Before you start: the four things you need to know
Before you open any planning tool, settle four facts: how many courts you can book, what time window you have, roughly how many players are coming, and whether players already have partners or need pairing up. These four answers decide almost everything else — the format you can run, how many rounds fit, and how long the day will take. If you're short on any of them, it's worth chasing them down before you plan further, because changing the court count or finish time later usually means re-planning the whole schedule.
Step 1: Confirm courts and the time window
Start with the venue. Confirm how many courts you have for the whole session and the exact start and finish time, including any slot you lose to changeover with the group before or after you. A tournament that has to stop dead at a fixed time needs a tighter format than one with a flexible finish. If you're unsure how many matches will actually fit in your window, the schedule planner guide walks through the maths with worked examples.
Step 2: Collect players and decide on partners
Next, gather names. Padel is played in pairs, so you need player numbers in pairs too — iTournee supports anywhere from 4 to 24 teams (8 to 48 players). Decide now whether players bring fixed partners, whether you want a Mixed pairs draw, or whether you'd rather pair everyone up with a balanced random draw. None of this needs to be finalised today, but having a rough headcount early lets you choose a realistic format before you're locked into promises about start times.
Step 3: Choose a format that fits your numbers and time
With courts, time and player numbers roughly fixed, pick a format. For a small, friendly group, a League only (round robin) format where everyone plays everyone keeps things simple and fair. For bigger groups, Groups then Main and Plate knockouts gives every team a guaranteed number of matches plus a knockout finish, with the Plate draw giving teams who miss the Main draw a second path to a final. If you only want a single sharp knockout with no group stage, Knockout only works too, and because iTournee never uses byes, uneven numbers are handled with a short play-in round for the lowest seeds instead. The formats guide compares all of these in more detail, including which player counts suit each one.
Step 4: Build the draw and the schedule
Once you've chosen a format, the draw and schedule need to be built around your courts and time window. Groups are sized automatically at three or four teams, and you can adjust groups or seeding before the groups start if you want to keep certain pairs apart. The schedule itself should account for changeover time between matches so no team is left waiting on an empty court, and no team should ever be double-booked across two matches at once. Doing this by hand with a spreadsheet is possible for a handful of teams, but it gets fiddly fast — this is exactly the kind of step a tool like iTournee automates for you in its 4-step wizard.
Step 5: Set your scoring rules
Decide how matches will be scored before play starts, not during the first match. A timed format with a golden point (similar to iTournee's Quick social preset) keeps a social day moving quickly, while best-of-3 sets with a tiebreak at 6–6 suits a more competitive club day. You can also run different rules for the knockout stage or final than for the group stage — for example, timed group matches followed by a set-based final. The scoring rules guide covers the options in full.
Step 6: Share the link and let players find their matches
On the day, players shouldn't need an app or a login. With iTournee, everyone opens one link or types a short code word on their own phone, picks their team, and sees their next match, court and opponent on their Home screen. This removes the single biggest source of tournament-day confusion — people wandering between courts asking who's on next.
Step 7: Run the rounds and handle the unexpected
As rounds play out, scores entered on a phone update live for everyone, with an undo available if someone taps the wrong button. A shared round clock counts down on every screen, and if a match is running over, 'Running late' pushes the whole schedule back by a few minutes rather than leaving the next matches stranded. You'll also need to handle real-world surprises: a team arriving late, a walkover, or a swapped player. These are all things an organiser can manage directly from the admin screen without reshuffling the whole event by hand.
Step 8: Finish with the knockouts and the final
Once group play is done, knockout seeding follows the group standings, so the strongest performers get the fairest path through the draw. If you've chosen Groups then Main and Plate, make sure every team knows which draw they're in before the knockouts start. An optional third-place match is available if you want a clear podium, and the final is a good moment to switch to a slightly longer scoring format if your group matches were short and timed.
Step 9: Wrap up
After the final point, you can export the full results as a CSV for your records, or print a results sheet with the schedule, groups and brackets for the noticeboard. If you want a paper trail before the day even starts, the printable templates guide shows what's available, including a QR code linking back to the live results.
iTournee is free to use while in beta — build your whole tournament, courts to final, in the 4-step wizard, or see it in action first in the interactive demo.