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 Typical, I thought. A day after I run through some weird round-robin scenarios, the weirdest one of all crops up – because of the rules regarding retirements in round-robin matches, Evgeny Korolev goes through to the quarterfinals even though James Blake defeated Juan Martin del Potro 6-1, 3-1.
I was wrong. It was about to get weirder.
Initially, the situation seemed pretty definite – not simple, but definite. All the players in the group ended up tied with one win and one loss apiece (del Potro beat Korolov, Korolev beat Blake, and Blake beat del Potro).
The rules say that when the players are tied in the number of matches won, the next thing that decides the winner is the number of matches completed. A player who retires doesn’t get to count the match as a completed match, so del Potro was eliminated – he only completed one match while Blake and Korolev completed two.
That left Blake and Korolov tied. When two players are tied, then the next thing that decides the winner is who won the head-to-head match between the two. And that was Korolev, who beat Blake 6-2, 6-4.
Even Tennis Channel coverage had proclaimed Korolev the winner of the group after the match, and this is the outfit that owns the tournament.
Back in the media tent, there was much poring over the ATP rulebook and stories being written about Blake going out.
There’s usually an ATP person in the tent to answer questions and clear up issues, but after this match – no one. Minutes tick by. Talk to the media desk: Is Blake coming in, at least? Walkie-talkies get called into action. Yep, in a bit.
Then three hours tick by. Three hours. No one from the ATP. No Blake. Heck, we realize, there hasn’t even been an official announcement about Korolev being the winner of the group. Back to the desk. What’s going on? Is there a way Blake could advance? Out come the walkie-talkies again.
Tired of waiting, a couple of us take a walk over to the player lounge to see what’s going on . If the mountain won’t come to you, etc. etc. Stopped by the security guard – no media allowed in without an ATP escort. (Tennis Channel people expected, of course – plenty of them milling around inside.)
Okay – but where is the ATP person? More walkie-talkies.
We glance inside. And there’s Blake! Sitting there watching an old Roddick-Haas replay on TV. All right, we’re sidling in.
Ask around – no one knows what’s happening. Decide to ask the man himself. Hey, James, are you going through? “Yep.”
What? How? “I have no idea.”
Is this official? “Yeah, they just told me.”
Decide to leave. Or more to the point, the security guard decides we’re leaving.
Back to the desk: Blake says he’s through. Really? Yep. When did he say that? Just now, in the players lounge.
“We need better security,” cracks someone at the desk. (Yeah. Or better access to information. Three hours!)
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Blake finally came in – note: with the embattled look he usually wears after a loss. He was accompanied by this statement from the ATP: Having reviewed the situation in the Round Robin Group 1 at [the] Tennis Channel Open in Las Vegas, ATP Executive President Eitenne de Villiers has issued the following statement:
“This has troubled me enormously and I feel as though I’m damned if I do and damned if I don’t. It’s in the interests of the fans, media, tournament and players to find a common sense solution. We have said all along we are going to learn from the experiment.
A similar situation occurred in Buenos Aires which has given us great cause for concern. It is clear that fans like RR and the research confirms that. But unless we can find a way to ensure that withdrawals don’t unfairly affect the outcome of groups I’m afriad round robin will fail.
“James Blake will be awarded the group on the basis that the rules were not sufficiently explained. James was within just a few games of winning this match comfortably to advance. Juan Martin has stated that he would have completed the match had he been fully aware of the implications of his retirement.
“The ATP will be awarding Evgeny Korolev the amount of $11,375, the average sum of the prize money for the quarterfinals and semifinals at this event.”
Following the match, del Potro said, “I wanted to finish the match, but also I was not aware of the technicality of the rule. I did not feel comfortable continuing.”
The ATP’s round robin system will be reviewed in the coming days and at the ATP Board meeting in three weeks in Miami.
The tournament issued this statement: “The Tennis Channel Open stands by the ATP,” said Tournament Director David Edges. “This is an unfortunate situation but we will abide by the tour’s decision.”
(In other words: Oh all right, seeing as you insist – we’ll keep our top seed and star attraction in the tournament.)
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It had been odd watching Blake celebrate winning the match and knowing (thinking) that he actually hadn’t got through. During the press conference, he talked about what happened at the end.:
“When he came up to net, I said I hope he gets better soon and that he does better in Indian Wells and Miami, because as I said, he seems to be a very nice kid. I looked over at my coach and gave him a little fist pump that I was through. I didn’t know the rules, I thought ‘he didn’t win five games... or six games, I’m through.’ I started to think about what I was going to do to get prepared for the next match. And then as I came off the court I was informed that might not be the case – the rule might say otherwise, ‘we’re not sure, we’re looking into it, we’re reviewing it.’ And it was just somewhat strange because I thought I’d done my job.”
From there, it took over two hours to get the situation resolved, with phone conversations involving ATP executives in multiple countries, Blake, and Korolev. So were officials inept or disingenuous when they said the rules weren’t clear?
Probably the latter. From the sound of things, something changed between the early stages of the match and the end. According to Blake, when he came off the court there were hems and haws about what would happen.
According to Lleyton Hewitt, that wasn’t the case during the match. Hewitt walked in for his interview almost exactly as Blake walked out, and both had a lot of the same questions put to them. It was interesting – Mr. Player Council vs. Mr. ATP Lawsuit.
“Me and a few other guys were sitting in the players lounge watching the match and one of the ATP people told us that Blake [needs to lose less than five or six games.] We said, ‘is there any way that Korolev gets though?,’ and they said if del Potro withdraws,” Hewitt said. “That’s the funny thing. Even on TV they were saying it. Everyone was aware of the rule.”
Blake and Hewitt also gave contrasting accounts of how Korolev took the decision. “He was ready to go. He was pretty much ready to leave. I think it’s tough. He’ll be out on tour for a long time so I don’t think one match or one tournament s going to change anyone’s career.” said Blake.
How would he have felt if the situation was reversed? “I’ll be 100% completely honest. If I was in the opposite situation – I had already rented a car, was ready to get in the car to go to Indian Wells like Korolev was, I’d be able to come prepared and say let the person who deserves to go through, go through.”
Hewitt didn’t think it had been easy to convince Korolev of the decision. “I’m not sure. I’ve heard different reports in the locker room,” Hewitt said. “Yeah, I’m not too sure.”
And how would he feel in Korolev’s situation? “Pissed off.”
“This is a kid on the rise. He’s beaten Blake 2 and 4 two nights ago. That side of the draw’s opened up a lot as well. A little bit of prize money's not going to mean a whole lot to him obviously... If he can get through he’s going to be lucky to be in the quarterfinals definitely but you need those breaks in tennis.”
Marat Safin, who spoke to a reporter after his night match, had the most definitive opinion on whether the decision was influenced by Blake’s profile and status. “This is exactly the saddest part... if it had been the other way around, nobody would care about it and it just would be no discussion at all,” he said. “Unfortunately, the CEO, he put James in the wrong situation. I don't think James wants to be in this situation at all, in front of all of us guys.
“Somebody got screwed, it's nobody's fault but the people upstairs.”
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To go back to the decision itself, de Villiers was quite right in saying it was damned if you, damned if you don’t. When it was thought that Korolev had gone through, the rule was condemned as bizarre. When Blake was sent through, officials were condemned for breaking the formerly bizarre rule.
“I think to be honest, with all due respect, that the situation has been handled in a not professional way at all,” said Safin. “For a serious organization [like the] ATP, you can't make these kind of decisions in the middle of the week, by the phone, and the CEO disappointed me a lot.
“It will be a big thing in the coming weeks when everybody finds out what happened – Roger Federer and Andy Roddick. Hewitt was here also, he said it was ridiculous. There's going to be serious talking.”
Hewitt was “gobsmacked” by the “decision out of the blue.”
“I’m mystified,” he said. “I’m not sure how they can change a rule mid-tournament. That’s the most frustrating thing for me as a player. To change a rule mid-tournament, that’s just not right. We all start a tournament in the same boat.
“The biggest thing is that it would be unlucky for somebody. I’m just somebody who doesn’t favor changing the rules mid-tournament.
”It would have been unlucky for James, he was only three games away from getting through. But rules are rules.”
“There are rules, but the people that are there to change the rules did so,” Blake had countered earlier. “They made a decision and I’m very happy with it.
”At the end of the day it came down to who would have been possibly wronged more in this situation.”
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A few concluding thoughts:
- Blake, who will be at the player council meeting in Miami, suggested a solution to the problem he said the USTA apparently uses – count a retirement at 2-1 or 3-1 as a 6-1 set: “you’re basically retiring each game from that point on that you would lose.”
- Why is there rule about retirements not counting as a match for the retiring player, anyway? That’s were the problem started. Well, probably to stop a player from quitting after he’s guaranteed to go through – e.g. if all he needed to do was win the first set.
Here’s the kicker: if we lost that rule and kept everything else the same, it might have been del Potro going through. Another rule states that the score of a partly-completed match doesn't count in either player’s game won/loss percentage. So del Potro (12-5) would trump Blake (6-12) and Korolev (17-18).
Might want to take a look at that one too. Again, it’s probably there to stop players quitting once they’ve clinched their group, but perhaps also to stop a player from getting a disproportionately lopsided score because his opponent was injured. Is there any question that del Potro would have made it a closer match if he’d been playing at full strength?
- This is a new situation, but two semi-precedents in tennis come to mind. Oddly enough, they both involve Illie Nastase. One is the Masters Cup tournament when Arthur Ashe was defaulted for walking off the court against Nastase but officials later awarded the match to Ashe. The second is the infamous US Open match between Nastase and McEnroe when Nastase was defaulted by the umpire, only for the umpire to reinstate Nastase and then take the umpire’s place in the chair.
- Whatever happens now, de Villiers is in a difficult position – a significant majority of the players don’t like round robin, there was a to-do about it in the players’ meeting, and he’s himself said it’s confusing. But the statement that “fans like RR and the research confirms it” suggests he doesn’t want to admit failure either. Here’s the lesson: If something is going to be implemented in competition, it needs to be thought through and judged worthwhile. Saying ‘it’s just an experiment’ isn’t a free pass to try any old idea and at the same time avoid taking responsibility for it.
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