Team Americano: the fixed-pair padel round robin explained

Team Americano combines the quick, points-based matches of an Americano with fixed partners. Instead of rotating players, the app rotates teams: it draws a round robin so that each pair meets every other pair once, spread over as few rounds as your courts allow.

Each team is credited with the points it wins in every match. With matches to 24, a 15–9 win gives your team 15 points and the opponents 9. The standings rank teams by total points, then wins (a draw counts as half) and then point difference.

Team Americano is ideal when players arrive as pairs: friends who always play together, couples, colleagues representing a department, or club teams preparing for a league. It feels more like a classic tournament than an Americano, because you win or lose together, but nobody is knocked out and every team plays the same number of matches.

If your teams differ a lot in level, Team Mexicano is often more fun: it draws each round from the standings, so teams meet opponents of similar strength.

With n teams there are n × (n − 1) ÷ 2 matches to play. Each round fills as many courts as possible and every team plays at most once per round. When the number of teams is odd, or you have fewer courts than half the teams, some teams rest each round, and the rests rotate so that nobody rests twice before every team has rested once.

By default the app plans the full round robin and stops when every team has met every other team. You can also choose a fixed number of rounds instead; if that is more than a full round robin, a second cycle starts and teams meet again.

Eight friends sign up as four pairs: Anna & Ben, Carla & David, Emma & Filip and Gina & Hugo. Four teams make six matches, and with two courts that is three rounds in which every team plays every round, for example:

• Round 1: Anna & Ben vs Carla & David, Emma & Filip vs Gina & Hugo
• Round 2: Anna & Ben vs Emma & Filip, Carla & David vs Gina & Hugo
• Round 3: Anna & Ben vs Gina & Hugo, Carla & David vs Emma & Filip

If Anna & Ben win 15–9 and 13–11 and then lose 10–14, they finish with 38 points and two wins. A team that drew 12–12 in all three matches would have 36 points and three draws, which count as one and a half wins.

Three rounds to 24 take about 45 minutes. For a longer session, raise the points total to 32 or set a fixed number of rounds so the teams play each other twice.

With an even number of teams and a court for every two teams, a full round robin takes one round fewer than the number of teams: 3 rounds for 4 teams on 2 courts, 5 rounds for 6 teams on 3 courts, 7 rounds for 8 teams on 4 courts. With fewer courts it takes longer: 8 teams on only 2 courts need 14 rounds.

With an odd number of teams, one team rests each round: 5 teams on 2 courts play 5 rounds, and each team rests once.

At about 15 minutes per round for matches to 24, 6 teams on 3 courts finish in around 1 h 15 min.

To keep a Team Americano on time:

• Let pairs register together with a team name. It makes the standings more fun to follow.
• Count your courts before you pick the format. If the full round robin is too long, set a fixed number of rounds or lower the points total.
• If a team drops out, withdraw it: its results so far are kept, and the rounds that haven’t started are redrawn without it.
• Players can follow the live standings on their phones through a link or a QR code, so you don’t have to read out results between rounds.

Ways to adapt the round robin:

• Team Mexicano: fixed pairs, but each round is drawn from the standings.
• Double round robin: set a fixed number of rounds so that every team meets every other team twice.
• Timed matches with free scoring in points or games.
• Ranking by wins, like a classic league table, instead of by total points.