Running a US Open Pool at the Office

An office pool lives or dies on one thing, and it isn't tennis knowledge. It's friction. Every extra step — a spreadsheet to open, a form to fill twice, a commissioner chasing picks by the coffee machine — loses another coworker. The pools that work are the ones where joining takes one tap and forgetting is hard.

Here's the playbook for a US Open pool your office will actually finish, from format choice to the money question.

Pick a format for the office you have

Be honest about your colleagues. A few watch every major; most know the two or three biggest names; someone will ask if Serena is playing. Choose accordingly:

Sweet 16 is the office default for a reason. Fifteen picks, starting at the Round of 16 — when the field has thinned to names people recognize and every match is on a show court. It takes about three minutes on a phone, and because it doesn't open until about a week into the tournament, the office that gets organized late isn't shut out. You can create the pool during week one while the watercooler buzz builds, and picks open when the Round of 16 field is set.

Full Draw suits the office with a real tennis faction. All 127 matches, picks locked at the first ball on Sunday, August 30. The one-tap autofill means even casual coworkers can produce a complete bracket in minutes — start from the favorites, flip a few hunches, done. Just know your deadline risk: every bracket must be in before the tournament's first match.

Survivor is the dark horse for offices. One pick per round, last one standing. It's the format that generates hallway conversation, because it produces weekly drama — who's still alive, who burned the world number 1 too early, who forgot to pick. A missed pick eliminates you exactly like a losing one, which is either a bug or a feature depending on your office.

Can't choose? Run two. Pools take about a minute each to create, and a Sweet 16 for everyone alongside a Survivor for the diehards covers the whole office.

Setup is one link

Create the pool, pick the men's or women's draw (or run one of each), and share the invite link on Slack, Teams, or the office email thread. Anyone with the link joins directly — no roster to type in, no accounts to provision. Pools are private by default, so it stays an office thing.

The platform then does the annoying parts of the commissioner job: every match is scored automatically, the leaderboard updates live, and email reminders go out before every deadline. You will never grade a sheet, and you will never be the person nagging accounts payable to submit a bracket — the reminders do it for you.

The money question, handled cleanly

Office pools and money need clear lines. Here's how it works on TennisPools, and it's built for exactly this situation:

• The buy-in is optional and it's yours. The commissioner decides whether there's an entry fee and how much. Plenty of office pools play for nothing but a traveling trophy and the right to gloat.
• The commissioner collects directly. If you do play for stakes, members pay the commissioner — Venmo, Zelle, cash in an envelope, whatever your office uses. TennisPools never holds the pot, never touches entry fees, and takes no cut of prize money. No rake.
• The tracker keeps it honest. TennisPools tracks who has paid, visible in the pool, so nobody's doing bookkeeping in their head and nobody quietly plays for free.

What the platform itself costs: nothing for pools of up to 5 members, and a one-time hosting fee of $2 per member beyond the first 5 for bigger pools — paid by the commissioner, not the members. A 20-person office pool is $30 total for the whole tournament; many commissioners just take it out of the pot. Members never pay TennisPools anything.

One genuinely important note: check your employer's policy before running a paid pool at work. Some workplaces are fine with it, some aren't, and no leaderboard is worth an HR conversation. The free version of the pool is 95% of the fun anyway.

A commissioner's calendar

• This week: create the pool, post the link, state the stakes (or the lack of them) upfront.
• Around August 27: the draw drops — post the link again. Half your office joined the first time and forgot.
• Before Sunday, August 30: Full Draw brackets and Survivor Round 1 lock at the first ball. The reminder emails are on it, but one last Slack message is good commissioning.
• During the fortnight: you have no duties. Enjoy watching middle management sweat a fourth-round match they'd never have watched otherwise.

That's the whole job. One link, one format decision, one clear money policy — and two weeks where the office actually has something to talk about. Start the pool before someone else in the office does it worse.