Russ and Chris,
I think the tournaments would be much more exciting if the players did know who they are meeting in the future. You guys are from England, I assume, so you know about Wimbelton tennis tournament.
I mean it would be important to know for the players if they win a specific match who they are going to play.
All players should be assinged a seating when the tournament begin. Let say we have 128 players to make it easy.
Split the players in two groups, odd and even ranking!
Then split each side four groups of 16.
Put the first 16 players in the ranking order, then do the next 16, but from the bottom up, the the next 16 down, and the the last sixteen from bottom up again. If there are more players, then just continue from the top and assign the additional players to the groups from the top again. Some groups would get 5 players, but those would be the wones with the strongest players.
Let say they were 140 players in the tournament, the last 16 players should be split 8 to each half and these groupd should have the additional players as the fifth member (groups 1-8 on each side).
Now the winners or the top two players should be assigned to another group, for example, let say the 2 players goes to the next round, then the players in the groups 1 and 15 (odd groups) who are the top players should meet each other and groups 2 and 16 on the other side. 3 & 13 and 4 and 14, etc.
This is easy if put up as an Excel Spreadsheet.
Please, feel free to contact me if you like, I can help with this.
Happy New Year
Harri Eloranta,
a.k.a. Luck