Draws & Knockout Brackets

A Draw is a bracket structure for a subset of your tournament. Recourt supports two draw types: a straight Knockout (single-elimination bracket) and Pool + Knockout (a round-robin pool stage that feeds into a knockout bracket). Both live in the Draws tab of your tournament admin panel.

Draw Types

When you create a draw you pick its type from two illustrated cards:

Creating a Draw

1. In the Draws tab, click Create Draw
2. Choose the draw type (Knockout or Pool + Knockout)
3. Enter a name (e.g. "Men's Open", "Beginner Division")
4. Choose Singles or Doubles entry, and toggle a Third-place match if you want one
5. Save

Each draw also carries its own default match format & scoring, which the rounds and matches generated inside it inherit.

Knockout Draw Setup

For a straight Knockout draw, click Set Up Bracket on the draw card to open the 3-step setup wizard: Select Players → Assign Positions → Generate.

Step 1 — Select Players

• Toggle 👤 Singles or 👥 Doubles (Doubles uses your tournament teams; create them in the Teams tab first).
• Pick a draw size from the presets (5, 6, 7, 8, 16) or type a custom number (2–128). The wizard shows the bracket math, e.g. "Bracket of 8 · 3 rounds · 1 bye".
• Select your confirmed participants (or teams) up to the draw size. Use Select All / Deselect All to do it in one click. A live counter shows "X / Y selected".

When you choose a draw size that isn't a power of two (e.g. 5, 6, 7), the remaining slots become byes. Byes are distributed in a balanced way at standard bracket positions so the strongest seeds get the walkovers — just like a traditional tennis draw.

Step 2 — Assign Positions

Place each player/team into a bracket slot. Two modes are available:

• 🎡 Spin Wheel — an animated wheel of the unassigned players. Spin it to randomly drop the next player into the next open (non-bye) slot. Great for a live, ceremonial draw.
• ✏️ Manual — click a bracket slot to select it, then click a player to place them there. Click two filled slots to swap. Bye slots are pre-marked and skipped.

A live bracket diagram shows filled and empty slots as you go. ↺ Reset clears all positions. You can only continue once every player has a position.

Step 3 — Match Setup & Generate

Configure how each bracket stage (Round 1, Quarterfinals, Semifinals, Final…) is scheduled. Each stage has one or more sessions, and each session sets:

• Day — which tournament day it runs on
• Courts — how many courts (1–20)
• Duration — minutes per match (30–240, step 15)
• Start — first match start time
• Gap — minutes between matches (5–60)

Use + Add Session to split a stage across multiple days. A live court × time schedule matrix (color-coded per stage, grouped by day) previews exactly where each match lands. When it looks right, click Generate Bracket. The whole bracket is created at once and scheduled; byes auto-advance into the next round, and later rounds fill in player names in place as earlier matches finish.

Pool + Knockout Draw

Use this draw type when you want a group stage before the bracket.

Example Structure

Draw: "Open Division"
  ├── Pool A  (Teams 1–4 → 6 round-robin matches)
  ├── Pool B  (Teams 5–8 → 6 round-robin matches)
  └── Knockout
       ├── Semifinal  (Pool A winner + B runner-up vs Pool B winner + A runner-up)
       └── Final

Creating Pools

Inside the draw, click Add Pool to create Pool A, Pool B, etc. Each pool gets a color for easy visual identification. Then assign fixed teams to the pool:

1. Click Assign Teams on the pool card
2. Select from your tournament's registered teams
3. A team can only belong to one pool per draw

Creating a Pool Round

A pool round contains all the round-robin matches across all pools:

1. Click Add Pool Round
2. Choose a name (e.g. "Pool Stage")
3. Select format and scoring config (Americano points or Tennis)
4. Save

Generating Pool Matches

Once teams are assigned to pools, click Generate Matches on a pool card. The system creates all pairings within that pool using round-robin logic:

Courts are not automatically assigned for pool matches. Assign courts manually per match in the Matches tab after generation.

Run this separately for each pool — Pool A and Pool B matches are independent.

Pool Standings

After matches are played, each pool shows a leaderboard ranked by:

1. Wins (most wins first)
2. Points scored (tiebreaker)
3. Win rate = points ÷ (points + points against)

The top N teams (per your "advance per pool" setting) move to the knockout stage.

Setting Up the Knockout Bracket

The bracket can be planned at any time — even before pools finish:

1. Click Set up knockout bracket in the Bracket section
2. Review the first-round pairings in the preview modal
3. Click Create bracket to build the full knockout tree (QF → SF → Final)

This creates match shells with pool-source labels (e.g. Pool A #1) so you can plan courts and times right away. The bracket uses cross-pool seeding: Pool A winner is placed against Pool B runner-up, and vice versa.

Seeding Players from Pools

Once pool play is finished and standings are final:

1. Click Seed from pools in the Bracket section
2. Review which players advance in the preview
3. Click Seed players — real names fill into the existing matches

Seeding is re-runnable: if some pools haven't finished yet, those slots stay as placeholders and you can seed again later. Court and time assignments are preserved.

Advancing Within the Knockout

Winners advance automatically. When a knockout match finishes, the winner is immediately placed into their next-round slot — no manual action needed. The bracket diagram updates live as matches are scored.

If Third-Place Match is enabled, semifinal losers automatically drop into the bronze match when each semifinal completes.

What Is the Third-Place Match?

When enabled, the two teams that lose in the semifinals play an extra match against each other to decide 3rd and 4th place — instead of both being eliminated without playing again. This is common in sports tournaments as a "bronze medal match", and it appears below the Final on the bracket diagram.

The Bracket Diagram

Every draw renders a live two-sided bracket diagram. It is shown on the Draws tab, on the public tournament page, and on the big-screen view, and it stays in sync as matches are scored.

• Two-sided layout — early rounds fan out on the left and right, converging on the Final (and 3rd-place match) in the center, with connector lines between matches.
• Zoom, fit & pan — zoom in/out, "fit to screen", and drag to pan; a fullscreen mode is available for projectors, with touch support on tablets.
• Live updates — scores stream in real time. A newly-filled slot pulses when a player advances, and active matches show a ● LIVE · Court banner.
• Status at a glance — scheduled matches have a green border, in-progress a red border, and completed matches a grey border. Scores show set/game points for tennis/padel or the single point total for Americano.
• Player avatars appear on each match card (up to two per side for doubles).

See it in action: Pools + Knockout example · Knockout example

Running several qualifier events that feed one finals bracket? See Qualifier → Finals for linking child tournaments and seeding their top finishers into a parent draw.