Padel Americano for 20 players
Twenty players is the size at which an Americano starts to strain. The schedule still works and here it is, but the format quietly stops delivering the thing it is chosen for, and it is worth knowing that before you book five courts.
| Round | Court 1 | Court 2 | Court 3 | Court 4 | Court 5 | Resting |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 16 & 13 v 9 & 17 | 20 & 15 v 4 & 19 | 14 & 5 v 11 & 18 | 2 & 7 v 8 & 1 | 12 & 3 v 6 & 10 | nobody |
| 2 | 13 & 6 v 19 & 15 | 10 & 20 v 14 & 16 | 3 & 9 v 2 & 5 | 11 & 12 v 18 & 1 | 8 & 7 v 4 & 17 | nobody |
| 3 | 9 & 18 v 3 & 8 | 4 & 13 v 12 & 6 | 11 & 15 v 16 & 20 | 14 & 2 v 5 & 7 | 1 & 10 v 19 & 17 | nobody |
| 4 | 5 & 6 v 1 & 17 | 20 & 13 v 18 & 3 | 10 & 9 v 15 & 7 | 8 & 4 v 11 & 16 | 14 & 12 v 2 & 19 | nobody |
| 5 | 19 & 5 v 16 & 8 | 6 & 20 v 7 & 9 | 13 & 3 v 4 & 11 | 17 & 12 v 14 & 15 | 18 & 10 v 1 & 2 | nobody |
| 6 | 5 & 13 v 20 & 7 | 1 & 3 v 8 & 15 | 14 & 18 v 6 & 16 | 19 & 10 v 9 & 4 | 11 & 17 v 2 & 12 | nobody |
60 different pairs over 6 rounds, no pair repeated. Nobody sits out.
Where the format starts to strain
Five courts take all twenty players, so nobody rests and six rounds produce sixty different pairs. On paper that is the best numbers on this whole site.
Divide them, though, and each player partners six of the other nineteen. Not quite a third. A complete rotation would take nineteen rounds, which is five hours. So twenty players in an Americano are not really doing an Americano; they are doing six rounds of mixed doubles with a shared table.
That is still a good game. It just is not the format's promise, and an organiser who sells it as everyone plays with everyone will get asked why two friends never once ended up on the same side.
What to run instead at twenty
King of the Court suits twenty better than an Americano does. Winners move up a court and losers move down, and over an hour the group sorts itself by level without anybody seeding it. With five courts that sorting is fine-grained enough to be interesting, and nobody needs a rotation to be complete for it to feel fair.
The other option is two Americanos of ten, or better, of eight plus twelve if the levels split that way. Smaller tables are also easier to keep: at twenty players, one unrecorded round is five matches gone.
Keep the single Americano when the game is an occasion rather than a weekly fixture. A season opener with twenty people wants one table and one winner, and nobody minds the rotation being partial.
The scoresheet is the real problem
Five courts finishing at different times, twenty names, six rounds: that is a hundred and twenty individual scores to collect, in an hour and a half, from people who want to keep playing.
Paper does not survive this. Either appoint somebody who is not playing to collect every round at the net, or let the players enter their own score from the court, which is the part a printed schedule cannot do and a live game can.
Questions organisers ask
- Can you run a padel Americano with 20 players?
- Yes, on five courts, with nobody resting. Six rounds give sixty different pairs, though each player still only partners six of the other nineteen.
- What is the maximum number of players for an Americano?
- There is no hard limit, but above sixteen the share of the group you actually partner drops below a third, and most organisers are happier with King of the Court or two smaller Americanos.
- How many courts do 20 players need?
- Five for everybody to play every round. On four courts, four players rest each round.
After the schedule, the game still has to run
An Americano schedule is the easy half of the game. The hard half is everything that moves: somebody drops out an hour before, two more ask to come, and the score lives on a phone that keeps locking itself.
That is what MyPadel does. You open a game and send one link. Players put themselves on the list and take themselves off it, the pairs rebuild when the number changes, and the standings update on everyone's screen as the scores come in.
The generator above stays free and account-free, always. The live game needs a free organiser account, because a game has to belong to somebody.