You know what, I love round robins. Wanna know why? Tennis is exciting again! Look at what happened in Las Vegas over the last few days. First of all, Benjamin Becker lost his first match to Jan Hernych and won his second against Gustavo Kuerten, setting up the following scenario for the remaining match between Kuerten and Hernych:

Hernych will advance to the quarters by winning a set OR by winning eight or more games in a loss UNLESS one set loss goes to seven, in which case he advances by winning nine games or more in a loss. Kuerten will advance by winning the match and surrendering six or fewer games, UNLESS he wins one to seven and surrenders seven or fewer games. Becker will move on IF Kuerten wins and surrenders seven games UNLESS one set win for Kuerten goes to seven and he surrenders eight games.

Got that?

Kuerten just returned from an 18-month absence due to injury and he was playing a 27-year-old journeyman counter-puncher with an average serve. He had to win the match and he had to win it convincingly - if Kuerten won the match 6-3, 6-4, it was the same as a loss. He needed to force the game on Hernych by going for big serves or winners, both of which put Kuerten out of his comfort zone since he hasn’t regained his rhythm yet and his strong surface is clay, not hard court.

Kuerten ended up losing the first set and the rest of the match was now a version of a dead rubber – the last set didn’t mean anything. If somebody gets a walk-off hit in baseball – a hit in the bottom half of the ninth inning on that puts a team ahead - everyone goes home. When Hernych got a service winner to take the first set, he should have just walked up to the net, shaken Kuerten’s hand and walked off the court.

Eliminate meaningless matches, and stop a match as soon as the remaining games become meaningless.

Look at this for instance: James Blake – the biggest draw and defending champion - walked onto the court against Juan Martin Del Potro needing to the win the match while only losing five games to advance. Blake is well suited to this task; he can force the game on his opponent and he did, going ahead 6-1 in the first set. However, Del Potro retired with Blake up, 6-1, 3-1, due to breathing problems.

Blake won the match but he was now out of the tournament. Huh?

Del Potro and Evegeny Korolev were in Blake’s group and all three players had records of 1-1 but the first tiebreaker is number of matches completed and Del Potro didn’t complete his match. That left Blake and Korolev, and Korolev advanced because he beat Blake. Case closed.

Except it wasn’t closed. The ATP changed the rule in mid-tournament! The president of the ATP, Etienne de Villiers, issued a statement awarding a quarter-final spot to Blake because he was winning his match easily and probably would have advanced. However, judgments about rules can only be made by approval of the ATP Board of Directors and that was a big problem, because it made de Villiers look like he was bending the rules so that the tournament could dump the no-name Korolev, a young player from Russia, in favour of the crowd favourite from the U.S., one Mr. James Blake.

The ATP reversed itself again the next morning and Korolev advanced to the quarter-finals as he should have. But this could all have been prevented if the ATP allowed walk-offs. The rule states that games from incomplete matches don’t count to prevent players from tanking once they’ve won the games they need to advance, but there’s no need for that rule if the match ends once it becomes meaningless.

The better approach is to award all games left in the remaining sets to the winner when their opponent retires from the match. In that case, Blake would have won his match 6-1, 6-1, and advanced. It’s not perfect, if Del Potro had retired early in the first set, Blake wouldn’t have deserved the victory, but at least you know the retirement was for real. No one complains in single elimination tournaments when a player advances due to hos opponent's retirement.

Matches now have an added layer of complexity and excitement. In a single elimination tournament, a player can take a few games off and still win the match, but now every game matters and each game could be the difference between advancing and going home. That makes it much more exciting.

There is currently a petition addressed to de Villiers to ban round robins, but I’ve posted a counter petition here. Sign it and join the future of tennis.

To read more, please go to mvn.com/tennis.
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