Seeds, Draw for Kalamazoo Announced; Young No. 1 in 18s; Boyajian No. 1 in 16s
The Sunday before the tournament here in Kalamazoo starts is always "Draw Day." Before the computer era, I understand it was a long, complicated process, requiring many hours and reinforcements of pizza. We've retained the pizza part of it, but the computer is now doing all the work.
The seeds are listed here.
The draws are here.
A few of the first round matches I'll be hoping to see Friday in the 18s are Viju George vs. Jared Pinsky, Sean Corrigan vs. Chris Madden and Chris Kearney vs. Will Guzick.
The next couple of days are going to be extremely busy for me, so I'll be doing only brief posts, but I will try to get something up every day.
9 comments:
hey does anyone know if the webcam feature is going to be available on ustaboys? just wondering.
Anyone know the formula for seeding at the Zoo? I mean I somewhat agree with it, especially towards the top, but I dont understand how certain people get seeded in spots when they dont play junior tourneys. Of course you are going to have an ATP ranking in the top 1,000 if thats all you play. And if that takes precedence then Levine should be the #1 seed and not Donald Young. He has had a better pro career so far, and thats without ALWAYS getting a wildcard into a main draw. If you say that Young is seeded #1 cause he is the defending champ then McClune should be above Clayton because he beat him in the backdraw final last year. Also, Venus just beat Fugate, why isnt he seeded higher? Most the time the Zoo seedings make sense, but I think they kind of contradict themselves, and those are the times when we wind up with people like Bobby Reynolds not being seeded. That was hilarious when they didnt seed him in 2000 (he went on to get 6th). Or how bout when they put Bogomolov at the #8 spot in 2001 and he didnt lose a set in route to the title. Theres just so much contradiction that goes on in their seedings, then they dont bother to even match them up and youve got the #1 vs. #9 in the round of 16 and the #8 vs. #16. If they are going to let that happen they should just alpha seed and be done with it.
We are expecting to have a webcam again, probably by Thursday.
Seeding is much easier to criticize than to do. What would be your formula Austin?
The RPI list that Tennis Recruiting uses. That list seems to be pretty "on the money". I know seeding is easy criticize and I'm not neccessarily criticizing the committees decisions, but it doesn't seem like they stay consistent with them. They have Fugate at #4, but he just lost to the #9 seed who has been in college and not able to be out there getting ATP points, but when he was supposed to prove he was better he did. So if you say that Fugate is higher because of ATP ranking then Jessie Levine should be ahead of Donald Young, but then you have to remember Young is the defending champion. Basically, I'm saying pick what is more important, awful ATP rankings that are in the 600's or worse that only a handful of kids even play on a consistent basis, or use world/USTA rankings and stick with that formula.
I haven't really looked at the draw, but I would predict a Smyczek-Levine final, with Levine taking it home. If that isn't possible then possibly Clayton or McClune losing in the finals. Young hasn't seemed to have been able to win a bunch of matches in a row regardless of what kind of tournament since the Easter Bowl.
Anyone can say how "tough" it is to do seeding and I would agree that it is exponentially more difficult with the BG18's. I think the committee did a pretty good job with the B18 list.
On the other hand, if you want to look at the G16's as an example, they seeded by going "straight off the list". That isn't very tough to do, and you certainly don't need a committee with that approach....a computer works fine.
The problem with that, again using the G16's, is that it leaves out as "unseeded" two blue chip players - Sarah Guzick and Nelly Radeva. They are likely both top 5 players in the draw based on ability and head-to-head results. If there is a committee looking at this, which there should be, just seeding those two players would be a simple correction to the computer list and could have been done with 5 minutes of analysis.
Not taking that step hurts the event and both the main and FIC draws. Imagine if the #1 - #5 seed drew either of those players in R1 or R2. Statistics say that will happen - ugh. It also gives the impression that the USTA committee either ignores, or doesn't care about the negative impact of not seeding blue chip players.
Other thoughts on this?
Kind of like how Burdette wasn't seeded at Clay Courts and won the title
or like C. McHale won the G16 Clay Courts, and wasn't seeded. Again a (dark) blue chip, not seeded.....come on USTA....at least make a small effort to correct the obvious flaws with the points system in junior tennis.
Without knowing many other results for them, how did Waylon Chin go from being seeded #11 last year to #31 this year? And Andy Magee from #19 to #32? Drew Daniel is the #6 seed, seriously?!? Based on what, other than his dominance in the 12's and 14's?
Then in the 18's Justin Kronauge went from #22 to #21, how? Not to mention Dylan Arnould going from #14 to #23.
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