Twenty-three names and thirty-two lines

I have done the club championships draw at three clubs now, over something like twenty years, and I have come to the conclusion that it is the same evening every time. Only the room changes.

It goes like this. Somebody has a list of entries on a sheet of A4 that has been on the noticeboard since August and has a coffee ring on it. Somebody else has a pen. There is always one more person in the room than is useful, and it is usually me.

This year it was 23 entries in the men's singles. If you've never done a draw, the thing nobody tells you is that a knockout only works in powers of two. Sixteen is lovely. Thirty-two is lovely. Twenty-three means 32 lines with nine byes, and nine byes is where the evening goes.

Because the byes have to go somewhere, and wherever they go somebody gets a week off and somebody else doesn't. The convention is they go to the seeds, which means you first have to agree who the seeds are, and that is a conversation that cannot be had quickly by anyone who has ever lost to anyone. Last year's results, says one person. Last year's winner has moved away, says another. Last year's results anyway, says the first. I have heard this exact exchange in three different counties.

Then the names go into something. A hat if you're organised. A pint glass if you're not. One year it was a biscuit tin and we spent ten minutes deciding whether the shortbread counted as an entry.

And you draw them, one by one, and write them in, and everyone watches, and it all feels very fair and democratic, right up until somebody leans over at about twenty to eleven and says, quite gently, that all the byes seem to be in the top half.

They always are. Or near enough. Nobody does it on purpose. It's just that three sensible adults with a pen and a hat will, without fail, produce a draw that a computer would be embarrassed by. The top half gets a week off. The bottom half plays a full first round. And by twenty to eleven nobody wants to start again, so it goes on the noticeboard, and for the next month the bottom half quietly hates the top half.

I don't think it's anyone's fault. I think it's what happens when you do sums in a bar. I'm told there are better ways now. I'm told that most years, round about February, when the first-round matches are still being "arranged".

Next year I've said we'll do it differently. I said that last year as well. I'll probably say it in the bar, with a pen in my hand.

Run this at your club: Run your tennis club championships with seeded draws from 2 to 128.