Player's guide

For every match, your captain sends you a personal link (by text once texting is on, by email, or pasted into a group chat). It knows who you are, so there is nothing to sign in to. Don't forward it – anyone who opens it answers as you.

Before the first match you'll get an invite link. Tap it and confirm your mobile number. That's your permission for MatchLineup to text you; the app never sends the first text without it. You can stop at any time by replying STOP to any message.

Open the link and tap one of four answers: In, If needed (you'd rather not, but will if the team is short), Maybe, or Out. You can change it as often as you like – your latest answer is the one that counts.

If you don't answer, the app assumes you can play and may pencil you in below everyone who said In. So if you know you can't make it, tap Out – it's the only answer that takes you off the list.

Matches often have a deadline for answers. You can still answer after it, but your captain sees it as late, and a reminder goes to anyone who hasn't answered about a day before.

If you've added a practice, lesson, or another club's match to your schedule for that day, or your connected Google Calendar shows you busy, the link opens with you pre-marked Out and says why. One tap changes it if you can play after all.

Your captain locks a lineup a few days before the match and sends it out: your line and, for doubles, your partner. If you can't play after all, tell your captain straight away – they can swap you out and re-send.

Your captain may set which side of the court you'll play, deuce or ad. Confirming or correcting it after the match (below) is how your deuce/ad record gets built.

Open the same link once the match is played. It asks for four quick things:

• Your score. Pick who won your line, then type the games the way TennisLink prints them – the winner's games first, like 6-4 3-6 1-0. If your captain has already confirmed the line, you'll see that instead.
• Who you played. Pick your opponents from the other team's roster, or type a name if they used a sub.
• Which side you played. Deuce or ad, for doubles. Tap the one you actually played, even if your captain set the other.
• Feedback. Five short questions: how your partner was to play with (1–5), the other team's sportsmanship, whether everyone was on time, whether anyone lost their cool, and whether any line calls made you wonder. Open from match day until three weeks after.

Feedback is anonymous. Your captain sees team totals – an average, a count – never who said what, and neither does anyone else. Captains' own ratings go into the same pool as everyone else's.

Sign in with your email – you get a link or a short code, no password – at matchlineup.com/login. Use the same email your captain has for you and your teams appear automatically. With an account you get:

• A dashboard with every match still waiting on your answer, across all your teams.
• Upcoming matches with your status and, once sent, your line.
• A personal schedule where you add practices, lessons, and matches for other clubs. Anything you add flags a conflict on your captain's grid, so they don't pencil you in on a day you're already playing.
• Google Calendar, connected read-only, does the same automatically for the next 30 days.
• Your own chemistry average, once at least five teammates have rated you and those ratings are a week old. You never see individual ratings, and no one sees yours.

On a phone, add the site to your home screen from the browser's share menu and it opens like an app.

Your captains and teammates can see your name, mobile, email, and rating – the same things on any team roster. Your availability answers are visible to your captain. Ratings and feedback are only ever shown as anonymous totals. Read the full Privacy Policy for the details.

Every text feature above is built, but MatchLineup is not sending texts yet. Until it is, your captain will send your links by email or paste them to you, and answers on the link or your dashboard work exactly the same. This page will say when texting is on.