Teams that put their best pair on line 1 won 51.3% of closely matched team matches
Line order made no clear difference. In 1,106 closely matched team matches where only one team put its best pair on line 1, that team won 51.3%. The matches are from Marin and San Francisco, 2022 to 2026. Allowing for chance, the true share could sit anywhere from 48.3% to 54.2%, so an even split is well inside the range.
Here the best pair means the pair with the highest combined Desk level before the match, which is the level on player pages. The Desk counts only closely matched teams, because a stronger team wins wherever its pairs play.
Does it hold in other cuts?
Yes. Each cut the Desk tested landed near an even split, so the result does not rest on one group of players:
- Only experienced players: 49.4% of 488 matches.
- Best pair with the longer history together: 50.2% of 789 matches.
- Best pairs equally far ahead of their second pairs: 52.3% of 369 matches.
- One match per team per league year: 50.4% of 875 matches.
Home court did not tilt it either: the team that led with its best pair was the home team in 50.2% of the 1,106 matches.
Do most captains already lead with their best pair?
Yes, in 62.1% of 27,102 lineups. But in close matches, that habit neither helped nor hurt.
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How this was measured
Scope. The Desk counted decided, fully played team matches with two or more doubles lines. The two teams' average levels sat within a tenth of a point before the match. Exactly one team put its best pair on line 1, so the other team's order is the comparison. Defaults, walkovers and retirements were left out. Each team's best pair had to lead its second pair by a tenth of a point or more, so there was a real choice to make.
Measured. Every figure above was checked against the live database on October 15.
Method. Every figure above was produced by the SQL recorded in docs/research/records/lineup-stacking.json, run twice to the same result before this page was built.