The Courts tab is your club's diary. It opens on today with a strip of the next fortnight along the top, and three buttons for morning, afternoon and evening. Pick a time of day and you get a list of start times with what is free beside each one. Tap a time, check the one screen it gives you, and the court is yours.
You do not choose a court first. Nobody ever wanted court three, they wanted seven o'clock, so the time is the question and the court is answered for you on the confirm with the first free one. If you want a different one, it is one tap: every free court at that time is on the same screen.
On a laptop the same day draws as the sheet the club has always had on the wall, courts across and times down. A cell is both questions at once.
What the court is for
The confirm asks, and you can ignore it: answer nothing and the court books just the same. What it wants is what kind of thing this is, and the list is what a club's diary has always had a column for. League match, ladder match, tournament match, friendly, coaching, team match, club night, practice. One tap.
League, ladder and tournament then ask which match, off what you have left to play. Pick one and the court is booked against it. Your opponent is told where you are playing, and the sheet says "Box 3: Dan v Priya" instead of just your name. The booking also stops counting against how many courts you may hold, because a league match is the club's own fixture rather than one of your three. Nothing left to play under that heading? It says so and books the court anyway.
Changed your mind, or skipped the question? Tap your own booking on the sheet. You get the same screen the confirm gave you: the kinds along the top, the names under them, and cancelling the booking at the bottom. Everything on it saves as you press it, so Update this booking at the end only closes the screen. Tap the kind that is already lit and the answer comes off; pick a different one and the court says that instead, match and all. Your courts are on the You screen too, and it is the same screen from there.
Who else is playing
Doubles, or three of you having a hit? Put their names on the booking. They are told the court is booked and that they are down to play on it. There is nothing for them to answer: a court is a diary entry, not an invitation. The sheet then says who is on it rather than just whose name it went in under, which is what the other eleven people reading it want to know.
Take somebody off, or add a fourth, by tapping the court on the sheet or on your You screen. The names are on the same screen as everything else about the booking, with a search under them. Whoever comes off is told the court is not theirs any more, and whoever goes on is told it is. Nobody hands over a phone number either way.
A court from the other end
When somebody takes one of the times you suggested, the app offers you the free courts at that time on the spot. One tap and it is booked, and you are both told. It never books one for you. If you agreed a date further ahead than your club lets courts be booked, you are told the morning it comes into range. Whoever gets there first has the pick of them.
Nothing follows a match on its own. Move the time or call it off and the court stays booked. It is a court two people agreed on, and the software is not entitled to give it away. What happens instead is that it turns up on your home screen with a Release button on it. Either of you can press it.
Two hours
Where your club allows it, Add another hour is on the confirm and only appears when the next hour on that court is really free. There is no length to choose and no dropdown: one hour is the ordinary booking, and the button is there for the times it is not.
Changing your mind
Your own bookings say Yours on the sheet. Tap one and it asks once, and the court goes straight back on the sheet for somebody else. There is nothing to pay and no deadline to beat.
If the club takes a court back for a match or a coaching session, you are told, with the club's own reason on it.