Handicaps

Club Handicaps
Tennis Handicaps Explained
This should help you to understand the mysteries of the handicapping system used for handicapped matches and tournaments.

Players or pairs are given a handicap rating which is classed as either an 'owe' or a 'receive' amount. The best player will have a high owe handicap e.g. Owe (minus) 30.2 . The lowest standard player will have a high receive handicap e.g. Receive (plus) 30.1 .

If they played each other, then in most games the better player would start on owe 30 , that is minus 30 ; they would need to win 2 points to reach love . The other player would start on 30 as if they had already won 2 points. The .1 and .2 are fractional, only affecting selected games, as explained next.

.1 , .2 , .3 etc mean that an additional 15 is owed or received in 1 , 2 , or 3 out of every 6 games. For example, Receive 15.1 means that the player receives 15 in every game except one out of every 6, when they receive 30. Each sequence of 6 games follows the same pattern.

If the players both receive or both owe then the handicaps cancel (the smaller is subtracted from the larger). e.g. Player A is on Receive 15.3 and Player B is on Receive .3 this results in Player A receiving (plus) 15 in every game,