Fiend at Court Unplugged
On a tournament by tournament basis, seeding is one of the most consistently controversial topics for USTA recreational play. Whether it is too early to complain about the seeding at an event is a frequent theme in the Facebook group for active USTA Texas tournament players. I am of two minds on this topic. Those divergent perspectives are reflected in the point from a feedback letter I recently submitted to the USTA Adult Competition Committee (ACC) which has purview over USTA Adult Tournament Tennis.
Point 6: Seeding is Important
Point 6 from my feedback letter to the USTA ACC.
I am sure that the ACC is already aware of this fact, but it is really important to getting tournament seeding right. Through my tournament circle of friends, participation on the Texas Section Tournament Player Experience “Action Team,” and anecdotally from players that recently competed at the La Jolla Hard Courts, it is obvious that snags with the rankings lists is propagating to issues in seeding.
Privately I have been telling those in my closest circle to basically suck it up and deal with it. To win a tournament, you have to beat everybody anyway, so who cares about the order. However, growing perception that the seedings are not “fair” contributes to negative player experience. That is particularly important at the National Level when people have incurred travel and time costs and are playing for placement on the International Teams.
I won’t belabor that point because I know that the issues with the technical deployment of Play Tennis are largely outside of your control, but I would hope that correct seeding is one of the ACC’s primary talking points internally at the USTA and externally to the tournament directors and referees.
It’s been a cluster at all levels this year.
In 2021 the USTA inflicted a new tennis engagement platform on the tournament playing community. I am sure that it was envisioned as a part of the “Build and optimize best-in-class digital infrastructure and platforms” strategic priority of the USTA. It has been a colossal failure. The inability of the new platform to produce rankings lists that are not riddled with errors has left tournament directors without a reliable and defendable means to seed events.
The least controversial way for tournament directors to seed events is to simply use the rankings list. It provides an easy justification to anyone who is unhappy with the seedings. “All-factors” is a method of seeding where players can submit additional information to tournament directors that might influence the seeding. I think that players consistently underestimate the challenge and complexity of All-factor seeding by tournament directors. There is simply no way to make everybody happy.
I don’t have a lot of patience for players who complain about the seeding. If you enter a tournament, the goal is to win the event and you have to beat everybody in the field. The order doesn’t matter. Additionally, when I enter an event, I do so wanting a shot at playing a match against the best player in the field. I don’t think of a draw where I am guaranteed that shot in the first rough as “bad.” I am much more likely to use the word “tough.”
However, when rankings points are on the line, winning a match in the main draw really matters. The context of my ACC feedback letter is Women’s National Tennis where the rankings points are important. That player community is competing for placement in International and Intersectional teams. That is high stakes competition. Having the two best players meet in the first round is a travesty in First Match Loser’s Consolation (FMLC) formats.
In the Texas Section, players are also competing for placement into an end of year “Masters” tournament. Qualifying for that event is a big deal. It is probably the effect that the USTA was trying to generate with the creation of NTRP Nationals. Unfortunately, that makes seeding all the more important.
Seeding will never be perfect. In light of that, Feed In Consolation through the Quarterfinals (FICQ) is the best compensating mechanism. If the two best players in a tournament meet in the first round of a FICQ tournament, the losing player can still finish as high as 5th during the event.
The simple fact of the matter is that seeding for tournaments has been really random and poor this year. It is not the fault of tournament directors. The USTA hasn’t provided tournament directors with good data required to seed events. If I were a tournament director, I would most likely elect to not seed an event at all. The playing community would hate that as well.
As fate would have it, we live in an imperfect world.
