seedings and/or setups

In tennis, what is the meaning of a 'seeded player'? ‘Seed’ is a player whose position in a tournament has been arranged based on their ranking so they will not meet other seeded players in the early rounds of play. For a given tournament there are specified number of seeds depending on the size of the draw. For ATP tournaments typically one out of four players are seeds; for example, a 32 draw International Series tournament would have 8 seeds. The seeds are chosen and ranked by the tournament organizers and the draw is then created with seeds placed such that they will not have to play each other in the early rounds and will only face lower ranked opponents until the latter rounds of the tournament where they will probably face each other.

[This is an official explanation you can read on the ATP and WTA websites.]

The graph on the right shows singles rankings for men (ATP) and women (WTA) as of Feb.1, 2010. In the case of pure chance draw, one would expect rankings distribution close to a straight line (the value axis is exponential!), while the graph curves to "terraces" which indicate the seeding influence. Introduced by the professional tennis management, seedings are, in effect, the safeguarding  of "more valuable players". More valuable for the tennis show business, of course, not for tennis as a sport. "Google" the money involved, it may help you to under- stand the safeguarding.

Do you realize how adverse intervention that is into the meaning and the morality of sportsmanship?

 2010-02-07 

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