Blog · Comparison · 6 min read
Full Draw vs Sweet 16: Picking the Right Format for Your Group
· By TennisPools
When you create a bracket pool on TennisPools, you make one decision that shapes the whole two weeks: Full Draw or Sweet 16. The commissioner picks the format at creation, everyone in the pool plays it, and there's no switching mid-tournament.
Both formats score the same way — points double every round — so this isn't a choice about rules. It's a choice about your group: how much homework they'll actually do, and when they want to play. Here's how to get it right.
The two formats, side by side
| Sweet 16 | Full Draw | |
|---|---|---|
| Total picks | 15 | 127 |
| What you pick | The 8 Round-of-16 winners, then through to the champion | Every match, Round 1 through the final |
| Points | 40 per quarterfinalist, then 80, 160, 320 | 5 in Round 1, doubling: 10, 20, 40, 80, 160, 320 |
| Maximum score | 1,280 | 2,240 |
| Picks open | Once the Round of 16 field is set | The moment the draw drops (~Aug 27) |
| Picks lock | At the first Round-of-16 match | At the tournament's first ball (Aug 30) |
| Time to fill out | About three minutes on a phone | A proper sitting — autofill starts you from the favorites |
The case for Full Draw
Full Draw is the complete tournament experience. You call all 127 matches, which means every single match of the fortnight has your fingerprints on it. A Tuesday afternoon Round 2 match between two players you'd never heard of last week suddenly matters, because one of them is carrying your bracket's third quarter.
The scoring ladder is built so no part of the tournament is filler: 64 Round 1 matches at 5 points each is the same 320-point pool as the final itself. Grinders who research the early rounds bank real points; the champion call still swings everything. A perfect Full Draw bracket scores 2,240.
The old knock on full-tournament brackets — "127 picks, are you kidding?" — doesn't really survive the autofill. One tap fills your bracket from the favorites; from there you flip the upsets you believe in. Most members finish in a few minutes. The people who spend two hours on it were always going to spend two hours on it.
The real constraint is the deadline: everything locks at the tournament's first ball. If your group includes people who will not open a link until someone shames them, you have exactly the draw-to-first-ball window — about three days — to get every bracket in.
The case for Sweet 16
Sweet 16 skips the early rounds entirely. It opens once the Round of 16 field is set — about a week into the tournament — and you pick from real matchups instead of a 128-player wall of names: the winner of each of the 8 Round-of-16 matches (40 points each), then the quarterfinals (80), semifinals (160), and champion (320). Fifteen picks, up to 1,280 points, about three minutes on a phone.
Three kinds of groups should look hard at it:
- Casual crews. If half your pool watches tennis twice a year, asking them to differentiate two Round 1 matches on Court 12 is asking for random picks. By the Round of 16, the names are familiar and the picks are real opinions.
- Late starters. Because it opens mid-tournament, a Sweet 16 pool can be created mid-tournament. Office didn't get organized until the first week's upsets made everyone care? You're not late — you're right on time.
- The burned-bracket crowd. In a Full Draw, an early loss by your champion hurts for two weeks. Sweet 16 compresses the game into the business end, when the stakes are highest and every match is on a show court.
The trade-off is texture: week one belongs to nobody in a Sweet 16 pool. You're watching great tennis, but you're not sweating it yet.
A third door: Bracket Scores
If your group wants more homework rather than less, Bracket Scores is everything Full Draw does plus one extra call per match: the exact set score — 3-0, 3-1, or 3-2 in men's best-of-five, 2-0 or 2-1 in women's best-of-three. Get the winner and the exact score and the pick pays half the round's points again (a correct 80-point quarterfinal becomes 120). It's the format for the friend who says "obviously she wins, but it goes three."
How to actually decide
Ask two questions about your group, not about tennis:
- Will everyone fill out a bracket before August 30? If you hesitated, that's a no — go Sweet 16, or accept some no-shows.
- Does week one matter to your group? If your crew will be watching from day one, Full Draw makes every one of those matches count. If they'll tune in for the second week, meet them there.
Still torn? Run both — pools take about a minute to create, and plenty of groups play a Full Draw for the die-hards alongside a Sweet 16 for everyone else. Read the full rules on the bracket page, or start your pool now and argue about formats in the group chat where it belongs.