then go back to the original list and select the same number of weaker players. You now have 3 piles. Shuffle the pile with the weaker players. Now select one from each pile, and that is a team. Repeat this process until all the cards are assigned to a team. Next take the remaining cards (there should be an even number), shuffle them, and then assign the top 2 cards to a team. Repeat this process until all of the cards have been assisgned. Now that you have the teams, you need to go the
One of the problems of the mixed doubles is having a matching number of men and women. At the draw, there is usually a quest for more by making phone calls. Luckily, cell phones have eased this problem. Assuming you have an equal number of men and women, first assign numbers to each player. Take out the best 25% of the men and the an equal number of the best women and put them in separate piles. Now select the same number of weaker players and put them in separate piles. Shuffle the 4 piles, and then match up the strong men with the weaker women, and the strong women with the weak men. You should have the same number of men and women not selected at this point, so shuffle the 2 decks and then match them up until all teams are selected. Now that the teams are ready, it’s time to seed the draw.