Random Seed Placement unfairly affects French Open Draw
Once again an unfair potential quarter final scenario has been facilitated by the farcical shuffling of seeds in the draw - this time the women's draw at the French Open.
Serena Williams, for the second GS tournament in a row has to play the highest of the seeds 5-8, whereas 4th seed Muguruza is given seed number 7 (That should be the 2nd seeds opponent but she has drawn seed number 6) and 3rd seed Kerber has number 8 with which to contend. (That should be Serena's potential opponent)
So instead of rewarding in order of rankings and seedings (1, 2, 3, 4) by allocating the lowest of the seeds 5-8 to the top seed, then progressively down to the fourth seed who is allocated the highest of that group, the reward order for Roland Garros this year is 3, 4, 2, 1.
Sound logical ? Hardly.
Why bother winning tournaments and being the best in the world if rankings are thrown out the window and not rewarded with proper placement in draws ? It's not just Serena that suffers.
Azarenka, the fifth seed, has been playing her guts out to retrieve a high ranking, and at five she should be drawn to play the fourth seed in the quarters - instead they give her the top seed. By rights Serena and Vika should be drawn to play in a semi final should they win all their matches to that point. ( 1 v winner of 4 v 5)
It saddens me that tennis officialdom continues to meddle with the draws in this fashion, when it doesn't add value to a tournament - just makes the announcement of the draw an event in itself and that is benefitting who ? Certainly not Azarenka in this case, so the players interests are definitely not taken into account. Yet the players happen to comprise the most important interest group as they provide the product which has proven such a crowd puller and money spinner.
I will protest on this issue of inequity in tennis until one day there is a decision maker or makers with enough common sense to throw the random seed placement folly out with the rest of the garbage.
the term is "placed" not "drawn to play", you are asking for all players to be "placed" in the draw so the highest seed plays the lowest seed. The current system allows for more random matchups and is most fair to the most amount of participants. your way sets up the whole draw in favor of the 5th seed.
ReplyDeleteSeeds are placed in the first round and are drawn to play each other in later rounds according to their placement in the draw, so let's not quibble over words. Of course I am asking for highest seed to play lowest seed and second seed to play second lowest seed, etc. that is what the rankings should be rewarding them.
ReplyDeleteBy introducing random match ups you risk the very unfairness to which you refer. And as for the fifth seed, 'my way' which is in fact the traditional draw methodology adopted by many sports, allows for a quarter final match up against the fourth seed rather than any of the top 3 seeds, and on rankings would remain an expected loss - no whole draw favour involved. Remember I am only referring to seeds, and not to the 96 other players in a Grand Slam tournament draw. They can be randomly drawn by computer or otherwise to whichever of the 96 spots are available, There are many random match ups amongst those.
Looks like we will agree to disagree on this 😀