The “mullet” hairstyle is a combination of short and long hair colloquially described as “business in the front, party in the back.” With that definition, the First Match Loser’s Consolation (FMLC) draw is the “mullet” of tournament formats. Ranking points are awarded on a “order of finish” basis in the front draw but switches around to a “points per round” system in the back draw. I don’t have the official stats from the USTA, but I would be stunned if FMLC wasn’t the most commonly used format for USTA sanctioned tournaments by a mile. Unfortunately, that draw format directly contributes to player disengagement from tournament play.
This is actually the second time I have tried to launch into this topic. “An FMLC FUBAR” is what emerged from my first failed attempt. I was derailed by discovering significant ranking points miscalculations in the bracket I was examining. Today we are going to look past the errors and examine that same draw as if the rankings points been awarded in accordance with the point tables in the USTA Adult Tournaments Ranking System.
Back to the Mabry
The Men’s 40+ NTRP 4.0 division from the 2022 Mabry Adult Senior Level 5 Open had the names of 13 competitors in the draw. Consequently, tournament play for that division started in the Round of 16 (R16). From a rankings point perspective, the first match that the 10 players who did not receive byes were scheduled to play were each worth “Reached QF” (Quarter Finals) points.
I have pasted a clip of the rankings point table from the USTA Adult Tournaments Ranking System with (sloppy) yellow highlighting of the column in the table that applies to this particular bracket. (Email privacy settings may block the image for readers that follow via that method.)
The players lucky enough to get a match in R16 and converted that opportunity with a win each received a minimum of 368 ranking points for their tournament performance. The players that received a bye in the first round had to win the QF match to collect “4th Place/SF” points, cumulatively worth 525.
Those numbers are provided to give a sense of magnitude of the opportunities to earn points for players who compete in the front draw.
Slumming in the Back Draw
There is less opportunity for a player to win points in the back draw of a FMLC tournament. While that seems logical on the surface, the disparity of opportunity to earn points is very significant. One of the reasons for that is that there are relatively few matches in the back draw when compared with the front.
I didn’t include it in the original “An FMLC FUBAR” post, but the following image is how the back draw for the Men’s 40+ NTRP 4.0 division from the 2022 Mabry shook out.
FMLC tournaments use an “if necessary” mechanism. If a player receives a bye or a walkover in their first match of the main draw they will have the opportunity for a second match in the back draw. The “guarantee” of a second match is usually the primary selling point of the format.
Match Mathematics
The nominal number of matches that a player will receive in the back draw under this format is 3. However, there is a chance for an “extra” match under a precise set of circumstances.
The “ideal” tournament scenario would see exactly 16 players enter the tournament who all actually show up to play the first round. In that case, each player in the back draw would start that bracket in the “qualifying” round for the Consolation QFs and the winners of those matches would all receive a bye in the actual Consolation QFs.
The reason for the machination is to accommodate the “if necessary” mechanism. That would arise if a played advanced with a walkover (or a bye) in the first match and lost the second. If that hits at the right place in the bracket, it is possible for a player to receive an extra match in the back draw if they subsequently run the table.
That means the absolute best case scenario for ranking points in a draw of this size is for a player to win four matches each worth 42 points as specified in the points per round ranking system used in FMLC. That is a maximum total of 168 points. The more common nominal opportunity for a player that wins the back draw is 3 potential match wins. That caps the more typical back draw champion to 126 points for their efforts. There is also a two match scenario that could occur which would be even less points.
The USTA 12 month rolling standing list uses a “Best 4” method for calculating tournament rankings. Players that have already earned more than 168 points in four tournaments have no incentive to play the back draw exclusively for rankings points. For players in that situation, continued play will have no impact on their standings.
For the Love of Competition, Play the Back Draw
The ideal scenario for FMLC back draw is that all players continue to engage in the back draw out of the spirit of competition. When a player elects to not participate in the consolation bracket, that act denies another player the opportunity for a match. However, sometimes that player was never in the tournament in the first place.
In our example draw from the Mabry, two players withdrew from the front draw before the tournament even started. Those players created walkovers in the front draw and a “gap” in the consolation bracket. That translates directly into less opportunity to play for those around them in the draw overall, but it is exacerbated in the back.
In fact, if you look at the match play opportunities in this particular back draw, there were only 5 actual pairings that could have theoretically been played. Only 1 of those resulted in a full match. Another match was partially played before an injury retirement at the end of the first set. The other three matches were walkovers.
That’s low engagement and participation. The only rationale for why this is OK hinges on the idea that what is described for this particular bracket is unusual due to the high number of walkovers. Unfortunately, what happened in this example is actually the norm rather than a rare situation.
FMLC Kills Participation
The FMLC effect has created a culture in tournament tennis where it is not only acceptable to drop out of the back draw, but also arguably the smart move. For many players the “guaranteed” second match comes only after waiting around for a full day or more. It is way too common for a player to repeatedly show up for a back draw match only to have their opponent no show or withdraw at the last minute.
I am fairly certain that this is where the notion that “Voluntary Consolation” is a good idea originated. I agree conceptually that players who are willing to play out the back draw should be rewarded with opportunities to play. However, I think that Voluntary Consolation is a solution to the wrong “root case” problem.
Ultimately what leads players to dropping out of the back draw is the limited opportunity for the combined incentives of tournament ranking points in addition to the opportunity for match play. To truly fix the problem there needs to be a legitimate opportunity to earn rankings points that might make a difference.
On Saturday we will examine why Voluntary Consolation actually makes the problem even worse. On Sunday we will explore the very obvious solution to the problem that is already well codified in the tournament regulations.
Story Time
The Trophy Husband “won” his first tennis tournament trophy in the back draw at the Cotton Bowl Major Zone. With freezing temperatures and high winds, the entire back draw withdrew one by one in each round until my husband was ultimately declared to be the back draw Champion.
This story comes with a punch line. When the Trophy Husband drove over to Brookhaven to pick up the trophy he had “won,” it couldn’t be found. It apparently never turned up in the interim and he never received it. If you have ever wondered what life is like in the Fiend at Court household, that is it in a microcosm.
Actual Mullet Talk
No one has rocked the mullet hairstyle in recent history better than ATP professional JJ Wolf. Tracey Austin once described his look as a “Camaro Crash Helmet.”
Then there is this awesome moment where Wolf’s hair completely derailed veteran journalist Blair Henley during an interview at the US Open.
Sadly, Wolf is no longer sporting the hairstyle and now wears a more conventional cut.
- USTA Adult Tournaments Ranking System, as of February 2022, viewed April 22, 2022.
- 2022 Mabry Adult Senior/Super Sr Level 5, viewed April 22, 2022.
- USTA Adult and Family Tournament, Ranking, & Sanctioning Regulations, Amended December 2020, viewed April 22, 2022.
As a USTA and LTA Referee the issue of Consolation events is very pertinent.
In the UK Tournaments I have been involved with where draw sizes have not been above 16 entrants, a compass draw works well and doe keep players engaged – especially if the format allows for all of the matches to be completed on one day!
In the US, I am mainly involved in Senior Tournaments with up to 64 draws in many different age categories and we use FMLC and occasionally Feed in Consolation to Quarter-finals.
As your article says, getting players to come back the next day for a consolation is difficult, especially when players losing their match in the main draw are not ‘invested’ in some way in a consolation match.Our usual practice to try and reduce no-shows is to have both players return to the tournament desk after their match; the winner is told of the time of their next match and the loser is invited to sign-up for the consolation event. Players signing up are paired up with the next player entering the consolation event and they play their next match later the same day they played their main draw match, after a suitable rest. Once they have played in teh consolation event, they are more likely to continue.
The only problem is adapting the USTA online tournament Management System to properly portray the Consolation draw. Losing players from the days matches enter the Consolation automatically but players in the draw can be moved to record matches. However, when the losing players from the next day are determined, they can make a real mess of the online draw-sheet! There needs to be a way of making the entrants into the Consolation, automatic – or not.
Wonderful!
Would be interested in getting your reaction to The Lucky Draw https://courthive.medium.com/the-lucky-draw-c0bb8299f904 which was conceived to deal with BYE propagation issues (in COMPASS) which you touch on but are clearly not the target of this meditation…
Would also love to hear whether you have considered the implications of the TODS (Tennis Open Data Standard) which underpins WTN and which I feel has the potential for much greater impact than WTN itself over time…
I am actually very familiar with the Swiss System because I play chess and coached a scholastic chess team for many years. I have been contemplating how the same thing could be applied to tennis. Your Lucky Draw post is very thought provoking.
Constantine, the head coach at Oberlin, is an avid Chess player and he devised a system called DrawMatic that I implemented in CourtHive/TMX and is now in the Competition Factory which is part of the USTA/ITA/ITF ecosystem… need to do a write up of that because it’s very similar to Swiss and very flexible for level based play (players can be added or removed before every round is generated