This website and an associated scheduling program that runs automatically just after midnight every Friday morning attempt to automate the tennis match scheduling that Katy so wonderfully did for the Hidden Meadows Tennis Club for 15 or so years. Perhaps the computer can pull this off. But there are recognized limitations. The computer is not programmed to be sensitive to nuances such as who likes or dislikes playing with whom and it is never going to be able to replace Katy as a motivator to get players out and playing. Nor will it ever hunt up a last-minute substitute for you if you become unable to play at a time when you had indicated you could.

I've attempted to write the web pages in such a manner that they can be accessed and manipulated satisfactorily from a cell phone as well as a desktop computer. This is an important goal of all modern web page designs, but it is difficult objective because of the tiny screen of a cell phone. If you have a choice, browsing from a larger screen will be much more enjoyable, especially initially while there is much to learn about how to use the website.

Tennis weeks run from Saturday morning through Friday evening. This choice could be easily changed if there ever became a reason to do so.

One week prior to the start of a tennis week, an administrator (currently Katy, Rick, Olivier and I are the only ones) is to have finalized a list of proposed match times for the coming tennis week. Players have from Saturday to Thursday of the week prior to a tennis week to indicate on a web page, how many times they ideally would be playing the coming tennis week, and also just which of the proposed match times they could be available for play.

When the scheduling program runs it has three goals. One is to find a way of assigning players to starting times so as to have everyone playing as closely as possible to their ideal level of play. A second goal is to be creating foursomes with players roughly equal in playing strength. A final goal is to shake things up and not be scheduling the same players to play together week after week. These goals often conflict with each other. Achieving all three simultaneously is especially difficult when the number of people being scheduled is small.

The scheduling program will generally only run a few minutes. A schedule for the next week will be available on the website after mid-morning on Friday. During the time between when the scheduling program finishes execution and the schedule is published, administrators can intervene to override the computer's scheduling if deemed desirable.

To facilitate matching strength of play, the computer maintains a tennis ladder. Our normal play seems to generally be for three sets with the three sets assigning players to teams in all three possible ways. Necessarily, if such a plan completes normally, one player wins three sets or one player loses three sets. A player winning three moves upward on the ladder (unless highest on the ladder to start), and a player losing all three potentially moves downward. The ladder is not displayed and its only purpose is to aid forming foursomes of roughly equal playing strength. Enough results of this sort are available from foursomes wanting to play three sets in this way, that no foursome should ever feel any compulsion to actually complete such a plan. Stopping after two is fine, and playing all sets with the same partnerships is fine, especially when there is an obvious strongest and weakest player and the play is more balanced if they always play together.

The ladder supports creating foursomes of roughly comparable playing strength, but comes with the obvious downside of requiring the reporting of match results. The website tries to help. On the same page on which proposed matches are shown, a clickable link appears once that match is in the past. Clicking on that link brings up a page on which there are nine check boxes. One can be used to indicate that the match did not complete normally and that there is no data available for updating the ladder. The other eight allow specifying whether there was a big winner or a big loser and just which of the four players it was.

Some of the matches listed on the Matches Show page are future matches, which could never currently have any results to report. For them the associated link rather than bringing up a form to report results, brings up a list of possible subs. The players listed are those who had indicated their availability for playing at the time of the match, but wound up unscheduled. These players are obvious good potential subs if someone ever becomes unable to play at a time when they had indicated availability and became scheduled. If worst comes to worst and no last-minute sub can be found, just cancelling the match is probably the best way forward.