Former British players Andrew Castle and John Lloyd both believe that there needs to be a shake-up when it comes to Grand Slam seedings.<\/p>\n
In 2000, Pete Sampras won his seventh and last Wimbledon<\/a> title after beating 12th seed Patrick Rafter in four sets.<\/p>\n While two seeded players made it to the final, many other seeds suffered early exits at SW19.\u00a0For instance, none of the players seeded between third and seventh made it past the third round.<\/p>\n Of the top 16 seeds, only four made it to the quarter-finals. That was also the last time Wimbledon had just 16 seeds.\u00a0Since then, that number has doubled at Grand Slams.<\/p>\n During Francisco Cerundolo\u2019s three-set win over Tommy Paul<\/a>, in his first Queen\u2019s Club title, commentators Castle and Lloyd discussed how the two finalists would be seeded at Wimbledon.<\/p>\n Projected Wimbledon women\u2019s seeds: Sabalenka and Rybakina headline, Chwalinska\u2019s rare feat, Eala and Raducanu safe<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Alexander Zverev has a serious problem heading into Wimbledon<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Want more from Tennis365? Add us as\u00a0<\/span>a preferred source on Google to your favourites list<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>for tennis coverage you can trust.<\/strong><\/p>\n Due to this setup, seeded players cannot face one another until the third round. And according to the British duo, that can lead to some rather uneventful matches in the first couple of rounds.<\/p>\n Castle said on the BBC on Sunday, \u201cI think there should be 16 [seeds] and then we would have better matches in the first week, guaranteed.\u201d<\/p>\n Lloyd said he \u201ctotally agreed\u201d and that would mean there would be some \u201cinteresting\u201d first and second round matches.<\/p>\n Castle did acknowledge that if you are seeded at a Grand Slam, it is a sign of your hard work over the course of the year to get to that point.<\/p>\n But Lloyd thinks if they reverted to 16 seeds again, tournaments would be more exciting early on.<\/p>\n He added, \u201cPeople tend to forget that a slam is two weeks and in the first week, there should be a lot of good matches and sometimes it is guilty of early rounds, particularly from the top seeds, not being great. You stick 16 seeds in there will be some great first and second round matches.\u201d<\/p>\n While this is not always the case, the 2001 edition of Wimbledon did have fewer early upsets for seeded players.<\/p>\n For example, 12 of the top 16 seeds made it to the third round or better, although between 17 and 32, eight were knocked out in their opening match.<\/p>\n If Wimbledon switched to 16 seeds this year, Luciano Darderi would fill the last spot, but French Open semi-finalist Jakub Mensik (#17) and Queen\u2019s Club finalists Cerundolo (#21) and Paul (#24) would miss out.<\/p>\n That could mean a Joao Fonseca might meet a Jannik Sinner or a Novak Djokovic at the first round at Wimbledon. But, as these rules are not in place, a third round meeting would be the earliest chance for a heavyweight clash such as this.<\/p>\n GO DEEPER: Former British No 1 questions if Serena Williams can compete in key area<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n The post Wimbledon told to return to unpredictable rule to \u2018guarantee\u2019 better early matches<\/a> appeared first on Tennis365<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Former British players Andrew Castle and John Lloyd both believe that there needs to be a shake-up when it comes to Grand Slam seedings. In 2000, Pete Sampras won his seventh and last Wimbledon title after beating 12th seed Patrick Rafter in four sets. While two seeded players made it to the final, many other […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2372"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2372\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}More Wimbledon News<\/strong><\/h2>\n