{"id":959,"date":"2012-10-26T11:27:43","date_gmt":"2012-10-26T15:27:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/heavytopspin.com\/?p=959"},"modified":"2012-10-26T11:27:43","modified_gmt":"2012-10-26T15:27:43","slug":"which-tournaments-award-competitive-wild-cards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/2012\/10\/26\/which-tournaments-award-competitive-wild-cards\/","title":{"rendered":"Which Tournaments Award Competitive Wild Cards?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Italian translation at settesei.it<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

For the last two days, we’ve looked at tour-level wild cards from various angles. \u00a0Many top players never received any<\/a>; others have gotten plenty but never taken much advantage<\/a>. \u00a0Still others have managed to prop up their rankings with occasional wild cards despite not having the game to take themselves to the next level.<\/p>\n

Wild cards are perhaps most interesting from a structural perspective. \u00a0Every tournament gets to give away between three and eight free spots in the main draw, and what they do with them is fascinating. \u00a0Events must pick from among several priorities: Bring in the best possible players to build a competitive field? Award places to big names, even if they are unlikely to win more than a single match? \u00a0Support national objectives (and perhaps invest in future fan interest) by handing the places to the best rising stars the home country has to offer?<\/p>\n

Obviously, these priorities conflict. \u00a0The Canada Masters events give out most of their wild cards to Canadians–56 of the last 59. \u00a0But those local favorites have failed to win even one quarter of their matches, the second worst record for home-country wild cards among the current Masters events. \u00a0Wimbledon is the least home-friendly of the Grand Slams, but perhaps it is still too friendly, as British wild cards have won barely one in five matches over the last 15 years. \u00a0Lately, it has been even worse.<\/a><\/p>\n

The dilemma is most pronounced for tournaments in countries without a strong tennis presence. \u00a0These events generally hand out most of their wild cards to non-locals, saving a few for the best the homeland has to offer. \u00a0Dubai, for instance, has only awarded 10 of its last 42 wild cards to Emiratis. \u00a0Unfortunately, those guys have gone 0-10. \u00a0The story is similar in Doha and Kuala Lumpur.<\/p>\n

A different approach is evident in Tokyo, the only remaining tournament in Japan. \u00a0These days, the 32-player draw only gives the event three wild cards to work with. \u00a0The tournament isn’t wasting spots on outsiders: Every wild card since 1992 has gone to a Japanese player. \u00a0The local wild cards have done better than we might guess, winning almost 30% of their matches, good for 45th among the 65 tournaments I looked at.<\/p>\n

In fact, there is not a strong correlation between home-country favoritism and poor wild-card performance. \u00a0Of long-running tournaments, Newport has seen their wild cards have the most success, winning more than half their matches. \u00a0Next on the list is Halle, also a bit better than half. \u00a0But the two tournaments take drastically different approaches to local players. \u00a0Newport only awards 63% of its WCs to Americans–second-lowest among tourneys in the USA. \u00a0Halle, on the other hand, gives nearly all of its free spots to Germans.<\/p>\n

When discussing the structural biases of the wild card system, it’s easy to pick on the USA. \u00a0America hosts far more tournaments than any other country, and thus US events have the most wild cards at their discretion. \u00a0Many of those decisions are made by a single organization, the USTA. \u00a0But US tournaments are far from consistent in their approach.<\/p>\n

The US Open is by far the most nationalistic of the Grand Slams, having awarded about 85% of its WCs in the last 15 years to US players. \u00a0The French comes next at 78%, then the Australian at 69%, followed by Wimbledon at 67%. \u00a0But even that understates the case. \u00a0Take out the French reciprocal wild cards since 2008 and the Australian reciprocals since 2005, and 100 of the last 105 wild cards in Flushing have represented the home nation.<\/p>\n

Yet as we’ve seen, Newport shows less home-country favoritism than almost any other ATP event, and the Miami Masters is even more extreme, living up to its billing as the “South American Slam” by giving barely half of its wild cards to US players. \u00a0Even the most biased US tournament (aside from the Open) is the clay court event in Houston, which isn’t even in the top third of all events, handing out “only” 86% of wild cards to Americans.<\/p>\n

The problem isn’t the behavior of US tournament officials–if anything, they are more international in their thinking than their colleagues in other countries. \u00a0Instead, their priorities–put home-country players on the court; amass a competitive field–combined with the sheer number of US events, result in one wild card after another for a small group of Americans and no equivalent advantages for players from countries that do not host tour-level events.<\/p>\n

After the jump, find a table with many of the numbers I’ve referred to throughout this post. \u00a0All tour-level events that took place in 2011 or 2012 are included, and data goes back to 1998. homeWC% is percentage of WCs that went to home- country players, WCW% is the winning percentage of all wild cards, and hWCW% is win% of all wild cards from the home country. \u00a0I’ve excluded wild cards who were seeded, since those are usually just late entries, and don’t reflect tournament priorities in the same way that other WCs do. \u00a0For a sortable table with even more data, click here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Tourney               Cty  WCs  hWCs  homeWC%   WCW%  hWCW%  \nJohannesburg          RSA    9     9   100.0%  55.0%  55.0%  \nBucharest             ROU   39    39   100.0%  36.1%  36.1%  \nHamburg               GER   57    57   100.0%  36.0%  36.0%  \nTokyo                 JPN   60    60   100.0%  29.4%  29.4%  \nEastbourne            GBR   36    35    97.2%  44.4%  39.7%  \nRome Masters          ITA   62    60    96.8%  36.7%  36.8%  \nParis Masters         FRA   43    41    95.3%  33.8%  33.9%  \nSydney                AUS   40    38    95.0%  40.3%  40.6%  \nCanada Masters        CAN   59    56    94.9%  27.2%  24.3%  \nZagreb                CRO   19    18    94.7%  26.9%  28.0%  \nStuttgart             GER   50    47    94.0%  35.9%  34.7%  \nBuenos Aires          ARG   29    27    93.1%  38.3%  35.7%  \nHalle                 GER   42    39    92.9%  51.9%  53.8%  \nMetz                  FRA   25    23    92.0%  40.5%  39.5%  \nMontpellier           FRA   36    33    91.7%  37.9%  38.9%  \nRotterdam             NED   42    38    90.5%  28.8%  29.6%  \nMoscow                RUS   40    36    90.0%  28.6%  29.4%  \nBrisbane              AUS   39    35    89.7%  45.7%  44.3%  \nBastad                SWE   44    39    88.6%  38.0%  36.1%  \nCosta Do Sauipe       BRA   35    31    88.6%  33.3%  24.4%  \nGstaad                SUI   41    36    87.8%  21.2%  16.3%  \nHouston               USA   36    31    86.1%  44.1%  49.1%  \nVienna                AUT   36    31    86.1%  36.8%  29.5%  \nMunich                GER   40    34    85.0%  37.5%  37.0%  \nUS Open               USA  118   100    84.7%  29.8%  30.1%  \nCasablanca            MAR   39    33    84.6%  22.4%  17.9%  \nStockholm             SWE   38    32    84.2%  49.3%  48.3%  \nEstoril               POR   35    29    82.9%  37.0%  34.1%  \nMemphis               USA   44    36    81.8%  44.3%  40.0%  \nLos Angeles           USA   37    30    81.1%  41.0%  40.0%  \nSantiago              CHI   36    29    80.6%  32.7%  33.3%  \nKitzbuhel             AUT   46    37    80.4%  34.3%  31.5%  \nWinston-Salem         USA    5     4    80.0%  44.4%  50.0%  \nValencia              ESP   35    28    80.0%  34.0%  24.3%  \nMarseille             FRA   34    27    79.4%  50.0%  45.8%  \nBarcelona             ESP   62    49    79.0%  38.6%  38.0%  \nRoland Garros         FRA  119    93    78.2%  29.2%  32.1%  \nBasel                 SUI   36    28    77.8%  40.0%  33.3%  \nDelray Beach          USA   36    28    77.8%  28.0%  22.2%  \nCincinnati Masters    USA   57    44    77.2%  45.2%  42.9%  \nSt. Petersburg        RUS   42    32    76.2%  38.2%  30.4%  \nAtlanta               USA    8     6    75.0%  38.5%  45.5%  \nMadrid Masters        ESP   35    26    74.3%  38.6%  31.6%  \nSan Jose              USA   42    31    73.8%  41.4%  46.4%  \nChennai               IND   42    31    73.8%  26.3%  22.5%  \nBelgrade              SRB   11     8    72.7%  31.3%  33.3%  \nWashington            USA   54    39    72.2%  36.1%  32.8%  \nNice                  FRA    7     5    71.4%  36.4%  16.7%  \nBeijing               CHN   24    17    70.8%  36.8%  22.7%  \nAustralian Open       AUS  119    82    68.9%  28.3%  28.7%  \nShanghai Masters      CHN   16    11    68.8%  20.0%  15.4%  \ns-Hertogenbosch       NED   34    23    67.6%  45.8%  37.8%  \nWimbledon             GBR  110    74    67.3%  31.9%  20.4%  \nIndian Wells Masters  USA   70    47    67.1%  48.1%  47.8%  \nAcapulco              MEX   39    26    66.7%  36.1%  16.1%  \nUmag                  CRO   43    28    65.1%  34.8%  33.3%  \nNewport               USA   38    24    63.2%  53.2%  46.7%  \nAuckland              NZL   42    26    61.9%  23.6%  21.2%  \nQueen's Club          GBR   64    39    60.9%  37.9%  31.6%  \nMiami Masters         USA   76    42    55.3%  38.0%  34.4%  \nBangkok               THA   28    12    42.9%  24.3%  14.3%  \nDoha                  QAT   43    13    30.2%  32.3%   0.0%  \nDubai                 UAE   42    10    23.8%  24.1%   0.0%  \nKuala Lumpur          MAS   12     2    16.7%  45.5%   0.0%  \nMonte Carlo Masters   MON   57     8    14.0%  42.3%  27.3%<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Italian translation at settesei.it For the last two days, we’ve looked at tour-level wild cards from various angles. \u00a0Many top players never received any; others have gotten plenty but never taken much advantage. \u00a0Still others have managed to prop up their rankings with occasional wild cards despite not having the game to take themselves to … Continue reading Which Tournaments Award Competitive Wild Cards?<\/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":[118,121],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-u-s-open","category-wild-cards"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/959","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=959"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/959\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}