Rafael Nadal gets his wish as Wimbledon ditches unconventional seeding system

Two-time former champion Rafael Nadal would have thoroughly welcomed the news that Wimbledon has decided to do away with its unorthodox seeding system. The Wimbledon officials have announced that The Championships will no longer be following the special system that had become something of a 'new' tradition.

Wimbledon's primary announcement on Friday was about how they would be using their insurance cover money - received on cancellation of the 2020 event - to distribute nominal prize money to the players. But what would have been of greater interest to Rafael Nadal - and many other top players - was the update on the official Wimbledon website.

Wimbledon announcing change in seeding system

The organizers specified that in the 2021 edition, the Championships will use the conventional seeding format followed by the other Slams - based solely on official rankings.

Wimbledon's weird seeding rule

Since 2002, Wimbledon had followed a system designed to give grasscourt specialists a boost. While all other Slams based their seeding on the official ATP/WTA rankings irrespective of surface, Wimbledon devised a unique formula that prioritized performances on grass over other surfaces.

The Championships decided their seeding order on the official ranking points as per the ATP Entry system plus two other criteria which are as follows:

• 100% of the points earned in all grasscourt tournaments in the immediately preceding 12 months, and
• 75% of the points earned in the player's best grasscourt tournament from the 12 months before that.

The reasoning behind this was to offer some protection to the grasscourt specialists on tour, considering the paucity of grasscourt events around the world.

The Wimbledon seeding system worked a bit differently

A famous misconception about the seeding system was that it is applied to all 128 players in the draw. But that wasn't the case; the 32 seeds were decided according to the official ranking points, after which the formula was applied to decide the order of seeding. Thus, no player who would have otherwise been unseeded could use the system to be unfairly seeded and thus avoid facing top players in the early rounds.

It is interesting to note that for some reason, Wimbledon never applied this seeding formula to the women's section of the draw. The women were seeded based on their official ranking points, with changes being made only in exceptional circumstances at the discretion of the organizers. Case in point: Serena Williams was seeded No. 25 in the 2018 edition despite being ranked No. 183.

This difference in rules for the men's and women's draws had become the biggest argument for those against the special seeding system. There was no logical reason for applying the formula only to men, as the WTA doesn't really have many more grasscourt tournaments on its calendar than the ATP.

In any case, as the three surfaces in tennis kept getting progressively homogenized with time, the requirement for a special seeding system on grass started looking increasingly redundant. That is probably what prompted Wimbledon to make the change and fall in line with the other Slams from 2021.

Rafael Nadal has always disliked the Wimbledon seeding system

Rafael Nadal might not have done cartwheels after hearing Wimbledon update on Friday, but he almost certainly would have let out a happy smile.

It would be fair to say that Nadal had been the most vocal critic of Wimbledon's unorthodox seeding rules, and for good reason. The Spaniard has borne the brunt of the formula on multiple occasions - especially in the last decade, when he won little to no points in the grasscourt season.

Rafael Nadal lost in the opening week of The Championships on three different occasions in the 2010s, and on the famous 'Manic Monday' (Round of 16) on two occasions. Moreover, he completely ditched the tournament in one other year - 2016.

Rafael Nadal has lost a seeding place to Roger Federer on multiple occasions

Rafael Nadal rarely had any points from the grasscourt tournaments to add to his Entry system points, which led him to losing a place in the seeding order multiple times.

In 2010, after the freshly crowned World No. 1 had just toppled Roger Federer in the rankings, Rafael Nadal had to settle for the No. 2 seed at Wimbledon. Federer was promoted to the top thanks to the grasscourt maestro's bagful of points on the surface.

This blow was even more bitter to swallow for the Spaniard as he had technically won Wimbledon the last time he had played the tournament. Rafael Nadal had famously defeated Federer in the epic 2008 final, and then given the 2009 edition a miss due to injuries.

History repeated itself in 2018 when Rafael Nadal lost the No. 1 seeding to Roger Federer despite, again, being the World No. 1

Still, Nadal was relatively quiet in those years, as No. 1 or No. 2 doesn't make much of a difference with respect to the opponents you face. As long as you are one of the top two seeds, you are assured of a comfortable draw.

But when the same event repeated the following year in 2019, the circumstances were a little different. This time Rafael Nadal was pushed outside the top two seeds; the World No. 2 was seeded third, with World No. 3 Federer promoted to the second place ahead of him and World No. 1 Novak Djokovic retaining the top seeding.

That was when Rafael Nadal finally snapped.

The Spaniard called the seeding system 'disrespectful', and said he couldn't understand why Wimbledon was the only Slam that used a different formula. He minced no words in exhorting the grasscourt Slam to align their seeding rules with the other Majors.

"The only thing that does not seem right to me about this story is that it is only Wimbledon that does it, only one tournament," Rafael Nadal had said at the time.

The 19-time Slam champion had also said he wasn't the only aggrieved party by the unique seeding system, and that other players had suffered too. He was dead right about that.

In 2019 the eighth-ranked Kevin Anderson jumped four places to No. 4, by virtue of his dream run to the final the previous year. That cost Dominic Thiem, Alexander Zverev, Stefanos Tsitsipas and Kei Nishikori a spot each in seeding. Not only that, but it meant Anderson wouldn't have face the 'Big 3' for one extra round - until the semifinals of the tournament.

Rafael Nadal was not a fan of the Wimbledon seeding rule

Top seed Novak Djokovic was also surprised to hear Roger Federer was promoted in the seeding at the expense of Nadal. But when Roger Federer was told about the Spaniard's complaints, the eight-time Wimbledon champion said that Rafael Nadal must "deal with it".

Rafael Nadal's uncle and former coach Toni Nadal had chimed in too, calling Wimbledon's seeding system "a bit ugly". Toni Nadal said that the organizers had disrespected his nephew time and again by pushing him lower, and that Wimbledon followed the peculiar system only to "do it different" - out of the belief that they were more special and prestigious compared to the other three Slams.

"It's a well-known topic, the Wimbledon guys are used to differentiating themselves because of this kind of thing, it's a bit ugly, but it's what they've done all their lives."

Nevertheless, with the peculiar seeding system now gone, both Rafael Nadal and his Uncle Toni must be high-fiving each other in Mallorca.

It will be interesting to see what Rafael Nadal does at Wimbledon in 2021 with this boost in seeding potential. For the fans though, it is one fewer topic for their regular dose of tennis drama in June and July.