Tournament Design in Doubles Pickleball

Abstract

This paper considers a common tournament design in doubles pickleball where N players compete across n matches. The research question involves the assignment of partners and opponents over the n matches. It is demonstrated that a particular design for the practical tournament corresponding to N=16 and n=5 has the desirable property that each player will either compete with or against every other player exactly once. Commentary is provided for other choices of N and n.