Hey there. I just got back from the US Open draw ceremony, which was held this year on the 71st Floor of the Empire State Building. I guess they had to go that high to find a large, loft-like space with plastic sheeting taped to the ceiling and blown insulation on the rafters.The USTA folks had hastily thrown up a few blue curtains and US Open placards, but it was still raw space.Kind of like a funky artist's studio; I expected some intense dude named Dieter, dressed all in black, to jump on the podium and do some kind of performance art cum vintage Merton Hanks "funky chicken" dance.
Actually, the draws themselves were performance art of sorts. It's funny how much the actual tournament draw-making philosophy has changed over the years. For instance, this morning, the entire draw was filled in but for the 32 places reserved for the the seeds. It used to be that the seeds were filled and then the cannon fodder was drawn, player by player, from a hat. The draws are available here, for your viewing pleasure.
The USTA officials drew the women first, and about six minutes into the process, Tom Perrotta (for those of you who don't know, the New York Sun's part-time tennis writer is now a full-time editor at Tennis, and that's great news for everyone here!) turned to me and said. "Five minutes into the draw ceremony and the women's tournament is ruined."
Tom was right. As Patrick McEnroe said when the full draw was done a short while later: "I thought there were six women who could win this tournament, and five of them - Justine Henin, Venus and Serena Williams, Ana Ivanovic and Jelena Jankovic -are in the top half." The sixth woman is the crown jewel of the bottom half, Maria Sharapova. You Svetlana Kuznetsova fans might take exception to Sveta being ignored as a contender, but Patrick's points was valid. Given Sveta's erratic history and Sharapova's injury problems, you could be looking at a Justine Henin vs. Daniela Hantuchova (eye-rolls, please!) or Nadia Petrova final. Can you say "buzzkill"?
The men's draw is not similarly divided between the haves and have nots, but Andy Roddick fans can't really be all that fired up above a Roddick vs. Roger Federer quarterfinal. That's as unfortunate as the potential Venus vs. Serena fourth rounder, or a Henin vs. Serena quarterfinal.
I have to confess, I'm also not smart enough (and I'm not being coy, either) to understand the real-time logic when they make the draw. For starters, they use a computer (this happened last night) to fill in all but the top two of the 32 seeded positions. Number One automatically goes at the top of the draw, on Line 1, and Number Two goes down on the very bottom of the draw, on line 128. Then, the official puts the names of seeds 3 and 4 into the proverbial hat and someone pulls out a name that goes on line 64 (the semifinal slot opposite the No. 1 seed). It turned out to be Nikolay Davydenko. Fair enough. Novak Djokovic, the No. 3 player in the world, was then automatically placed on the other, vacant line, No. 65 - the track leading to a semifinal showdown with Rafael Nadal. Still fair.
But then. . .
Tis is what they do: they put the names of seeds 5 through 8 into a the hat and draw them blindly for the slots in the draw that will put each of them into a quarterfinal. So, by the literal as well as proverbial luck of the draw, Roddick - instead of James Blake, Fernando Gonzalez or Tommy Robredo, will play Federer. Then, after drawing and positioning the other two names in similar, blind, fashion, and placing the remaining name on the last vacant line,he officials take the next group of four (9-12) and draw them blindly for the slots that give each of them a potential berth in the round-of-16. They knock off one more group that way, nos. 13-16. For the rest (16-32), they go line-by-line, more or less putting them into the draw in the way you might have thought they would the top players.
This system seems so perverse, I almost wonder if I'm not missing something. How the hail did we come to this? I've got a call in to US Open tournament referee Brian Early, and am hoping to get some answers (I had to leave the draw before the media one-on-ones began). I 'll share them with you after I get Brian. But here's my beef: Unless I'm mistaken, the seeds - and this is back in the day of 16 seeds at Grand Slams - were dropped in on an alternating basis. In some cases, the No. 3 and 4 positions were drawn,so that the 1 might play 4 while 2 played 3. Under that system, all the seeds had set places in the draw, where the top players played the lower-ranked players while the group of players bunched in the middle (like Roddick, Blake, Gonzalez and Robredo today) got the beat each other up for the privilege of being thrown on the altar. But No. 1 was on track to play No. 8 in the quarters - not No. 5, as will happen among the men at the Open.
So let's apply this approach to that awful women's draw (hail, they should just make room for Sharapova in the top half and chuck the entire, worthless bottom half out the window and save half of that equal prize money). Ironically, Henin would still play Serena in the quarters - that's because another issue is at play here: Serena's ranking does not accurately reflect her ability and potential. But then, if you really seeded on merit and tried to ensure that the "protected" players (seeds) were completely (instead of "partially sort of. . ." ) given preference, Justine would conceivably play, starting in the round-of-16, Hingis, Serena, Kuznetsova and Sharapova. Meanwhile, Sharapova would get Safina, Petrova, Jankovic (on form) and Henin.
The repercussions would be more obvious in the men's side: Federer would get Robredo instead of Roddick in the quarters, which would be good for two of the players in that equation (Roberedo being the third, and suddenly a candidate for suicide watch).So if my math is correct, on form Federer would have to beat Hewitt, Robredo, Davydenko and Nadal, while Nadal would need to get by Ferrer, Gonzalez, Djokovic and Federer. Roddick and Blake would fall by the wayside if ranking determined result, but Roddick would start out at the bottom of the draw, where he would have a crack at Gonzalez, and Blake would start on top, where he would get a shot at Davydenko.
In any event, it's hard to project these scenarios, because who knows the last time the Top 8 seeds composed the quarters of a Grand Slam event? But I think it's goes against the very raison d'etre of seedings to treat seeds 5 through 8 as interchangeable components, to be drawn from a hat and popped into the draw at any of four key locations. The whole point of seedings is to keep the best players from meeting too early (thereby preventing second-rate players from cruising through big holes in the draw), and the current methodology seems to embrace that, but only up to a point. Then it simply abandons the idea. It's the inconsistency that's annoying, especially when it doesn't seem that hard to me to stagger the seedings to remain consistent with the idea of having the proven, top players meet each other as late as possible - while still being fair - in the event.
So what we have now is a really convoluted, partiall computer-driven system where seeds as well as journeymen are drawn. The players ranked 5 through 16 are treated too much like equals, while the players ranked 17 through 32 are not treated equally enough - they're interchangeable, at the point in a draw, you might as well just toss them like some many pine nuts into a salad.
I'd really be curious to hear what you all think on this one, and if I'm missing something, I'm sure I'll be the first to know!