For fans of the PSA tour, two of the most memorable moments of the 2013 season involved the agony of Greg Gaultier.
Last January in the final of the Tournament of Champions against Ramy Ashour he was on the losing end of the "rock 'n' roll rally"
– which, thanks to the ubiquity of the internet, is probably the most
viewed point in the history of squash. In the context of the match, it
marked the end of the road for Greg. He had won the first two games and
lost a tight third 10-12, but following that highlight-reel rally early
in the fourth he would win only two more points for the rest of the
night. He was out of gas.
Flash forward to November’s World Open final, where Gaultier battled
Nick Matthew through four intense games lasting over 100 minutes, then
collapsed in the fifth, losing 11-2. Once again, Greg’s tank was empty.
It was brutal, even if you were rooting for Matthew, to watch Gaultier
struggle through that final game, pushing his unwilling body on to the
inevitable conclusion – another WO final loss.
A Built-in Disadvantage
How do you explain a supremely fit athlete like Gaultier succumbing to
exhaustion in two of the biggest matches of the year? There’s lots of
room for speculation, but I think an underappreciated factor was the
luck of the draw.
Both tournaments used a match schedule that spread the quarterfinals
over two days: the top half of the draw played first, then the two
winners took a rest day while the bottom half played. That meant when
the finals rolled around, the player from the top half (Ashour and
Matthew in these two instances) was playing his second match in two
days, preceded by a day of rest, while the unlucky player from the
bottom half (Gaultier) had to play three days in a row.
For fans and tournament promoters, this type of schedule makes sense.
By the quarterfinals the cream has risen to the top. There’s every
reason to expect the quarters will produce four long, contentious,
high-quality matches – a good two nights’ worth of entertainment.
But that same logic is precisely what makes such draws unfair to the
players and ultimately bad for the pro game. While top-ranked players
often cruise through the earlier rounds, strategically conserving
energy along the way, by the quarters they know they have to give an
all-out effort if they expect to continue advancing. For the finalist
from the draw’s bottom half, having to play three of these
full-throttle matches in a row is a distinct disadvantage.
A look at some additional events bears this out. In 2013 there were two
other tournaments with draws scheduled the same way, the NetSuite Open
and the U.S. Open. In both cases the finalist from the top half won.
And for the past eight years that I’ve been attending the ToC the draw
has always been structured this way. In seven out of those eight years
the winner has come from the top half. (With the 2014 edition a week
away, now’s the time to call your bookie. Put your money on Nick
Matthew, who’s been inserted in the slot vacated by Ramy Ashour at the
top of the draw.)
There are obviously other factors that help to explain these results,
including the fact that the number-one seed is placed in the top half.
(In the case of the ToC, though, four of those seven top-half winners
mentioned above weren’t number-one seeds.) The point is that with this
sort of draw there’s unfairness built into the system.
I’m not saying Gaultier would have won the ToC or the World Open if
he’d gone into those finals with the same amount of rest as his
opponent, but I do believe he would have had a fighting chance of
finishing with a bang instead of a whimper. That would have been a boon
for the players, fans, and promoters alike.
A More Fair Kind of Unfairness
So how do you create a more level playing field? Other major
tournaments, including the Qatar Classic and the British and Hong Kong
opens, play all four quarterfinals on the same day. That method has
disadvantages the split quarters were created to overcome: you have
more high-quality matches than you can fit into one evening, and with
fewer rest days for everyone involved the tournament becomes a war of
attrition, with both finalists unlikely to be at their best after three
or four consecutive days of play.
A partial solution – my truly modest proposal – is to continue having
the quarterfinals on two days, but to split them up differently.
Instead of having the top half of the draw play on day one and the
bottom half on day two, have the top and bottom quarters of the draw
(the ones containing the one and two seeds) play on the first day and
the middle two quarters (containing the three and four seeds) play on
the second.
This would be an improvement for two reasons. First, it would give the
advantage to the players who have earned it: the top two seeds, if they
win, would be the ones getting the day of rest between the
quarterfinals and the semis.
Second, it would create at least the possibility of the two finalists
going into their match with comparable rest. If the top two seeds
reached the final, they’d both have had the day off between quarters
and semis – providing the best possible circumstances for high-quality
play. If the tournament didn’t go according to seed, there would still
be a fifty-fifty chance of the finalists entering the match with equal
rest. With the schedule currently used by the ToC and the World Open,
there’s no chance of that happening. The finalist from the top half always has an advantage built into the draw.
I realize this is a wonky issue, but these kinds of details can make a
difference in both the quality and the outcome of matches. Watching
Gaultier struggle through that fifth game of the World Open was
painful, especially because I kept thinking to myself, “It didn’t have
to end this way.” The PSA players are a passionate, dedicated group.
They deserve for their tournaments to be as fair as possible.
Matt Lombardi is a freelance writer and squash enthusiast based in Seattle. This will be his third year serving as the blogger for the Tournament of Champions web site -- look for his daily updates, including intrepid predictions, starting Thursday, January 16.
What's On My Mindis a column by rotating authors. Contact: DailySquashReport@gmail.com
