Quote:
Originally Posted by Umbrella
You guys talked me into it, and I signed up. My questions are very noobish. My two starting players are pretty bad. One is a 14 year old, ranked 1004th, the other is a 21 year old ranked 2106th.
1. Since these guys are so bad, is it better to just do a lot of practice? And does it matter which practice tournament you enter?
2. If the answer to #1 is to practice, when to enter tournaments? When form gets close to 15?
3. I understand junior tournaments are for 18-, but what are amateur? Are these for the truly awful players, like mine?
edit to add
4. I entered my young guy in a tournament, which showed only two other players. However, he ended up having to go through qualifying. Where did all the other players come from?
5. For the entries on tournaments, what are the numbers before and after the slash?
6. What exactly is a futures tournament?
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Umbrella
And I'll add another. How do you gain manager points?
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1. Regardless of how good or bad your guys are, practice is an essential part of players' careers. It's the primary method to earn XP that you use to build up players' skill/service/doubles abilities. When players are young, the primary focus is on practice, while playing tournaments to keep their form above 15.
Choosing practice tournaments doesn't have to be too complicated. Digamma's point is a good one, but may be more nuanced than you need. My main thoughts in choosing among practice tournaments is 1) what surface season is it? and 2) what surfaces do I want my players to be better on? Question 2 is more important when your players are younger, as added exposure increases their affinity to surfaces, but that effect decreases over time as players accumulate more total tennis experience. And always enter both singles and doubles for maximum experience.
2. Mostly covered already. This changes, though, when you have a player that you're trying to have climb to the very top of either the junior or general rankings.
3. The breakout of tournament types is essentially this: Major tourneys are open to all; Challengers are open to players outside the top 30 or 32; Futures to those outside the top 200; Amateurs to those outside the top 1000.
As Digamma has alluded to, there are junctures in a player's career where it is important to match his abilities to those he's playing with. Early in a player's adult career, it's hard to break through with a very low ranking, so you spend sufficient time earning ranking points in one level of tournaments so that you can consistently compete at the next level of tournaments.
4. Computer-managed players do not register for tournaments in advance. The list you see if of human-managed players that have entered the tournament.
5. The X/Y denotes the number of singles and doubles entries in the main tournament field.
6. Covered it in 3.
7. I think manager points are mainly gained by having your players win practice matches. There could be more ways to earn points, but I honestly haven't looked into it much.