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THE
SCOOP: U.S. OPEN, DAY 10
Go
back to 16 seeds
By
Sandra Harwitt
tennisreporters.net
FLUSHING
MEADOWS, N.Y., SEPT. 6
– Let’s
revisit the new fangled idea at the Grand Slams of seeding 32
players instead of 16. Did it do the job it was intended to do,
saving the top players from being upset in the first couple of
rounds? Absolutely.
Is
that a good thing for the game? Absolutely not.
tennisreporters.net
sticks by its original assessment on seeding 32 when it was first
announced after Roland Garros. Basically, we don’t support
the decision because as we predicted, nothing interesting happened
in the first week of play. We weren’t the only people to
notice that the 32-seed concept makes the first few rounds at
a Grand Slam dull as dishwater. Many people were commenting on
the lack of compelling matches at the Open throughout the first
week.
It
wasn’t until the third round that some of the names started
to get tested in matches and a few fell by the wayside –
Wimbledon champion Goran Ivanisevic surprisingly stepped out in
the third round to Albert Costa and No. 9 seed Tim Henman landed
on the wrong side of a five-setter to Xavier Malisse of Belgium.
The
women’s draw provided little interest by holding to form
well after the third-round. Only Martina Hingis was seen struggling
in a fourth-round match that ended in a third-set tiebreaker to
former French Open champion Iva Majoli of Croatia.
Yes,
the French Open lost Venus Williams in the first round when she
was upset by Barbara Schett of Austria in straight sets. That
loss seemed to be part of the decision to seed 32 players at the
Grand Slams. tennisreporters.net wasn’t bothered that Williams
fell in that match because she was unprepared to play and deserved
to be sent packing. While it meant that Williams was out of the
draw, it added some excitement to the first round and there were
plenty of other players left to fill the gap.
Just
because you have marquee names hanging around for a long time
doesn’t mean that it spices up a tournament. What happened
at this U.S. Open is it made for a week of snooze before some
lively matches took place – our choice for the best two matches
here were the nearly perfect four-set quarterfinal match where
Pete Sampras beat Andre Agassi in four tiebreaker sets and world
No. 1 Gustavo Kuerten’s five-set thriller in the third round
where he came back from two sets down to beat Max Mirnyi.
Here’s
our advice to the Grand Slam Committee – go back to seeding
only 16 players and let the party begin.
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