History of the tennis draft
Past tournaments. Tournaments conducted prior to 1997 were held offline.
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The first tourament ever conducted was the French Open in 1988, contested by Rick, the Judge, Randy, Wagner and Jay. For many years, the tournaments were strictly an offline auction where the coaches gathered and went through the draft in one sitting. In 1996, the draft moved to its first online format where coaches sent in a tab delimeted file ranking their preferences for players and a maximum amount they were willing to spend. These "blind" bids were fed into a program that allocated players based on priority and assigned dollar values. Coaches then all received their final rosters as a product of this process.
In 1997, the draft moved into an approximation of its present form, the online auction. Several time frames have been experimented with for the auction format. For example, the 1998 French Open took place entirely within a one hour lightning round. The 1997 Wimbledon event had players sold off if nobody over bid them in a 12 hour period, causing numerous players to be sold in the middle of the night. In the end, the present format of a one week auction with a 48 hour overcall period that leads up to a 1 hour lightning round was settled upon.
If anyone posesses records of the offline events held from 1988 to 1997, please forward that information to me.
May we enjoy many future events together!
Jay
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