Portlethen Tennis Club  American Tournament Rules
1 A set consists of 8 games, 6 games or 4 games, depending on the number of couples in the tournament.
2 Half of the games in the set are played WITH your partner and the other half AGAINST your partner.
3 Before play begins, the LADIES spin for choice of side or service.
4 After the first half of the set, the GENTS change partners.
5 The order of service is as follows:
For an 8 game set: gent1 gent2 lady1 lady2
gent2 gent1 lady1 lady2
For a 6 game set: gent1 gent2 lady1
lady2 gent2 gent1
For a 4 game set: gent1 gent2
lady2 lady1
6 Each player is responsible for keeping a count of the number of games he/she has won in each set.  These scores are then recorded on the score sheet at the end of the set.
7 At the end of the tournament, the lady with the highest number of points is the ladies' winner and the gent with the highest number of points is the gents' winner.
8 If there is an unequal number of gents and ladies then, before the draw for partners is done, an appropriate number of ladies should be chosen to play as gents (or, conversely, gents chosen to play as ladies).
9 When 2 gents play together against a lady + a gent, the gents start scoring at -15.  Similarly, when 2 ladies play against a lady + a gent, the ladies start scoring at +15.
Alan Tait Trophy
The scores from the monthly Amercian Tournaments go towards the Alan Tait Trophy. The actual scores from each tournament are recorded and then, to achieve equal weighting of each tournament, they are adjusted  to the equivalent score out of 20.
For example, if there were 4 couples in a tournament and they play 8 games in each set, then each person will play 3 sets and have a maximum possible total score of  3*8 = 24. So, to adjust the real scores to the equivalent scores for a tournament in which the maximum possible total was 20, each real score is divided by 24 and multiplied by 20, e.g. an actual score of 10 will be converted to an adjusted score of 20*10/24 = 8.33