Common sense, rating points don't make a good couple

For an ardent tennis fan, the organisers have made things extremely affordable this time around. Buy a ticket to the quarterfinals and enjoy the quality of a final at SW19. After all, a Roger-Rafa classic for the price of a round of eight clash is a steal. The only issue is it could be midweek as opposed to a Sunday.

Yes, the much-awaited Wimbledon draw is out and if all goes according to plan, Roger Federer will face Rafael Nadal in the quarters. Andy Murray is expected to meet Jo-Wilfried Tsonga at the same stage. Novak Djokovic doesn’t cross swords with any of the other three rivals and just to clarify, David Ferrer isn’t a part of the ‘Big Four’.

That Ferrer isn’t strictly a part of the ‘Big Four’ is obvious you might say, but that’s not necessarily an area where the British press and Wimbledon concur with the rest of the tennis world. Up until a week back, the press in England was going on about the need for a subjective seeding for Nadal; otherwise there was this possibility of Andy Murray facing the Spaniard, the Swiss and the Serb one after another.

There were talks about the need for the powers that be at Wimbledon to take a more subjective look at the seedings, not something they haven’t done in the past. But a week is a long time in tennis and now that the draw isn’t so unkind to the Brit means sections of the English press aren’t really complaining.

A part of what happened now is something that’s had a recent history attached to it. Primarily because of how the rankings operate and how the French Tennis Federation swore by it. A dip in Nadal’s rankings due to an injury that kept him out for months together meant he was able to gather enough points only to be No. 4 prior to the event in Paris. That meant, the French Tennis Federation didn’t want to push the case for a higher seeding despite him having to defend the title at Roland Garros.

More importantly, it resulted in Djokovic playing Nadal in what many billed as the final before the final.

Now, despite Nadal winning in Paris, he is down to No. 5 as opposed to his opponent in the final, Ferrer, who is up at No. 4 on the basis of reaching his first-ever Grand Slam final. That, according to ATP parlance, translates into something like this: Nadal has done his job as the defending champion, while Ferrer has improved from what he was as a player last time around. He deserves more points and even if it means he would overtake Nadal in the rankings, so be it.

Nadal pulled out of the pre-Wimbledon grasscourt tournaments citing fatigue. Therefore, the All England Club didn’t have any clear-cut results to determine the Spaniard’s form on this particular surface. Fair argument, but common sense and rating points don’t always make a good couple.

One doesn’t have anything against Ferrer. The AELTC doesn’t want to set a precedent by seeding Nadal higher. In fact, credit to Ferrer for staying fit.

Therefore, he has earned the number of points that he has for a computer to calculate that he is the fourth-best player in the world, ahead of Nadal. However, just that one quarterfinal appearance at SW 19 and a win percentage lower than that of Nadal in 2013 plus a thrashing at the hands of the same man at Roland Garros should ideally hold more context and meaning. While we want a ranking system to provide meaning to the competitions that the players are involved in, we don’t want a path to the final grander than the final itself.

—The writer is sports editor and senior presenter with Neo Sports.