Proposed Tourney Format

Here is the problem: Players sign up for a tournament... They play 1 or 2 events, pay their entry fee... Let's say that they have a bit of bad luck and get knocked out the first round. Now they get to wait to see if there are going to be consolation rounds. Maybe yes... or Maybe not... depending on if they wish to either stay very late into the day or even stay until the next day. We are in an age where most clubs we have tournaments at are down to 3 courts. It's very hard to fit regular matches in, be on time and then try to fit in some consolations....

At the Bangor tourney, held in November, 2007, we discussed an alternate. Having played in a Masters tournament here and there, I thought.. "Hey, we can do that!". I may have even thought about it out loud. Tom Farley and I sat down and discussed the following:

Let's say that the Mens A division has 8 participants. we would split them into 2 groups of 4. Each group will play a round robin within the goup based on this scoring criteria. Matches would consist of 2 games to 11. Matches would be 1/2 hour long. then the top 2 players of each group would play off for Semi's and the Finals. This would guarantee each tourney participant at least 3 matches (2 games to 11) with 3 different people. The wait time between matches would be less and we feel that the players will be more involved. We also figured out that the time involved is the same as if we did the tournament in regular format.

This is still on the drawing board.. I plan on having an in-house sometime in the near future to test the waters.

Let us know how you feel about this or if I should explain a bit better.

Thank you....