Pickleball Club Tournament Software
Mixed doubles in the morning, men's and women's doubles after lunch, pool play into a playoff in every division
A club pickleball tournament is four or five small tournaments sharing the same courts: mixed doubles, men's and women's doubles, sometimes singles, often split by skill level. Each division plays pool play into a playoff, the format USA Pickleball's 2026 rulebook describes in rule 15.B.5. The real constraint is time. A player may enter mixed and gender doubles only if the two events do not overlap (rule 15.D), so the day has to be built in blocks.
A Saturday on six courts with four divisions
The plan below fits 30 teams in four doubles divisions onto six courts. Mixed doubles owns the morning and gender doubles the afternoon, so every player can enter one of each.
08:00 — check-in. Two mixed divisions, intermediate and advanced, eight teams each, every division split into two pools of four.
08:30 — pool play. A pool of four plays six matches, so the four mixed pools have 24 between them. The two mixed divisions are separate brackets, and the scheduler builds their running orders one after the other. With one game to 15, a 25-minute slot and a team rest of 0, the 24 matches take five slots, not four, and the last pool match runs 10:10–10:35. Four rounds on six courts work only if you set the times by hand.
11:00 — pools closed. The scheduler also places the playoff matches of the first mixed division on courts 5 and 6 at 08:30 and 08:55, which pushes the second division's pools to about 11:00. The top two of each pool go into a four-team playoff, semi-finals best of three games to 11, at times you set once the pools have closed.
11:45 — mixed finals and third-place matches, four courts busy at once.
12:30 — lunch and the first medals.
13:00 — men's doubles (eight teams, two pools of four) and women's doubles (six teams, one pool of six) start together. That is 12 plus 15 pool matches, 27 on six courts in five rounds, and every women's pair plays all five back to back, which again needs a rest of 0.
15:15 — playoffs. The women's top four come straight out of their single pool into semi-finals.
16:15 — the last finals. The results page has carried every pool table and bracket since the first serve.
Divisions, pools and the playoff
Divisions. The 2026 USA Pickleball rulebook lists men's and women's singles and doubles plus mixed doubles (rule 15.A). A mixed team is one man and one woman. In a skill-rated doubles event the higher-rated partner sets the team's level; in an age event for players 19 and over the younger partner sets the team's age group. In JudgeMate every division is its own category with its own pools, bracket and entry list. A category set creates them in one pass: type the division names, tick women, men, both or neither, and each row becomes one category, or two when you tick both, all with the same rules. The label is stored, but JudgeMate does not check a player's gender, rating or age. Your entry form and the check-in desk do that.
Pool play into a playoff. Rule 15.B.5 divides teams into pools that play round robin to seed a single- or double-elimination playoff. JudgeMate runs one to four pools and sends 1, 2, 4 or 8 teams from each into a knockout, 4 and 8 only with a single pool. After pools, the only extra is the third-place match. A consolation round, either one round or a full consolation bracket, exists only in the plain knockout format without pools. Double elimination is not available. The full consolation bracket comes closest, but its winner never gets the rematch against the main-bracket winner that rule 15.B.1 provides.
Ranking a pool. A new pickleball bracket starts with the USA Pickleball table from rule 15.B.4: 1 point for a win, 0 for a loss. Ties go to wins in the matches among the tied teams, then point differential across all games, then point differential in the games between them, then point differential against the next higher team, then points scored. A team that withdraws or forfeits has its results removed from the table (15.B.4.a). Custom points only switches the rule set off. You then enter the match points yourself, for example 2 for a win and 1 for a loss, and ties go to head-to-head first, then the balance.
Seeding. Give seed numbers to the strongest teams and the pools are filled in a snake, so seeds 1 and 2 never share a pool. Rule 15.E asks sanctioned events for a draw and seeding committee. At a club, one person and a published reason are enough.
Courts, game length and the 10-minute rules
Add your courts as resources with a start time, a slot length and a rest time per team. Rest is added after a team's slot and rounded up to the next slot, so any value above 0 gives a team at least one slot off between matches. Rule 21.G allows 10 minutes between matches. With 25-minute slots and one game to 15, set rest to 0 and let the slot hold the break; with 10, the mixed pools above run until almost noon. Each division builds its own running order around slots another division of the event has already taken, and does not move them. The scheduler treats every pair as its own side, though. A player who sits in a mixed pair and a men's pair is two different entries, and a clash between them is not flagged. Keep the blocks apart in time, as rule 15.D requires anyway.
Game length is set once per bracket with two fields, Points per set and Sets to win. The app says set where the rulebook says game. Games to 11, 15 or 21 and one, two or three games to win cover every standard format in rule 15.C.1, from one game to 11 up to best of five games to 11. Raise single matches, such as the finals, without touching the rest of the bracket.
Scoreboards opened from the bracket count side-out scoring, where only the serving team wins points. Rally scoring is a provisional USA Pickleball rule (15.C.2) that a tournament director may choose, except in double-elimination doubles and the 2026 Golden Ticket and National Championship events. In JudgeMate it is a switch on the standalone live scoreboard and is not available inside a bracket yet. A club that plays rally types the games won on the match card after each match.
Once you start a match's scoreboard, from the day console or the match sheet, the match gets a referee QR code that opens its score panel, so whoever keeps score enters it at the court. A match without a scoreboard has no code, so the QR sheet is printed on the day. A team that has not reported 10 minutes after being called loses a game, and after 15 minutes a multi-game match (rule 18.F). Record the walkover and the winner takes the match by the games to win set for the whole bracket: 1-0 with one game to 15, even in a match raised to best of three. With the USA Pickleball table, a walkover also removes the absent team's results from the pool table.
Setting the tournament up in JudgeMate
Allow half an hour the week before.
Create the event and choose pickleball. Categories are doubles by default; switch one to singles if you run a singles event.
Create the divisions as a category set: Mixed intermediate, Mixed advanced, Men's doubles. Pick Groups + knockout, two groups, two advancing, and switch on the third-place match. Add Women's doubles on its own with one group of six and four advancing, because it is set up differently.
Open registration on the public event page. One player creates the team and the partner joins it under the same name; a player without a partner can mark themselves as looking for one. Set an entry limit per division. Once a division is full, new entries go to a waiting list. Mark entry fees as paid or waived as they arrive. JudgeMate keeps the list, and the money is collected the way your club already does it.
In each bracket choose one game to 15 for pools, then raise the semi-finals and finals to best of three games to 11. Add six courts with an 08:30 start, a 25-minute slot and 0 minutes of rest, and build the running order for both mixed divisions. Courts and the schedule settings are shared by the whole event, so before you build the afternoon order, change the start to 13:00. The mixed matches stay on the courts as taken slots. Build the women's doubles running order, then straight away set its playoff times by hand, after the pool. The scheduler puts those matches on courts 4 and 5, and a new time does not move a match to another court, so also move them to the women's pool courts (1–3) or clear their court. Only then build the men's doubles order. That way the 27 pool matches fit into five rounds. The scheduler does not wait for pool results and would put the semi-finals at 08:30 next to the pools, so set the playoff times by hand or build the bracket's running order again once the pools have closed.
On the day, close each division's pool stage when its last result is confirmed, and the bracket fills itself from the tables. Start from pickleball in the create menu, and for the wider checklist read how to organize a pickleball tournament.
Whiteboard, spreadsheet or Pickleball.com
A whiteboard per division works until four divisions share six courts. From then on the desk is the only place that knows which court frees up next, and players wait around it between matches.
A spreadsheet copes with pool tables. Moving the top two of every pool into a bracket is a manual copy, and on this Saturday you make it four times.
Pickleball.com is built for the American tournament circuit. It runs round robin, single and double elimination, and registration can require USA Pickleball membership. Its pricing page lists a one-time $25 setup fee per tournament and an amateur player service fee of $5 plus 7.99% of the registration checkout (checked October 2026). For an event that takes entry fees online that is the stronger fit. A club day costs the organizer nothing in JudgeMate, which in turn takes no payments, checks no memberships and keeps no ratings such as DUPR.
Set up your event
Free for organizers. No athlete cap. No commission on registrations. See pickleball features · Organizer guide