Team Americano: how to run one, step by step
Team Americano is the format for a night where people sign up as pairs. You keep the same partner all evening, the whole schedule is drawn before the first serve, and every pair meets every other pair exactly once.
Because nothing in the running order depends on a result, you can print the entire evening and tape it to the wall before anyone hits a ball. That is the practical difference from every format that re-seeds, and for a club night with people arriving at different times it is worth a lot.
How it differs from a normal Americano
A normal Americano switches your partner every round and scores you as an individual. Team Americano keeps the pair together and scores the pair.
Everything else is the same, including the part people recognise: points are counted per ball. A match to 24 might end 16–8, and both numbers land on the table. There are no wasted points — losing 11–13 is worth far more than losing 4–20.
Both players in a pair bank the pair's score, so the table ranks pairs, not individuals.
The circle method, and why it matters
The schedule is the circle method run over the pairs: pair one stays put and the rest rotate one step per round. Do that and every pair meets every other exactly once, with no bookkeeping and no repeats.
The number of matches is straightforward:
| Pairs | Matches |
|---|---|
| 4 | 6 |
| 5 | 10 |
| 6 | 15 |
| 8 | 28 |
| 10 | 45 |
Divide by your courts to get rounds. Eight pairs on four courts is 7 rounds; on two courts it is 14.
What happens when you have fewer courts than matches
This is where a lot of tools quietly cheat. One turn of the circle produces several matches at once — with eight pairs, four matches. If you only have two courts, two of those four have nowhere to go.
PadelLoop splits the turn across several rounds rather than dropping the leftover matches. The matches within one turn are mutually disjoint — no pair appears twice — so any subset of them can be played at the same time without a conflict.
The alternative, which an early version of our own engine did, is to throw the extras away. The test caught it: sixteen players on two courts produced 14 meetings where there should have been 28. Half the tournament silently disappeared. If you are evaluating another tool, this is a good thing to check by hand.
Players, courts and the count
You need an even number of players, at least four. PadelLoop will not start on an odd count — the pairs are fixed, so an odd player would be left without a partner, and refusing is better than leaving someone out quietly.
An odd number of pairs is fine. One pair sits out each round, and the circle method spreads those rests evenly by construction.
What you get in the tool
Team Americano is one of the social formats, so you get the big screen view for a TV in the hall, a share link players can open on their own phones, and CSV export of the final table when you are done. That is not true of every format — the fixed-teams round robin, King/Queen of the Court and Monrad keep their table on the organiser's own screen.
Pairs are built straight down the player list, two by two. If people signed up as couples, type them in that order and you get exactly those couples. Team Mexicano draws the pairs instead, which is the right answer when you want the tool to decide who plays with whom.
A worked six-pair schedule
Six pairs, 15 matches. Pair 1 stays put; the rest rotate one step per round.
| Turn | Matches |
|---|---|
| 1 | 1v6, 2v5, 3v4 |
| 2 | 1v5, 6v4, 2v3 |
| 3 | 1v4, 5v3, 6v2 |
| 4 | 1v3, 4v2, 5v6 |
| 5 | 1v2, 3v6, 4v5 |
Five turns of three matches each. On three courts that is five rounds and you are done in well under two hours at 16 points a match. On two courts the same 15 matches become eight rounds, because one match from each turn waits for the next slot.
Check the table and you will find every pairing exactly once, and pair 1 meeting each of the other five. That is the circle method doing its job.
Setting the target score
Points are counted per ball, so the target score sets the match length directly: roughly half a minute per point. Sixteen points is about eight minutes, 24 is about twelve.
Work backwards from your finish time. Six pairs on three courts is five rounds; at 24 points plus a three-minute changeover that is 75 minutes. At 16 points it is 55. Eight pairs on two courts is 14 rounds — at 24 points that is close to three and a half hours, which is a different kind of evening entirely.
Because the whole schedule is drawn in advance, you can do this arithmetic before anyone arrives and print the finish time on the sheet. That is worth doing: an evening with a stated end time runs better than one without.
When the pairs are uneven in level
Team Americano does not re-seed, so a strong pair meets a weak pair at some point and the result is lopsided. That is the honest cost of a fixed schedule, and it is the reason Team Mexicano exists.
Two things soften it without changing format. Build the pairs to even out — put a strong player with a weaker one when you type the list, rather than letting two strong players sign up together. And keep the target score low, because a 16-point mismatch is over in eight minutes while a 32-point one is a long walk for somebody.
The rules and a setup link are on the Team Americano page.
Common questions
What is Team Americano in padel?
An Americano played in fixed pairs, with the entire schedule drawn before the first ball. You keep the same partner all evening, every pair meets every other pair once, and points are counted per ball with both players banking the pair's score. Because nothing depends on results, the full running order can be printed and hung on the wall before play starts.
How is it different from Team Mexicano?
When the schedule is decided. Team Americano draws the whole thing up front, so everyone can see the running order in advance. Team Mexicano lets the live standings pick each round, so matches get closer as the evening goes on but nobody can see ahead. There is also a setup difference that matters when people arrive as couples: Team Americano builds the pairs straight down your player list, so the pairs you type are the pairs you get, while Team Mexicano draws them for you.
How many matches is a Team Americano?
Pairs multiplied by pairs minus one, divided by two. Four pairs is 6 matches, six pairs is 15, eight pairs is 28. Divide by your number of courts to get the number of rounds. If a round has more matches than courts, PadelLoop splits it across several rounds instead of dropping the extra matches, so every pair still meets every other exactly once.
What happens with an odd number of pairs?
One pair sits out each round, and the circle method spreads those rests evenly on its own without any extra bookkeeping. The players themselves must be an even number, since the pairs are fixed — PadelLoop refuses to start on an odd player count rather than leaving someone without a partner.