Most padel tournaments still run their group draws by hand in a spreadsheet. A volunteer spends half an evening splitting 16 pairs across 4 groups, weighing skill level, club, experience and logistics. A week before the tournament something changes, and the whole schedule has to be redone.
In 2026 that's unnecessary. Software solves it in seconds. Below is how it works, what the criteria are, and what to watch out for.
Why manual group seeding grinds to a halt
Three reasons:
- Too many variables: skill level, club, available time, partner pairings, mixed or single-gender. A person can juggle 3-4 variables at once, not 6.
- Irreversible decisions: if you realise halfway through that group 3 doesn't work, you often have to start over.
- Changes right up to the wire: players withdraw, move around, ask to switch partners. Every change has to keep the seeding correct.
What good automatic group seeding does
A good algorithm takes into account:
- Skill balance within a group: all pairs in a group inside a reasonable rating range.
- Skill gap between groups: group A is the strongest, group D the weakest (or deliberately mixed, depending on what you want).
- Club spread: avoiding a situation where everyone from the same club ends up in the same group (especially relevant for regional tournaments).
- Number of courts and playing schedule: the group seeding also has to factor in how often each court is in use and how long the whole tournament runs.
How the algorithm works (without getting technical)
In simple terms: the algorithm first sorts all pairs by rating, splits them into groups of equal size, and then optimises within each group on the other criteria. When several valid arrangements are possible, it picks the most balanced one.
For a tournament of 16 pairs in 4 groups this takes under a second. For 64 pairs in 16 groups: a few seconds. For 128 pairs in 32 groups: still under a minute.
What it gets you in practice
Three concrete wins:
- Time: from 2-3 hours per draw to 10 seconds. Two hours saved per tournament.
- Painless changes: a player drops out, you sub them in within 5 seconds, recalculate the draw, done.
- Fairness: an algorithm has no favourites. Every pair is judged objectively on rating and criteria, so no more "that pair always lands in the easy group" arguments.
What an algorithm CAN'T do
Two things you still have to use your head for:
- Social dynamics: if two pairs are at odds with each other, you have to sort that out by hand. The algorithm has no way of knowing.
- Outside commitments: player X has to leave before 4:00 PM, so those matches need to be scheduled early in group A. These are manual exceptions to the schedule.
What schedule generation adds on top
Besides the group draw, software can also generate the playing schedule: which pair plays when, on which court. That's a second layer of automation that saves a huge amount. Planning 16 pairs across 4 courts by hand costs another hour. Automatically: no time at all.
Key criteria for a playing schedule:
- Every team gets at least 10 minutes of rest between matches
- No team plays twice in a row on the same court
- Start and end times are spread out so the tournament runs tight
The reality: a 32-pair padel group tournament
A club tournament of 32 pairs in 8 groups of 4 on 6 courts. By hand:
- Draw: 2-3 hours
- Playing schedule: 1-2 hours
- Adjustments on the day for no-shows: 30-60 minutes
- Total: 4-6 hours of volunteer time per tournament
Automatically:
- Draw: less than 1 minute
- Playing schedule: less than 1 minute
- Adjustments: under a minute per change
- Total: a few minutes
The volunteer time you free up can go to what actually adds value: welcoming players, solving small problems, the social side of the tournament.
Slams and automatic group seeding
Slams uses an algorithm that accounts for all of the criteria above and produces a complete group draw and playing schedule in seconds. Read how it works here. Start for free and try it with your own tournament.
