The WhatsApp chase
Someone posts “Beat Dave 6-4 6-3” in the group. Then it scrolls past three conversations about court keys and a photo of a broken net. You fish it out on Tuesday night and type it into the spreadsheet.
Box leagues for tennis clubs
Run your tennis box leagues without the spreadsheet
Players enter their own scores. Their opponent confirms. The standings update themselves, and the Tuesday night you spent fishing results out of WhatsApp is yours again.
No card, no password · Your league is running in a few seconds
1234
| Player | DB | DM | FM | MJ | GP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| D. Byrne | 6-4 6-2 | 7-6(5) 6-3 | 7-6(5) 4-6 8-10 | 6-2 6-4 | |
| D. Martin | 4-6 2-6 | 3-6 4-6 | + | 6-4 3-6 7-10 | |
| F. Mortimer | 6-7(5) 3-6 | 6-3 6-4 | 6-1 6-4 | 6-3 7-5 | |
| M. Jackson | 6-7(5) 6-4 10-8 | + | 1-6 4-6 | 4-6 5-7 | |
| G. Poynter | 2-6 4-6 | 4-6 6-3 10-7 | 3-6 5-7 | 6-4 7-5 |
WinLost, won a set
LostAwaiting confirmation
The problem
Sound familiar?
The spreadsheet
One person has it. On one laptop. The formulas break when somebody plays a championship tiebreak. Nobody else can update it, and if they are away for a fortnight the league stops.
Promotion day
The season ends and the real job starts: work out who goes up, rule a new grid, type forty names in again. Then somebody asks why they went down and you go back through the sheet to find out.
Tennis · Padel · Squash · Badminton · Pickleball
How it works
Three things happen
You do five minutes of work at the start. Your players do the rest without being asked. The club just watches the table move.
Your players, every week, without you
Players enter scores, their opponent confirms
They tap the link in the group, tap their name, and they are in. No account, no password, nothing to install, and it works on whatever phone they already have.
Walk off court, put the score in. Their opponent gets asked to confirm, and until they do, it counts for nothing. Nobody has to take anyone's word for it, and you are not the referee.
Forgot to confirm? After three days it confirms itself. That is the nagging job gone too.
Box 2 · Two sets · Championship tiebreak
Jackson v Byrne
6
7
Tiebreak: loser's points
5optional
6
4
10
8
16 Jul 2026
i
D. Byrne has to confirm this.It won't count towards the table until they do, or until it confirms itself in three days.
M. Jackson beats D. Byrne
6-7(5) 6-4 [10-8]
32
Cancel
Save score
Your club, all season, on its own
The table moves on its own
The moment a score is confirmed the standings recalculate: points, bonus sets, head to head, set difference, the lot. Anyone with the link reads every box, every result, every season. No login just to look.
So “what's the table?” stops being a question. It is a link, it is always right, and nobody had to crop a screenshot to answer it.
Still want it in the group chat? Share drops the standings straight into WhatsApp, current to the second.
| Player | P | W | L | BS | Pts | Games | Sets | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | D. Byrne | 4 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 11 | 48–33 | 7–2 |
| 2 | F. Mortimer | 3 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 7 | 33–25 | 4–2 |
| 3 | G. Poynter | 3 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 7 | 28–31 | 4–3 |
| 4 | M. Jackson | 3 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 5 | 26–36 | 2–5 |
| 5 | D. Martin | 3 | 0 | 3 | 1 | 4 | 23–33 | 1–6 |
3 for a win · 2 for a loss having won a set · 1 for a loss with none won · 0 for a match nobody played.
5 players, 4 matches each, maximum 12.
Ranked on points, then the match between them, then set difference, then game difference, then matches won. Pending scores are not counted until confirmed.
That's the whole loop
Five minutes to set up, five minutes at the end to sort out who goes up and down. In between, the only thing you have to do is play.Two sets + championship tiebreak
Every way a club plays tennis
Pick the format when you create the season and every score is checked against what that format can actually produce. Nobody has to remember whether your league plays a third set or a match tiebreak, because the season already knows.
Seven formats, not one
Two sets with a championship tiebreak, which is what most club leagues play. Best of three full sets. Best of three with a match tiebreak instead of a third. A single set. A pro set to eight. Fast4. Two sets with a tiebreak to seven. Your league plays what it already plays.
Tiebreaks are checked, not trusted
7-6 asks for the tiebreak score and 7-5 does not. 6-4 6-4 is a finished match and 6-4 4-6 is not, so it asks for the decider. A set of 8-6 in a format that stops at 7 is refused. It is the same rule your league already plays to, applied before the score reaches the table.
Singles and doubles in one season
Boxes 1 to 4 singles, boxes 5 and 6 doubles, one season, one table each. A pair goes in as one entry: any of the four can put the score in, either opponent confirms it, and nobody has to be nominated to report for the pair.
Play everyone once, or twice
Five in a box playing everyone once is four matches over a season. Set the box to play everyone twice and it is eight, home and away kept apart on the same sheet, which is what a club with a long summer season usually wants.
The table your club already publishes
Three for a win, two for a losing set, one for turning up, or the graded table, or a point a set. Nine numbers behind “set them myself” if your league has its own. Change it mid-season and every table recalculates, because nothing is stored as a total.
Rain, injury and no court all season
A match nobody could arrange is a walkover. One that stopped at 4-2 in the third is a retirement. One the floodlights ended level is unfinished, and that one has no winner at all. Three honest outcomes, so nobody invents a 6-0 6-0 to tidy the table.
Ties broken the way your rules say
Level on points comes down to head to head, or sets, or games, in the order your league sets. The table says which rule separated two players and the rollover screen says it again in a sentence, so “why did he go up and not me” has an answer you can forward.
And the season leaves as a file
One button saves the whole season as a spreadsheet: a tab for every box, one with every result on it and one for the ladder. A row a match, both names, the score, the date. That is your club’s record, and it is yours whether you carry on paying us or not.
All year round
And a club ladder, between the seasons
Boxes give your club eight good weeks and then a gap. The ladder covers the rest of the year: one list, everybody in the club on it, and a rating beside every name that carries straight on from one season to the next.
A minute to start, nothing to keep
Press start and everybody already in a box is on it. Anyone you add to a box later joins without being asked, so there is no second list to keep up to date.
Then it runs the way your boxes do. Two players sort a match out between themselves, one records the score and the other confirms it. Both ratings move as they walk off court, and every match says what it was worth.
Nobody has to understand the ratings to enjoy them. Win, go up. Beat somebody good, go up a lot. Part of Premier.
| Rank | Player | P | Rating | Form | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1▲1 | D. ByrneW3 | 23 | 1421 | ||
| 2– | F. Mortimer | 19 | 13961382 settled | ||
| 3▲2 | G. Poynter | 21 | 1352 | ||
| 4▼1 | A. Reid | 17 | 1338 | ||
| 5– | R. Kaur | 20 | 1310 | ||
| 6▼2 | M. Jackson | 16 | 1284 | ||
| 7– | J. Okonkworesting −30 | 9 | 1262 | ||
| 8new | N. Petrides | 2 | 1216 |
Movement is places over 30 days · form is the last five · the trend line is their rating over time · purple is a score waiting on the other player, and it counts already.
What clubs run this on now
You have probably already got a tool. It does not do this.
Tennis is the one racket sport with software everywhere, and most of it books courts. That is a different job from running a league, and the club that has one still runs the other on a spreadsheet.
ClubSpark books your courts
Keep it. It takes bookings, holds your membership and does your LTA return, and Clayside wants none of those. What it does not do is a box league your members update themselves, which is why the club that has ClubSpark still has a spreadsheet.
The LTA’s box league tool
It exists, it is free with your venue, and it asks every player to have an LTA number and sign in. That is the whole difference: here a player taps a link and taps their name. Our comparison page says what each one does, including where theirs is the better answer.
And the spreadsheet, still
Whatever else a club has bought, the box league is usually a grid on one person’s laptop with a screenshot in the group chat. That works until the person is away, the formulas meet a championship tiebreak, or they hand it over and nobody can open it.
Taking it to a meeting? The case for your committee is one page, written to be forwarded without editing.
Questions
The things tennis clubs ask first
How do we set it up?
About five minutes. Create the league with a club name and an email, no card and no password. The first time you sign in it walks you through the whole thing on practice data and then clears that out, so the only real thing you type is how many boxes you run, whether each is singles or doubles, and who is in them. Then you paste one link into each box’s group chat.
Can we run singles and doubles in the same season?
Yes, and most clubs do: boxes 1 to 4 singles, boxes 5 and 6 doubles. A pair is one entry in the box rather than two players, so any of the four can enter a score and either opponent confirms it. One person can play in a singles box and a doubles box at the same time.
How long should a tennis season be?
Three months, which for most clubs means a spring, summer and autumn season and a shorter winter one if you have floodlights. A box league runs on its deadline: it is the closing date that makes people ring round and book a court. Past three months the last few weeks are the same three people chasing each other.
What happens on promotion day?
Clayside drafts the next season out of the final table: top two up, bottom two down, or whatever numbers your rules use. Before you commit it it tells you what it spotted, including two players level at the promotion cut and which tie-break separated them. Move anyone you like, then press the button.
Do players need an app or an account?
Neither. They tap the link in the box’s group chat, tap their name, and they are in. No account, no password, and nothing to install. It works on whatever phone they already have, which matters when half a box would rather not be given a new app to learn.
We already use ClubSpark. Do we need this as well?
They do different jobs. ClubSpark books courts, holds your membership and does your LTA return; Clayside runs the box leagues those members play in, with scores they enter themselves. Most clubs keep both, and the box league is the bit ClubSpark leaves on a spreadsheet. Clayside and ClubSpark, side by side. And the LTA’s box league tool.
What does it cost?
One box of up to 12 players is free, for as long as you want it, and it is the whole product rather than a trial of it. A full league is £150 a year or £15 a month: 10 boxes, promotion and relegation, career records and the club ladder. See what is in each. The case for your committee.
Have a look
Your next season does not have to run on a spreadsheet
No card, no password, nothing to install. Type your club’s name and where to email you, and your league is ready for its first season.