Seeding Revisited

[barry]

Some interesting reading on seeding:

http://www.carolynnichols.com/Seeding/

http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/2001/06/30/stories/0730102n.htm

I guess seeding is subjective and not based on ranking. Seems more fair to seed by earned rank not by committee's opinion.

 

[rhubarb]

Here are the current rules for seeding/draws at Grand Slams and ATP events.

ITF rules for the Grand Slam tournaments
http://www.itftennis.com/shared/medialibrary/pdf/original/IO_2564_original.PDF
Section Z. ENTRY PROCEDURES: 2. Singles Main Draw: f. Seeds and g. Method of Draw, pages 23-25.

Whilst the ITF rule book does not note it, currently the AO, RG and USO use the rankings list directly; WM uses it with a grass surface weighting. Wimbledon's formula is published every year when they make the seeding list.

The rest of the ATP-level tour is covered by their rules:
http://www.atptennis.com/en/common/TrackIt.asp?file=/en/media/2005_rulebook_v1.0.pdf
6.15 SEEDS DEFINITION page 78
6.16 NUMBER OF SEEDS page 79
6.17 PLACEMENT OF SEEDS - MAIN DRAW pages 79-80

 

[barry]

This is the point I take exception too:

"ii. Selection of Seeds The selection and arrangement of seeds will be at the discretion of each Grand Slam Tournament Committee, however, the computer ranking list dated approximately seven (7) days prior to the tournament shall be a primary, but not sole, basis for such selection and arrangement."

It is decided by committe and not by performance / ranking. Ranking are only considered. If 32 or seeded, then why not 128, seems logical to me not to use the committe, but let current rankings determine seeds.

 

[rhubarb]

Whilst it is true that the Grand Slam tournaments are allowed to diverge from the rankings, in the men's game only Wimbledon takes this option. The seedings are still based on the rankings. (Don't ask me about the women's: it works slightly differently and I don't care to know about it because I'm not interested in women's tennis.)

What they do is to take the rankings points of the top 32 ranked players entered, and add on points derived from a formula to adjust for grass court performance over the previous 24 months. Last year's formula was 100% of grass court points in previous 12 months, and 75% of points from the best result on grass going back another 12 months.

The only real problem I see with this is that they change the formula slightly sometimes, and this means they have some flexibility to abuse the system. For instance, if they'd used the 2003 formula last year, Lleyton Hewitt would not have had a top 8 seeding. They went back to the 2002 formula instead, and it meant he had more points and was seeded for the quarter-final. It also meant he couldn't play Henman (also seeded for qf) until the semi-final, which might be construed as convenient for the AELTC. However, if they defined a persistent weighting formula, then the system would not be open to claims of fixing.