Planning Player Shuttles at a Tennis Tournament

Every professional tennis event that houses players in an official hotel has to get them to the courts and back. At the bigger tour events that is a fleet of cars and a transport office. At ITF and Challenger level it is usually a handful of volunteer or hired drivers, a printed timetable taped up in the hotel lobby and a busy WhatsApp group. It works, until play runs late, a driver is double-booked, or a player misses their warm-up because the shuttle they expected only ran on request.

Start from what the tour expects

Tour regulations generally ask the tournament to provide transport between the official hotels and the site for the whole playing day, starting early in the morning and running until after the last match or practice has finished. ITF events commonly list hotel to site transport as an organisational requirement without fixing the hours, so many desks borrow the same shape: frequent morning runs to the site, regular afternoon and evening runs back, and a last shuttle a set time after end of play. Check the current regulations for your event category before you publish anything.

A timetable that matches how players move

• Mornings are one-way: almost everyone travels to the site, so run departures from the hotel every 30 to 45 minutes
• Afternoons flip: matches and practice end at different times, so run regular departures back to the hotel
• Quiet directions can run on request: a morning run back to the hotel only goes if someone books it
• The last shuttle should follow end of play, not a fixed clock time, and practice counts as play
• Publish one poster with the pick-up point, journey time and how early to be there

End of play is the hard part

Most timetable problems happen at the end of the day. The order of play says when matches are scheduled to start, not when they finish, so a fixed last shuttle is either too early on a long day or wasted on a short one. A better approach is to estimate end of play from the order of play on each court, chaining each match after the previous one, and to include the last practice booking. The desk then confirms the real end of play when the final match finishes, and the last shuttle moves with it. Anyone booked on a shuttle that moves needs to be told.

On-request runs need clear rules

On-request runs save driver hours, but only if players understand them. Each one needs a booking cutoff and a minimum number of riders, and everyone who booked should hear whether it is running as soon as the cutoff passes. If it is cancelled, tell them the next scheduled departure instead. Turn-up services are simpler: no booking, just a published time, which suits the busiest morning runs.

Building the driver rota

A transport rota is a puzzle of availability, vehicles and travel. A driver dropping players at the venue cannot also leave the hotel ten minutes later, some drivers can only take certain vehicles, and long split shifts add up fast across a week. Whatever rules apply to your drivers depend on the vehicle and how it is used: car drivers in Great Britain generally fall under working time rules, while minibus and coach drivers can fall under drivers' hours rules. Treat hours limits as guidance to check with your transport provider, build the rota so nobody breaks them by default, and keep a record whenever the desk decides to override a warning.

Keep booking where players already are

Players will not download a separate transport app for a one-week event. Let them book a seat the same way they ask for practice: in the tournament app or by message, with a reminder shortly before departure and a waitlist when a run is full. When the transport desk and the practice desk share the same schedule, the shuttle can even be suggested automatically from a player's practice or match time.