All you need to know about the seeding methodology used in Wimbledon 2019 — In depth data driven discussion about the method and its effectiveness
The grass court season that kicked-off couple of weeks ago, will reach it’s pinnacle when the 133rd edition of the world’s oldest and the most prestigious tennis tournament begins on Monday, 1st of July. It’s time to head off to the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, to enjoy some strawberries and cream along with some high quality tennis.
This article will discuss the much talked about seeding formula used at the Wimbledon Championship 2019, which includes an in-depth discussion about how it works, why it’s needed and whether the methodology is effective.
How does the much talked about Wimbledon seeding formula work?
Unlike other Grand slams and Masters tournaments, Wimbledon does not seed the players based on their ATP Ranking Points. Instead Wimbledon uses a surface-based seeding system which adds additional emphasis to a player’s grass court achievements in the past 24 months. This methodology became a major talking point in the week leading to the Championship as the calculation ensured that world number 3 Roger Federer was seeded second in the gentleman’s singles above world number 2 Rafael Nadal who has 1325 ranking points more than Federer according to the ATP rankings.
You can understand the seeding methodology better using the chart given below, which provides a detailed breakdown on how Federer overtook Nadal based on the surface-based seeding methodology used at Wimbledon.
As shown above, this formula doubles the ranking points earned on grass courts since 25th June 2018 and adds 75% of the points earned from the highest achievement on grass in the year before. This allowed Federer to collect 2360 additional points and leapfrog Nadal by 180 points to achieve the all-important second seed. In addition to Federer, 2018 runner up Kevin Anderson and 2017 runner up Marin Cilic benefited handsomely, based on the seeding methodology.
Why do you need a surface-based seeding methodology at Wimbledon?
Quite a few current and past players including Nadal, Djokovic and Patrick McEnroe expressed their disappointment regarding the surface-based seeding as they believe all major tournaments should use a consistent methodology for seeding players.
Let’s compare player performances on different surfaces and the opportunities available on grass courts to evaluate the necessity of a surface-based seeding methodology.
Player capabilities and performances vary based on the playing environment
Due to high degree of variations in the surfaces, even the best players tend to prefer certain court types, compared to the others. For example, if we compare the performances of Federer, Nadal and Djokovic in different surfaces, we can clearly see that even though their overall win percentages are similar there are noticeable differences in performance within each surface type. While Federer loves grass, Nadal dominates in clay and Novak has the advantage on hard courts. Same trend can be seen among majority of other players on tour including Murray (grass), Cilic (grass), Wawrinka (clay), Thiem (clay) and Del Potro (hard).
Limited of opportunities to gain points on grass courts compared to other surfaces
In a calendar year only six weeks are allocated to grass court tournaments and Wimbledon Championships account for two of those weeks. Therefore, in addition to Wimbledon only 1250 ATP rankings points can be gained, even if a player wins all four grass court tournaments on offer as shown in the chart given below.
Given the fact that most top players who play in the second week of French Open miss the first week on grass and rest the weeks before and after Wimbledon, this will most realistically be lowered to 500 points that can be won at either Queen’s Club or Halle.
Let’s compare this to potential points to be gained prior to French Open by a clay court specialist. The table given below indicates an opportunity to gain 6500 points by playing 14 weeks on clay.
A top player like Dominic Thiem will spend 8–9 weeks on clay by playing a couple of weeks in golden swing, and 4–5 weeks in Europe before French Open and another couple of weeks after it. This will enable him to compete for ~5000 ATP ranking points on clay and getting 30% — 40% of those points will enable him to be seeded among the top 10 players by May 20th 2019.
Similarly, there are 6500 ranking points on offer from February to August on hard courts. Therefore, a player like Juan Martin Del Potro can compete for ~5000 points, by playing the mandatory Masters 1000 tournaments and a couple of ATP 500 tournaments.
If we do the same calculation for Australian open, only considering the time frame after US Open 2018 there is a maximum of 5750 ranking points on offer. Of which, close to 5000 points can be gained by playing 5–6 major tournaments.
However, practically speaking, points earned throughout the year on hard courts will be applicable for both Australian Open and US Open. Therefore, there is an opportunity to gain more than 12,000 ATP ranking points on hard courts only.
The data given above indicates that the grass court specialists are at a significant disadvantage, compared to clay and hard court specialists.
Therefore, there is a need for a surface-based seeding methodology, to avoid clashes between top players and grass court specialists in the early rounds of Wimbledon.
Does the current methodology solve the problem?
Now that we confirmed the need of a surface-based seeding system, let’s evaluate the current system and check whether it provides a fair outcome.
According to the chart given below, maximum points earned by playing in grass court tournaments increases to 6000, which is very close to the maximum points that can be earned on clay.
If we look at a top player like Roger Federer who is likely to play 3 tournaments on grass (e.g., Stuttgart, Halle and Wimbledon) in a given year, he is eligible for gaining up to 5000 ranking points depending on his consistency in winning. This is identical to the ranking points a top clay-courter or a hard-courter would be eligible for, as explained in the tables above.
One major criticism about the methodology, would be its bias towards the outcomes of the Wimbledon Championships in past couple of years, which accounts for close to 60% of the total points gained (3500 points). However, that is inevitable, as there aren’t any Masters 1000 events on grass. In addition, adding points for a tournament held two years back will be unfair for young players, such as Stefanos Tsitsipas and Felix Auger-Aliassime who didn’t feature in the ATP tour in 2017.
Taking all things in to consideration, I think the seeding methodology implemented by Wimbledon Championship is accurate and fair by most players.
Do you agree with my assessment?
I would love to hear your thoughts. Leave a comment!
