The fascination of Grand Slam tournament organisers have with random shuffling of seeds in the draw, just to seemingly satisfy their own useless whims has cost the fans big time at Roland Garros this year.
With Rafa doing all he needed to grab one of the top 4 seedings thanks to a superlative week in Rome, topped off with a routine thrashing of Federer in the final, and the unfortunate withdrawal of Andy Murray from proceedings in Paris, we had the follwing:
1: Novak Djokovic
2: Roger Federer
3: Rafa Nadal
4: David Ferrer
Sensible developers of a tournament draw would place these seeds in a way that would result in Djokovic playing Federer in the final, should they win all their 6 preliminary matches. Job done by the French Open crew with Novak and Roger at the top and bottom of the draw respectively.
Logic should also suggest that the top seed be set to play the lower seeded player in the semis should all 4 players win their 5 preliminary matches. Then we would be fortunate enough to avoid the 2 best players in the world playing each other prior to the final, which is where they should meet.
But no - once again we are privy to the stupid situation where Roger Federer, the second seed, who is in fact the most poorly performed player of the top 4 seeds this year (the only one yet to win a title) has the privilege of not having to play the best player on clay, and 7 times winner of this Grand Slam title, in the semis. That burden goes to the top ranked player in the world, and the only player from the top 4 yet to lose to Nadal this year.
Djokovic will have to meet and beat Nadal in the semis before he even has a chance to play another final and perhaps claim the last leg of a career Grand Slam.
It used to be a tournament organiser's dream to have a possible Federer Nadal final, but these days those potential match ups are virtual no contests. It is the thrill that a marathon fight between the 2 finest in the game - Rafa and Nole, the 2 leading points scorers on tour this year by a street - provides that we will more likely receive 2 days earlier in Paris in 2013 than we should have.
