We need rankings and seeds determined according to the different surfaces, especially red clay and grass. Otherwise the draws will always be wobbly. In the women’s tournament, Kerber at No. 1 and Pliskova at No. 2 make very little sense, just like Nadal at No. 4 in the men’s event.
PARIS – If we forget about ethical issues for a moment, it is very clear that women’s tennis desperately needs Maria Sharapova. Along with comeback girl Petra Kvitova, the Russian superstar could give the top of the women’s game a decent amount of credibility that the tour is currently lacking due to the crisis of world No. 1 Angelique Kerber. This year the German has lost seven times in the first round, including her inexplicable 6-2, 6-2 defeat to Ekaterina Makarova at the French Open.
Last year Kerber won two Slam titles and competed in both the Wimbledon and Olympic finals, but so far this season she has been a shadow of herself. Her ability to fight and grind out matches has been completely missing. The No. 2 seed Karolina Pliskova could probably do a little better than the German in this tournament, even if the Czech has never been a clay court specialist. At this point, the French Open tournament organizers should look into the possibility to determine seeds based on the players’ record on the red clay, exactly like the All England Club does for Wimbledon.
Lewis Carroll, the author of “Alice in Wonderland”, first promoted the idea of having seeded players in order to avoid that the best players would face each other in the first few rounds.
The reason why the ATP and WTA have decided to come up with a special grass court ranking system that would determine the Wimbledon seeds is that there are only a few tournaments a year on that particular surface.
Compared to the last couple of decades, the number of clay court tournaments has decreased as well, hence Rafa Nadal’s complaint about how short the clay court season has become. Most of the women’s players today have the same game: Big and power ground-strokes with very little creativity. Talented shot-makers such as Schiavone or Vinci have become very rare on the women’s tour.
Kerber, Pliskova, Konta, Cibulkova, Radwanska, Venus Williams and Wozniacki are all not as good on clay as they are on hard courts. At the moment, the best clay courters in the world are probably Halep, Svitolina and last year’s French Open champ Muguruza. If we had a system that determines the seeds according to the surface, those three players would probably be the first three seeds.
We also face the same issue in the men’s event. In spite of the fact that he is the overwhelming favorite to win the title, Nadal is only seeded at No. 4, which makes very little sense. Another non-sense is the No. 5 seed assigned to Milos Raonic, while Dominic Thiem, who has this year enjoyed very good success on the dirt, is only seeded No. 6.
(Article translation provided by T&L Global – Translation & Language Solutions – www.t-lglobal.com )
