A tennis ladder is a kind of loosely organized sports club for tennis players. The ladder system fixes you up with periodic match play against people of roughly your own skill level. This is very useful if you like to play tennis and want to improve your game. It gives you opponents who are committed to play though they may be strangers, and a competitive yet friendly atmosphere which will motivate you to play more often. If you play in a formal league or on a tennis team you are being served with the same benefits but a tennis ladder is a nice way to meet players and obtain matches. You don't have to supply the courts, just the organization.

There are many varieties of tennis ladders. The most typical, I think, is the form where there is a simple list of players in order of ranking, the most skilled players at the top. The players would challenge other members of the ladder in an attempt to gain their position. I call this a passive ladder. There is no time constraint or other positive incentive for the players to engage each other. I've been on some of these, and they tend to be pretty dull. Not a whole lot of tennis gets played.

I prefer a more active ladder where you are assigned matches which you must complete within a certain timeframe, and a ranking penalty is imposed if you don't play your opponents. This provides you with ongoing incentives to play and helps to combat lazyness and procrastination.

Back in ancient times the players had to phone the match scores in to the ramrod (the guy/gal who runs the ladder) and he would collect them on scraps of paper. At the end of the round he would sit down with all these scores and figure out a new lineup, then call 15-30 people and tell them what their new match assignments would be. This drudgery is eliminated with the handy dandy Tennis Ladder Administrator program. The lineup is sent out automatically via email, the players email the match scores to the ramrod, he reads the email and clicks the scores into the program at the end of the round. The program will generate a recap of the round and email it out to the players. The ramrod can then create a new round and arrange the players with point-and-click. The Ladder Administrator can email out the new lineup with the click of a button and you are done.