This week in Paris, all eight quarterfinalists are among the top nine seeds, the most tightly packed final eight since the 2009 Canada Masters, which was the only Masters or Grand Slam event this century in which all of the top eight seeds reached the quarterfinals.<\/p>\n
This quarterfinal lineup is a\u00a0reminder that, even with the decline of Roger Federer<\/a> and the temporary absence of Andy Murray<\/a>, men’s tennis is a top-heavy game. \u00a0At the Masters and Grand Slam levels, there have been eight other events since 2000 where all eight quarterfinalists were drawn from the top fourteen seeds–and all eight have been in the last five years. \u00a0By contrast, there were only two events between 2000 and 2005 where each player in the final eight came from the top\u00a025.<\/span><\/p>\n This year, the average Masters and Grand Slam event has featured 6.5 seeds in the quarterfinals. \u00a0That number has hovered between 6.5 and 7 since 2009. \u00a0From 2000 to 2009, however, it never topped 6.25. \u00a0In 2000 it was as low as 4.4; in 2003 the figure was 4.6.<\/p>\n The median seeds (or ATP rankings, for those players who were unseeded) tell a similar story. \u00a0This year, the median quarterfinalist rank at the average Masters or Slam was 7.8, indicating that typically, four of the final eight were seeded 7th or better. \u00a0That number didn’t fall below 9.0 between 2000 and 2009 and reached as high as 18.3 in 2003.<\/p>\n What triggered this research, though, wasn’t a desire to quantify the top-heaviness of the men’s game, but to look at whether certain tournaments lent themselves to this sort of late-round predictability. \u00a0Given this year’s lineup in Paris and the notable eight-for-eight showing four years ago in Canada, it seems a reasonable guess that, for whatever reason, these two events were particularly prone to a seed-laden final weekend.<\/p>\n They aren’t. \u00a0In fact, measured by the median quarterfinalist seeding since 2000, the Canada Masters event ranks as the least predictable among the current slate of Masters and Grand Slam events. \u00a0The defunct Hamburg Masters is the only event that compares. \u00a0Paris has not been so unpredictable, but it doesn’t rank in the top half of Slam and Masters events by this metric. \u00a0Despite the blue clay, the most predictable event has been the Madrid Masters in its years on clay.<\/p>\n Given that seedings are based on ATP rankings, which are in turn based on a season that is hard-court heavy, I’m surprised to find any clay events near the top of the list, even Roland Garros. \u00a0More in line with expectations are Monte Carlo, Rome, and most extreme of all, Hamburg. \u00a0Another surprise is Shanghai near the top of the list. \u00a0Conventional wisdom suggests that players don’t prioritize the Asian swing.<\/p>\n If there’s any rhyme or reason to why some of these tournaments are more likely to see predictable final eights, it is elusive.<\/p>\n Here is the full breakdown, sorted by median quarterfinalist seeding:<\/p>\n This week in Paris, all eight quarterfinalists are among the top nine seeds, the most tightly packed final eight since the 2009 Canada Masters, which was the only Masters or Grand Slam event this century in which all of the top eight seeds reached the quarterfinals. This quarterfinal lineup is a\u00a0reminder that, even with the … Continue reading The Most Predictable Quarterfinals<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[82,115],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-paris","category-tournament-strength"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1356"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1356\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Event Surface Yrs SdQFs AvgQF MedQF \nMadrid Masters Clay 5 6.6 13.1 6.7 \nUS Open Hard 14 7.1 14.1 8.5 \nRoland Garros Clay 14 7.0 14.8 8.5 \nShanghai Masters Hard 4 5.8 17.5 8.8 \nAustralian Open Hard 14 6.7 14.6 9.8 \nMadrid Masters Hard 7 5.3 19.1 11.1 \nIndian Wells Masters Hard 14 6.1 20.1 11.3 \nMiami Masters Hard 14 6.8 17.1 11.5 \nParis Masters Hard 14 5.9 16.9 11.8 \nCincinnati Masters Hard 14 5.1 18.1 12.2 \nMonte Carlo Masters Clay 14 5.1 22.3 12.7 \nWimbledon Grass 14 6.3 36.1 13.4 \nRome Masters Clay 14 4.9 19.8 13.8 \nCanada Masters Hard 14 4.8 22.4 16.1 \nHamburg Masters Clay 9 3.9 27.7 22.9<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"