New Regional Playoff Draws
All playoff draws that contain more than 16 players / teams will use the new regional playoff system. The regional playoff draws were designed to give you both improved drive times AND one true City Champion at each skill level. The structure is similar to the NCAA basketball tournament where each draw is divided into regional playing brackets . Each color coded region represents a different section of town and contains an equal distribution of top seeds. As players advance in the draw each region merges together to produce a single overall City Champion. The end result is a playoff draw that offers significantly improved drive times and good player variety. The new regional draw format was voted on by our membership with an 89% approval rating over traditional seeding used in the past. This is another Ultimate Tennis exclusive. We hope you enjoy it!
Regional seeding notes
- Each color region contains up to qualifiers from 4-8 divisions.
- The top divisional seeds are used to anchor each colored bracket and are evenly disbursed. Lower seeds are grouped based on location.
- Within each colored region the highest seeds are matched up against lowest seeds using traditional tennis seeding rules.
- Regional draws closely follow traditional seeding however to produce good driving regions it can not be exact.
A player's exact seed number and strength is very theoretical and should not be emphasized with respect to placement in the draw! Because each division is isolated during the regular season with no interdivisional play you can't compare the relative strength of seeds like you can in pro sports. In this league setting some divisions will be stronger than others due to who registers from a particular area. Players in stronger divisions will have a harder time earning points. For example a #1 seed from a strong division will usually have earned fewer points than a #1 seed from a weak division. Therefore, for seeding purposes it doesn't matter the exact placement of to seeds because the true strength of each seed is only an estimate. When reviewing the draw, PLEASE do not get hung up on the exact seed placement as it truly is irrelevant in this setting. What is important is that the top seeds are evenly disbursed to each section of the draw to create good general seeding. The best player in the draw will always be determined by simply playing the matches.
Sample 64 Draw
