Scoring a match

Scoring lives under For Officials on your phone. It is a phone-only tool on purpose: it is held courtside for three hours, which is not something a laptop is for. Open the menu on your phone and tap Scoring.

The page lists the dual matches you are assigned to. Anything else — a tournament court, a practice set, a match that is not in Bluebridge at all — goes through Score another match, which asks for two team names and nothing more.

Try it first

At the top of the scoring page is a demo match, Southern State vs. Eastern. It is the real thing — the same nine matches, the same scorer, the same rules — against two schools that do not exist. It lives on your phone alone: nothing syncs, nothing reaches your account, nobody else sees it, and you can reset the whole thing and start again. Learn the buttons there rather than on the first point of a real match.

The matches of a dual

Open the match you are working and the nine matches are already there — Doubles 1, 2, 3 and Singles 1 through 6 — because a dual is always that shape. Pick the one you are covering.

Tapping one shows what it is — ITA, no-ad, doubles as a six-game pro-set on one set of balls, singles as best of three with new balls every set — and asks who is playing. A dual has nothing to decide there, and offering the decision only invites a wrong answer at the moment nobody has time to check it. Confirm and start, then the toss.

The board shows where each match stands — not started, live with its score, or final with the result — so you can see the dual at a glance and pick up anything left mid-set.

Anything that is not a dual — a tournament match, a practice set, a match that is not in Bluebridge — goes through Score another match, which asks for two names and the rest of the setup.

The toss

Pick who won the toss, who is serving, and which side they are serving from. That is the last question before the first point — everything after it is derived.

The scoring screen

• The scoreboard at the top: the serving team on the first row, sets across, points at the end.
• The card between the names and the points — the current game, point by point, numbered along the top.
• The score as it is called, with the clock between points beside it.
• The court, showing which service box is in play and where the players should be standing.
• Ace, Fault, Overrule and Undo, and then the two point buttons — the home team solid, the second team in the lighter blue.

Reading the card

It is the paper card, in the same notation. A slash is the point, written in the winner’s box. An A is an ace. A dot is a fault, written in the receiver’s box — which is where a card records the server’s miss — and a double fault is that dot followed by a D. Seven boxes, because a no-ad game cannot run past seven points.

What the screen calls

The score reads the way you would say it: the server’s score first, Deuce at 40-40, Deciding point underneath it in no-ad. When a game ends it holds Game, Team for ten seconds with the standing under it — First game, then One game all, then UCLA leads 2-1, second set. A set holds for thirty seconds, which is also your reminder that balls change.

In a tiebreak the leader’s score is called first and the leading team is named under it, the way it is announced on court.

ITA or USTA

Setup asks which rulebook the match is played under, and the scorer changes with it.

• ITA — the college game. Overrules with their own ladder, electronic line calling as an option, and a medical timeout that assesses a point. Teams play teams.
• USTA — there are no teams. Setup asks for the players, and they are the sides: one each in singles, both surnames in doubles. A foot fault is a service fault, not a penalty: second serve, or the point if it was already the second. Code violations are the only ladder, a medical timeout costs nothing, and neither it nor a bathroom break is limited to one.

The ITA ladders

In an ITA match, Overrule is on the button row. The first overrule is a caution, the second is a point penalty, and a third or later one is a code violation — which means it takes the next step of the code ladder rather than starting its own.

Code violations run point, game, match. The two counts are shared: if a player has already had a code for ball abuse and then earns a third overrule, that overrule is the second code, so it is a game penalty. A game penalty takes the game whatever the score was.

Everything a team has earned shows under their end of the court, so you can see the ladder without opening anything.

Stoppages and codes

Tap a team’s name on the court — or a player’s circle, which does the same thing — to open their sheet: Code Violation, Extended Bathroom Break, Medical Timeout.

A code violation asks what it is for before it is recorded — unsportsmanlike conduct, excessive overrules, delay of game, racquet abuse, ball abuse, audible obscenity. The reason is called with it and kept on the match, so a report written that evening is not being written from memory.

• Under ITA, one extended bathroom break and one medical timeout per player per match — once either is taken the button goes dead rather than quietly recording a second. USTA limits neither, so the button keeps count instead.
• A medical timeout assesses a point automatically — called as a point assessed rather than a penalty, since nobody did anything wrong. The point goes to the opponent.
• Neither counts as an offence. The code ladder is its own count, and the offence number sits on the Code Violation button so you can see where it stands.

ELC matches

Switch on ELC match at setup when the lines are being called electronically. It is off by default. What changes is what an overrule costs: a warning, and then a point penalty for every single one after it, all match, with no limit. It never becomes a game penalty, never defaults anyone, and never turns into a code violation the way a third overrule does in a called match. The code ladder is untouched and runs alongside it as always.

Fixing things

Corrections sit below the line on that same sheet, in a quieter style so they cannot be mistaken for something that happened in the match:

• Assign Serve — hand the serve over when the toss or the end was entered wrong. Alternation carries on from there. At 0-0 you can also do it straight from the scoring screen, under the buttons.
• Change Server — in doubles, swap which of the pair is serving.
• Swap Sides — in doubles, swap which of the pair is in the deuce court.

Ends have their own switch in the header, next to the X — use it when the screen and the court disagree. The automatic changes carry on from the corrected position.

Undo takes back the last thing you tapped, and it is never dead: at 0-0 it takes you back to the toss, and after match point it is still there next to Done, so a mis-tapped match point does not mean rebuilding the match by hand.

Doubles

If you entered player names, the players appear as circles on the court, in singles as well as doubles, with the ball beside whoever is serving. Doubles is scored by player: the four of them stand in the formation they should be standing in — server behind their baseline, partner across the centre at net, receiver behind the diagonal baseline, their partner up on the other half. Initials come from the names; the home team is solid blue and the second team the lighter fill.

Before the first and second games of each set it asks two questions: who serves for this pair, and who receives in the deuce court. That is all it needs — the rotation and the court swaps follow from them for the rest of the set, and it asks again at the start of the next one because a pair may change either.

Balls, and changing the match mid-match

Ball change is set at setup: every set (the ITA default), split sets at one set all (the USTA default), or counted in games — 7/9 and 9/11, where the first change comes earlier because the warm-up is worth two games. On a counted setting the scorer shows how many games are left on these balls; on the others the set call is the reminder, and it holds for thirty seconds because that is the window where it is actionable.

The settings button in the header changes the match while it is being played: no-ad to ad and back, and a third set to a match tiebreak or the other way round. That is also where a dual match that is genuinely being played differently gets put right. Both apply from where you make them — the sets already played keep their format, and a game won on a deciding point is not re-decided by switching to ad.

Ending a match

End is in the header. A retirement gives the match to the opponent and the scoreline carries ret.; an abandoned match has no winner. A default follows from the code ladder on its own.

Anything that ends a match asks first — a retirement, an abandonment, and the third code violation. Everything else in the scorer is one tap from undone, but these finish it in front of two teams, so they get a sentence and a second tap.

The clock beside the score counts the time between points; underneath it is the match’s own running time. When the match finishes, the result carries the time it started, the time it finished, and how long it took — undo the match point and the finish time goes with it.

Where the score goes

Every point is written to your phone the moment it happens, so a locked screen, a reclaimed tab or a browser that reloads all come back to the same score. The match is then synced to the match it belongs to — held back a few seconds while you are playing, sent the moment it ends.

If there is no signal, nothing is lost: the phone keeps the match and it syncs the next time you open the scoring page. The finished match tells you where it stands — Saved to the match, or Saved on this phone.

Anything you have synced is on your account, so a court scored on one phone can be opened on another. Those rows show a small cloud; tapping one brings the match down to the phone you are holding.

After the match

The completed screen writes the result the way a result is written — UC Irvine def. UCLA, with the score from the winner’s end — and then the match statistics: points won, first serve in, first and second serve points won, aces, double faults, break points won, service games held, and the longest run of points.

None of that is anything extra you had to tap. It is all read back out of the points you scored, which is also why it can never disagree with the scoreline.