Either way you then select your mode: Rotating Partners (partners rotate each game; everyone plays everyone in a balanced schedule), Fixed Teams (you assign players to fixed pairs that stay together the whole tournament), or Manual (no automatic scheduling; you add each game yourself as you go) - Manual is always Quick, since it has no roster or bracket setup.

Both of these live in Custom setup, alongside the other settings. Quick doesn't ask, and takes the usual answer to each: the players in the tournament can enter scores, and it counts toward the Leaderboard.

If you want only yourself to control score entry, turn on Lock score entry to organizer. Leave it off and the tournament's own players can enter scores too, as long as they have a courtScore account with their name linked to it. It is never open to anyone else with an account, only to the people actually playing. This one is set when the tournament is created and stays as it was.

If this tournament shouldn't count toward the all-time Leaderboard (a casual or practice session, for example), turn on Exclude this tournament from ranking. Both are only available when logged in, and the ranking setting can be changed later from Tournament Settings (the gear icon on the tournament page).

The tournament name field sits at the very top of the Setup step, above everything else, since it's the one thing every organizer fills in regardless of which path they take. Choosing Custom with either Rotating or Fixed Teams then opens on a Guided panel right below it, expanded by default: answer how many players are coming, how long you have the venue, how many courts, how long a match takes, and optionally the exact dates and times, and it fills in the setup below for you - number of players, whether to split into groups (and how many), matches per player, a playoff format if one fits for free, match format for the round robin and (once a playoff format is picked) for the playoffs, and a full schedule if you gave it dates - each with a live line explaining the number it chose and why, updating as you answer. Two settings it cannot work out for you sit in the panel alongside the questions they follow from: Name these courts, under the courts question, opening its fields only once you switch it on, and the Counting choice for best-of matches, which appears under Match format as soon as you pick best of 3 or 5.

Because Guided is doing that filling in, the setup controls below it (number of players, groups, courts, matches per player, and the score-lock/ranking toggles) stay collapsed while it's active, with a line explaining they hold what Guided has already worked out; open them any time to see or change a detail, though changing one directly can undo the balance Guided calculated, so it's worth checking Guided's own answers afterwards. If you do change something and then want it back, a Put courtScore's answers back button appears naming what you changed, and one tap restores every setting Guided had worked out.

If your numbers give a real but thin tournament, Guided says so plainly (for example "2 matches each is what your numbers actually allow") and still lets you create it. Only when nothing fits at all - no split gives everyone an equal match count - does it stop you, explaining what's not possible and what would fix it, with a popup if you try to continue anyway.

In Fixed Teams the panel asks for teams rather than players, and works out how many groups your time allows instead of matches per player, which is fixed there by the group size. It is worth more in that mode than it looks: 12 teams all in one pool is 66 matches, over eight hours on two courts, so Guided splits the field to fit rather than letting you discover that mid-evening. It only offers splits that divide the field evenly, so no team plays an extra match.

Guided also already answers the playoff-format and match-format questions itself, so the wizard skips straight from Setup to Review - two steps, not three. Don't need any of this? Tap Fill it in yourself to collapse the panel; nothing it would have set is touched until you actually use it, the wizard's normal three steps come back, and it reappears the next time you start a Custom Rotating tournament.

With Custom setup, Rotating and Fixed Teams both offer Split into groups right on this same step, off by default: turn it on to split the field into named pools that each play their own independent round robin, then feed a set number of qualifiers from each pool into a combined playoff bracket, instead of one flat roster.

With groups on, a second toggle - Randomly assign into groups - lets the app do the sorting: keep the roster as one flat list, set how many groups you want, and the app splits it as evenly as possible and shuffles the draw, which you can see group by group on the Review step before creating anything. Leave it off and you type each group's roster yourself, exactly as before.

Every group needs a minimum number of players (or teams, in Fixed Teams) to be valid - too few for the group count you picked and the app tells you so, with a one-tap fix where there is one. Groups are locked in once the tournament is created.

Also on this step, Rotating tournaments get Matches per player (an "i" next to the label opens a short explanation): leave it alone for a complete round robin, where everyone partners with everyone in their group (or, without groups, everyone in the tournament), and that is what you get whenever it splits your group exactly evenly. Where it would not - some players left a match ahead of others - leaving it alone instead defaults to the lowest number of matches that does split evenly, applied automatically rather than offered as a round robin that isn't quite fair.

Either way you can set your own number for a shorter or longer session. A line underneath tells you what your choice actually produces, and if the number you pick would leave some players a match ahead it offers the nearest number that keeps everyone even, which you can apply in one tap. Fixed Teams does not need this - every team plays every other team once, which is always equal.

Right below it, Assign courts to games lets you set how many physical courts you're running on - turn it on and pick a number, and every match (round robin and playoffs alike) gets grouped into rounds of that many courts, with no player ever double-booked onto two courts at once. This one's not locked in - change it anytime from Tournament Settings, on or off, or a different number of courts.

A Name these courts toggle appears once courts are on, with one optional free-text field per court, so a venue that calls its courts 5 and 8 (rather than 1 and 2) can say so - leave a field blank and that court just keeps its plain number. Renaming later works the same way from Tournament Settings.

Custom setup then has one more step before you review and create, covering format and scheduling together so you can see right away whether your choices still fit. First, picking a playoff format (see step 4) and choosing how many games decide each matchup, for round robin and any playoff rounds you picked. If you pick best of 3 or 5 for any of them, a follow-up choice appears: count each game individually toward standings, or count the whole match as one game.

The same step also covers Schedule: turn it on to set the dates and times you'll be playing. Say how long a match should take and when your first session starts, and asking for more than one repeats it weekly - each date can then be edited or removed, so a holiday or a venue clash is easy to work around. As you set it up the app tells you whether everything actually fits, and offers to add sessions or shorten matches if it doesn't, rather than letting you discover the problem on the night. Every match then gets its own date and start time.

If a matchup was set to best of 3 or best of 5 during Custom setup, all of its games sit together in one card - best of 3 shows both of its two guaranteed games right away, adding a third only if they split 1-1; best of 5 shows its three guaranteed games, adding a fourth and (if it comes to it) a fifth as the match actually calls for them. You can change the round robin's match format from Tournament Settings any time before a second game has been scored for any match.

If the tournament is scheduled, each match also shows its start time next to the court, and the fixture list is divided by date so each evening reads on its own. Times are a guide, never a rule: any score can still be entered at any point, in any order, and if the night runs long the printed times stay put rather than quietly shifting.

To speed up or slow down the rest of the tournament, change Minutes per match in Tournament Settings and every unplayed match is re-timed; if lengthening matches means some no longer fit your sessions, you're told how many and can add a session, add a court, or shorten matches back to fit them.

A session's date changed too - rained off, venue moved your slot - just tap that date in Tournament Settings to edit it; every unplayed match is re-timed the same way, and a change that no longer fits your remaining sessions is reported rather than silently dropped.

If courts are on, each match shows a Court badge - tap it (as the organizer) to swap that match's court with another one in the same round, right up until it's decided; if the round robin is split into groups, every group shares the same pool of courts, so a swap can offer a match from another group too. This is a scheduling aid, not a hard gate: you can still enter any score at any time, in any order.

Once there are two or more rounds of court play, a Round row appears below the group tabs (or on its own, without Groups): All plus one tab per round, so you can jump straight to what's on court right now instead of scrolling the whole list. It shows once you've picked a specific group - not on Overall, since a round only means something within one group's own games - and always resets to All when you switch groups.

Add Game only appears on All and on the last round's own tab - a new game can never join a round that's already been decided, so it's hidden on any earlier one. Once the last round is already full (as many matches as courts), Add Round takes its place: it fills the whole new round in one tap - one match per court, as many as it can validly pick without repeating anyone - then switches you straight to that round. On a small roster it may stop a court or two short rather than force a weaker pairing; a toast tells you how many it filled.

Where it's available, tap Save PDF at the bottom of the Round Robin tab any time to download a branded record of every game, current standings, and the playoff bracket - unplayed games show a blank score, so it doubles as a paper score sheet. The button only appears where the export is working, so if you can't see it, that's why.

If the tournament has groups, a row of tabs inside the popup lets you switch between each group's own standings and the combined Overall view; the Round Robin tab has the same group tabs plus its own Overall option, listing every group's games together divided by group.

Once a playoff format is locked in, a Q badge appears next to anyone currently on track to qualify - live, updating as results come in, well before the playoffs are actually generated. If your roster only supports a Direct Final, that's already the only outcome possible, so the badge appears automatically with nothing to pick.

Picking one just sets the format; no games are created yet, and a Change format link lets you pick something else until you're ready. When you are, tap the Generate button that appears. If your roster only supports a Direct Final, there's nothing to pick - the Final tab shows the Generate button on its own, no Playoffs tab needed.

Every round up to the semifinal shows up in Playoffs as it's generated and scored; the championship match itself always lives in its own Final tab, which shows a Generate button once the round before it is done - whether that's after a semifinal or, for a Direct Final, right away. Each round has to be fully scored before the next one can be generated.

In Rotating mode, players are paired into teams from the standings (a Direct Final pairs rank 1 + rank 3 against rank 2 + rank 4); in Fixed Teams mode, the top teams enter directly.

If the tournament has groups, a set number of players or teams qualify from each group by their own group finish, with the remaining spots filled by the best records tournament-wide; the Standings popup marks a group-guaranteed qualifier Q and a wildcard Q | WC. A tournament without groups still shows Q for whoever's currently in the qualifying spots - there's just no wildcard distinction to make without groups.

Across multiple playoff rounds, your partner stays your partner for as long as you keep winning - a new opponent each round, but the same teammate all the way to the final.

If courts are on, each playoff round's own matches (say, all 4 quarterfinals) get split into their own court groupings too, same as the round robin - not to be confused with the playoff round itself (Quarterfinal, Semifinal, ...); a quarterfinal with more matches than you have courts just plays out over a couple of court-rounds within that same stage.

Every time you generate or regenerate a round - from Playoffs for an earlier round, from Final for the championship match - the confirmation prompt also lets you set that round's match format - Single game, Best of 3, or Best of 5 - defaulting to whatever was picked during Custom setup, or Single game if it never was; matchups then work the same way as best-of-N round robin games - see step 3.

Picking Best of 3 or 5 there also surfaces the Counting choice from that same step - count each game individually or count the match as one game - defaulting to whatever's already set for the tournament. This counting choice is one setting for the whole tournament, not per round, so once any best-of-N game anywhere has been scored, it's locked in and the picker just confirms it rather than letting you change it.

That email includes a See Your Highlights link - every recipient gets the same link, and opening it (with a courtScore account, if you played) shows you your own finish and record, anyone you beat who finished above you, your best win and toughest loss, and who you played with most. You can also open Highlights any time from the sparkle icon at the top of the tournament page, live or finalized.

If a tournament shouldn't have happened at all instead, the creator can delete it before finalizing: open Tournament Settings (the gear icon on the tournament page) and tap Delete Tournament in the Danger Zone at the bottom. This permanently removes the tournament and everything scored in it, with no undo, and is only possible before finalizing - once results are recorded on the leaderboard, the tournament can no longer be deleted.