Once you are ready to create your tournament draws, follow the steps outlined below. For an overview of draw creation and draw creation options, please refer to the Creating Draws in Tournament Desk Overview article. Before or after you have published your draw, you can choose what is visible in the public draw in Public Draw Settings.
How to Create and Publish a Draw
Creating/deleting Playoffs & Availability of Playoffs
How to Create and Publish a Draw
Before following the steps below and creating your draw, ensure you have completed all the pre-draw activities you require (avoidances, seeds, etc). When you are ready to create the draw, follow these instructions.
- Navigate to Tournament Desk by clicking Launch Tournament Desk on the tournament menu.
- Click on the Events tab and select the appropriate event.
- Click on the Draw tab.
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Click Make Draw.
- Ensure you have completed all the pre-draw activities you require (avoidances, seeds, etc) before clicking Make Draw.
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Upon clicking Add Draw, you will enter the draw details.
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There are two Creation method options listed in the last drop-down box:
- Automated - The system will place ENTIRES into the draw automatically.
- Manual - This option will provide a blank draw.
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There are two Creation method options listed in the last drop-down box:
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Once you have input the details, click Make draw. Your draw will now be created.
- Select a draw, draw type and enter a draw name
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Draw size is automatically determined by tournament desk based on the number of players in your main draw, for example:
- 1-4 players = Draw size of 4 players.
- 5-8 players = Draw size of 8 players.
- 9-16 players = Draw size of 16 players.
- 17-32 players = Draw size of 32 players.
- 33-64 players = Draw size of 64 players
- Enter a number of seeds, this will autofill but can be lower (not increased)
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Group Seeding:
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In some cases, the Tournament Committee may group seed players together and assign each of them the same seed (for example, in the group 5-8, each player in the group is assigned the fifth seed).
- Select the number you would like to begin the grouping after, i.e. if you have 8 seeds and you would like seeds to show as 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5, 5, 5 you will select 4 here.
- Group seeding will show in the draw only, not in the Entries Tab (regular seeding will show here).
- This will not be available for flighted events.
- More details on group seeding can be found in the Friend At Court 2022, Glossary, pp. 160 & 163)
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For manual draw creation, your draw will be blank. You will need to enter players into the draw by right-clicking on the position in the draw and selecting the Assign draw position.
- You can also assign seeds to the draw by right-clicking and selecting Assign Seeds.
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To delete a draw, you click 'Draw options' and then 'Delete draw'.
- The system will require a reason as to why the draw was deleted.
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Publish and Unpublish Draws
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Once draw has been created, you are able to publish the draw on your tournament website.
- This can be done by publishing each draw individually or by publishing all created draws at once. Both options are described below.
- This can be done by publishing each draw individually or by publishing all created draws at once. Both options are described below.
- To publish each event's draw individually, within each event, click Draw Options and then Publish Draw.
- The tournament draw will show the matches and schedule for for the selected round and two others.
- The selected round is indicated by the darker blue box at the top of the draw, while the other two rounds are indicated by a light blue box. Any round you're not currently viewing is indicated by a grey box.
- You can click on the box for any round to jump to the matches and schedules for that round.
- To Unpublish your draw, click Draw Options and Unpublish draw.
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To publish all created draws at once, within the Events tab, click Publish and then Publish all Created Draws.
- This will publish all draws that have been created, pending draws will not be published.
- To unpublish all draws, click Unpublish all created draws.
Public Draw Settings
You can choose what you want the players to view on the website in Public Draw Settings.
You can choose to show : Player residency - i.e. city, state, district, section, country, team or none - (you can only choose one) .
You can choose to show player status if appropriate - it is turned OFF as default.
- Alternate (ALT)
- Lucky loser (LL)
- Special exempt(SE)
- Junior exempt (JE)
- Qualifying (Q)
- Wild Card (WC)
You can also preview the public draw settings in this pop out.
To edit the view:
In the Events Tab in Tournament Desk under publish - select Public draw settings
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Additional Player Information-
- Select only one item from the drop down. i.e. city/state or country. This will change the view for all tournaments. City/State is what is set as default.
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Adornment-
- Here you can choose to show players’ ITF World Tennis Number WTN on the public draws. All three confidence level icons of low, medium, and high will also be displayed once this adornment is enabled in draw settings.
Players' WTN Level check marks will be different colors depending on their confidence. Below is a breakdown of what each color means and where they can be found.
- High degree/dark blue check mark - When a player's confidence level is >=70%
- Medium degree/ light blue check mark- When a player's confidence is between 40 - 60%
- Low degree / grey check mark - When a player's confidence level is <=30%
- Here you can choose to show players’ ITF World Tennis Number WTN on the public draws. All three confidence level icons of low, medium, and high will also be displayed once this adornment is enabled in draw settings.
Example of public view below if WTN is selected:
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Display Entry Status
- To display the Entry Status, you check the box. It is turned off by default. It is in abbreviated form as below:
- Alternate (ALT)
- Lucky loser (LL)
- Special exempt(SE)
- Junior exempt (JE)
- Qualifying (Q)
- Wild Card (WC)
- To display the Entry Status, you check the box. It is turned off by default. It is in abbreviated form as below:
To edit the status of the players you can do so by following this guide: Editing Player Status in Tournament Desk
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If enabled it will show in brackets as below in both the public view and tournament desk.
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- Match Day Information- by unchecking the boxes they will be removed from the view of the public view.
By default, all are selected. You can unselect by clicking on the check mark.
Scrolling down on this page will show you a preview of what is shown. i.e. if you uncheck Show time and Show facility for example. The preview will show you the change. I have marked where the date and facility would have been shown in red.
Finally, remember: You can also check the players' view, by clicking on View on USTA.com from the drop-down next to the tournament name, found top right.
Note: Public Draw Settings will now also show for Round Robin draws. This includes additional player information, WTN and match day information.
Creating/deleting Playoffs & Availability of Playoffs
Please check with your section and Friends at Court if you are not sure, below is a guide but there are also exceptions to the rules and variable factors depending on the number of players in the draw. The below table shows which draw formats will have a 3/4 playoff and a 5/8 playoff
- To create a playoff
- From the select the Events tab in Tournament Desk and choose the event.
- Click the 'Draw options' drop down menu on the right and choose 'Generate playoffs'.
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- Tick the playoff needed and click 'Create playoffs'
- You can access your playoff by clicking the drop down box and selecting the playoff
- To delete a Playoff draw
- Select the playoff to be deleted from the drop down.
- Select the 'Draw options' drop down menu on the right and select 'Delete Playoff'
- If you are sure you want to delete the playoff, click 'Delete'. Note: This action is irreversible.