The Junior Circuit Rulebook

HitCourt Circuit — Rules & Regulations

v1 — content-complete (Tournament-Organizer-facing document; FU-019 / SI-2). Authored Sprint 0 Session 7 (2026-05-20). Modeled on the ITF World Tennis Tour Juniors Regulations in structure + voice. This is the document a Circuit Owner reads and adopts for their own circuit. Status: all values confirmed with Captain (S7); sport-rule items verified against the ITF Rule Book (S8). Every HitCourt-specific value — grades, points ladder, categories, eligibility, scoring, ranking rules — is Captain-confirmed (none invented). The two S7 sport-rule [verify] items are now closed (S8): match format is correctly framed as an organiser choice (§2.2 carries only the sport-level statement; the supported-format menu lives in §3.6 as a flexible Regulation, not an ITF-bound list), and the Composition-of-Draws / Doubles provisions (§2.7) are confirmed accurate against the ITF Rule Book. Remaining before publication: render to a polished .docx. See the appendix for the full status. Companion document (separate, internal): hitcourt-rules-and-regulations-code-map.md (v0 created) maps each provision below to where it lives in code (circuit-defaults.md D-N, the Cascade Framework, quadrant classifications). That document is for agents + the dev team; THIS document is for Circuit Owners and carries no code references. Adoption model: a Circuit Owner may (a) adopt these Regulations as-is, or (b) adopt them and edit the negotiable parts (Part 3) to match their own circuit. The non-negotiable parts (Part 2 — the Rules of the sport) cannot be changed.

How to read this document — the two kinds of provisions

Every provision below is one of two kinds:

(For the project team: 🔒 RULE = quadrants (1)/(2); ⚙️ REGULATION = quadrants (3)/(4) of rules-vs-regulations.md. This note is the only cross-reference in this document; everything else is plain governance language.)

PART 1 — THE CIRCUIT

1.1 Title & Purpose

This document sets out the Rules & Regulations under which a HitCourt Circuit operates. A Circuit is a season-long series of tournaments linked by a common ranking system, run by a Circuit Owner (Tournament Director) on the HitCourt platform at https://www.hitcourt.com/circuit/<circuit-slug>/.

The purpose of these Regulations is to ensure every tournament in the Circuit is run fairly, consistently, and in accordance with the Rules of the sport — while giving the Circuit Owner the freedom to shape the competitive and commercial character of their own Circuit.

1.2 The Circuit Model

A HitCourt Circuit consists of:

• A calendar of tournaments across a season.
• Categories (age / gender / skill brackets) and Events (Singles / Doubles within each category).
• A ranking system that aggregates results across the season into a leaderboard.
• A registered-player base with persistent profiles and history.

A season runs across the calendar, then freezes and archives. Season length and any finale are not a fixed HitCourt default — they are delivered through Circuit Permissions / Settings (a Sprint 1+ feature, not yet built):

• Sub-Circuit — a Circuit Owner may select a defined set of their tournaments to form a Sub-Circuit (e.g., 8 designated events), which carries its own separate Sub-Circuit ranking alongside the main Circuit ranking. (This is the "circuit-within-a-circuit" pattern — see circuit-domain.md §9, e.g., the PTT sub-circuit of LTAT; surfaced as P-4 Sub-Circuit Calendar + P-5 Sub-Circuit Ranking in circuit-permissions.md.)
• Finale — where an Owner opts for a year-end finale (e.g., a Masters), its seedings are taken from the Sub-Circuit ranking. Optional, per-circuit.

1.3 Roles

1.4 Player Identification

Each player holds a persistent HitCourt member ID, generated by the platform's existing player-ID creation system (the engine's established formula — adopted as-is). Where a Circuit participates in a shared-pool / feeder relationship with a federation or a global rating system, the player may also carry a National Tennis ID and/or an ITF World Tennis Number (WTN) linked to that HitCourt member ID.

1.5 Adoption of these Regulations

A Circuit Owner adopts these Regulations in one of two ways:

1. Adopt as-is — take HitCourt's recommended defaults wholesale.
2. Adopt and adapt — take HitCourt's defaults and edit the negotiable provisions (Part 3) to match the Circuit's own prior practice or commercial needs.

The non-negotiable Rules of the sport (Part 2) cannot be changed under either path.

PART 2 — RULES OF THE SPORT (🔒 non-negotiable)

These provisions come from the Rules of Tennis and the ITF Junior Rule Book. They are the sport itself; no Circuit may override them.

2.1 Rules of Tennis

All matches are played under the Rules of Tennis as published by the ITF, including the Code where applicable.

2.2 Match Format

Tennis is played in sets, games and points under the Rules of Tennis. The specific match format used for an event (number of sets, set length, deuce/tie-break method) is an organiser choice, not a Rule of the sport — HitCourt records it for scheduling but does not constrain it. See §3.6 for the supported formats.

2.3 Draw Geometry

A tennis elimination draw is a power-of-2 bracket: 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128 lines. Each round halves the field until one winner remains. The platform does not support non-power-of-2 main draws.

2.4 Placing of Seeds

Seeded players are placed at fixed, ITF-canonical bracket positions so the strongest players can only meet in later rounds:

• Seed 1 → line 1 (top of the draw). Seed 2 → the last line (line 16 / 32 / 64 / 128 depending on draw size).
• Seeds 3-4 are drawn as a pair; Seeds 5-8, 9-12, 13-16 are drawn in groups of four, into ITF-defined positions, top to bottom.
• If two seeded players are from the same nation/province, they are drawn into different halves. If three or four are from the same nation/province, the 3rd and 4th are drawn into the quarters not already holding one of that nation's seeds. This separation principle extends to cover all seeded players.

(Source: ITF Junior Rule Book — Making the Draw → Placing of Seeds.)

2.5 Byes

When there are fewer players than the draw size, byes are awarded to the highest seeds first (so the top seeds get a first-round walkover). Any remaining byes are then drawn by lot so as to distribute them as evenly as possible throughout the sections of the draw.

(Source: ITF Junior Rule Book — Making the Draw → Byes.)

2.6 Same-Nation Separation & the Placement Cascade

Players from the same nation (or province, for a national-scope Circuit) are drawn into different sections of the draw as far as possible, so they meet as late as possible. The platform applies this through a deterministic cascade — at each level of the bracket (Halves → Quarters → Sections → Lines), same-nation players are split as evenly as possible, with a lot deciding any odd split. This same cascade governs the placement of seeds first, then byes, then the remaining players.

(This is the operating mechanic HitCourt uses to satisfy the ITF separation Rule. See the project's Cascade Framework for the full algorithm.)

2.7 Composition of Draws & Entry Definitions

The draw is composed of entrants in these ITF-defined categories:

A Qualifying Draw is run in sections equal to the number of qualifiers required (4 qualifiers → 4 sections, etc.); each section produces one Qualifier. (Source: ITF Junior Rule Book — Making the Draw → Qualifying → Sections and Seeds.)

2.8 Draw Stages

A tournament's draw architecture may take one of these forms:

PART 3 — HITCOURT RECOMMENDED REGULATIONS (⚙️ negotiable per Circuit)

These are HitCourt's recommended defaults. A Circuit Owner may keep them or change them. Where a provision must be fixed once the season/tournament is published, it is marked (lock-on-publish); otherwise it may be changed per event.

3.1 Tournament Grades & Allocation of Points

Every tournament is assigned a Grade, which sets the ranking points on offer. HitCourt uses six grades — Grade A (highest) then Grade 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 (Grade 5 lowest). A Circuit Owner may also run an event with no grade and no ranking points (a pure participation/trophy event); ranking points are entirely optional.

The points are ONE continuous ladder

There is no separate "main draw" and "qualifying" points scheme. Points are awarded by the round a player reaches, measured by the size of the field in that round (round-of-N). The whole competition — qualifying and main draw together — is a single elimination ladder that halves the field each round:

Winner ← (2) ← (4) ← (8) ← R16 ← R32 ← R64 ← R128 ← R256 ← R512 ← R1024

A draw's size simply decides where the "main draw" label stops and "qualifying" begins — the points for any given round never change. In a 32-team main draw the first round is R32; the qualifying rounds below it are R64, R128, R256. In a 128-team main draw the first round is R128; qualifying below it is R256, R512, R1024. Same ladder, different starting point. (The terms "Final Qualifying Round", "FQR−1", "FQR−2" are just the three rounds immediately below the main-draw's first round.)

This keeps the descent smooth — there is never a cliff between the main draw and qualifying — and it means every player who steps on court earns points, down to the deepest qualifying round.