Alright, so the other day I decided to have a crack at this boulter tennis score thing. Sounded specific, figured I’d see what it was all about and maybe try to code up a little something to track it. You know, just for kicks, or maybe for a little side project I was tinkering with.
Figuring Out The Rules
First thing, I had to actually figure out what made a “boulter tennis score” different. Is it like, some special tie-break rules? Or a unique way they count games in a set? I poked around a bit. My initial thought was, “Okay, maybe it’s a simplified system, or something used in a specific tournament.” I sort of assumed it would be straightforward, you know? Like, point, game, set, match. How complicated could it be?
I started by trying to pin down the specifics. Let’s say, for the sake of getting something done, I assumed it meant games are still won by two clear points after deuce, but maybe sets are shorter, like first to 4 games, win by two. And perhaps a specific tie-break rule if it gets to 3-3. Just laying down some ground rules for myself, because sometimes these things aren’t as clearly defined as you’d hope.
This Whole Thing Reminded Me…
And that’s when it hit me. This whole process of trying to nail down vague requirements, it just threw me back to this one time, years ago. I was helping out a local community sports club. They wanted a “super simple” scoring system for their annual badminton tournament on their little website. Super simple, they said.
Man, that turned into a saga. First, it was just “track scores.” Easy. Then, “Can we have player profiles?” Okay, a bit more work. Then, “It needs to look really modern and flashy!” from one committee member, while another wanted it “classic and understated.” Then came the arguments about how handicap points should be displayed, whether we needed live updates (for a once-a-year amateur tournament!), and if we could integrate it with a non-existent social media platform they were “planning” to launch.
I spent weeks going back and forth, trying to get a straight answer, a consensus. Every meeting, someone had a new “brilliant idea.” The “super simple” scoring system became this monster of feature creep and conflicting desires. In the end, they used a shared spreadsheet. A spreadsheet! After all that palaver. I learned a lot about managing expectations then, or rather, the impossibility of it sometimes with groups like that. Lost a fair bit of my enthusiasm for “community projects” for a while too, if I’m honest.
Back to Boulter Score: Keeping It Real
So, with that badminton fiasco etched into my brain, when I looked at this Boulter tennis score, I took a different approach. If the rules weren’t crystal clear from a quick search, I wasn’t going to go down a rabbit hole. I decided to implement the most straightforward version I could imagine based on what little I could gather or infer.
- Points: 0, 15, 30, 40, Game. Standard deuce/ad.
- Games: First to, say, 4 games. Win by two. So, 4-0, 4-1, 4-2, 5-3.
- Sets: Maybe best of 3 sets.
- Tie-break: If it’s 3-3 in games, a simple tie-break to 7 points, win by two.
I just coded that up. A few functions to handle adding points, checking for game wins, set wins. Nothing fancy. No flashy UI, no complex state management that would take ages. Just the core logic.
It felt good to just get something working without getting bogged down. Sometimes, you just gotta define your own scope and stick to it, especially when you’re doing it for your own learning or a small project. Otherwise, you end up chasing ghosts, just like with that badminton club’s “vision.” You build what you can, based on what you know, and move on. Far less stressful that way, trust me.
