Help Us Pick the Best Doubles Team!

[coolchap]

Hi Friends,

We’ve completed the trials and identified our top 5 male players based on singles performance. Now comes the tricky part — for the upcoming competition, we need to select just 3 players:

• 2 players for the men’s doubles team
• 1 player for the mixed doubles team

Here’s the challenge: should we simply go with the top 3 singles players, or should we run separate doubles trials to test chemistry and pairing? As many of you know, two outstanding singles players don’t always make the strongest doubles team — sometimes a great player paired with a slightly lower-ranked teammate can be a winning combination.

Since I haven’t had to make this kind of decision before, I’d love to hear your suggestions, ideas, or even past experiences on how we can pick the most effective doubles pairings from our top 5. The goal is to field the strongest team possible for the competition.

Looking forward to your thoughts!

Thanks,
Coolchap

 

[JJ Ng]

What do those 5 male players want to do? Many players do not want to play doubles and only want to focus on singles. If you have two male players who prefer or do not want to do doubles, then your problem is solved!

 

[coolchap]

Let me provide some more context. There is tournament coming up where we will compete with other teams . We are forming our own team with 3 teams, 1 double men, 1 double women , 1 mixed doubles. There is no singles even in this tournaments.

So all the 5 players will love to play and only max 3 can play. Either we can choose the top 3 or can have some other double trials in between these 5 in some fashion too choose. The challenge 5 number is harder number to create the round robin. I was checking different method but seems like some player will play more and some will play less matches or wont get to pair with everyone.

 

[golden_son]

I lean toward trials for the reasons you stated originally, but have any of them played doubles together before? I agree that chemistry and familiarity with your partner's playstyle can be more important than pure skill.

Also, pairing one left- and one right-handed player is common practice.

 

[coolchap]

Yes, but all the players are right-handed. Some of them—specifically the 1st, 2nd, and 5th players—have played more doubles, with the 1st and 5th playing the most. Players 3 and 4 haven’t partnered much in doubles. Since the selection should be based on a clear framework rather than my personal gut feeling (which could introduce bias, as I’m also one of the players—the 5th—so my chances are already slim), I might end up being just the backup. That’s unless I pull off some doubles magic while others struggle—LOL.

You may read my loss ranting here (Which led me to be in the 5th position) https://www.tabletennisdaily.com/forum/topics/losing-rant.37748/