Regarding the USTA Pro Circuit Roland Garros Challenge

On paper, the USTA Pro Circuit Roland Garros Challenge looks like a brilliant idea for all parties.  The challenge revolves around three Har-Tru American clay court ATP Challenger Tour events for the men and three ITF Pro Circuit American Har-Tru events for the women.  Players' results are given a point value based on how big the lower level event is, and one's best two-of-three point values are added up to get your "score".  The American woman and man with the highest score gets the reciprocal wild card to the French Open main draw.  You can see the standings here.

For the tournaments, this ensures that lots of Americans are in the draw, which ensures interest from fans and higher attendance at events.  For American players who cannot get into the main draw based on the ranking, there are massive point and financial incentive from a potential trip to Paris, so playing these smaller tournaments are a great idea.  So, from this perspective, the wild card challenge is only a good thing, for the fans in attendance who want to see Americans battling on court, for tournament sponsors, for the players themselves, it seems as if having a wildcard challenge, rather than just handing out the reciprocal wildcard, is a brilliant idea.  There is also something very rewarding about winning that wildcard as opposed to being gifted with one.

However, as is common with Twitter, everyone has an opinion, and so I stumbled upon an interesting tweet from a poster named Tyler Green, questioning the USTA for their wild card challenge on the women's side, specifically referring to whether the player in the lead right now, Taylor Townsend, deserves the wild card more than Louisa Chirico, who will not be given direct acceptance to the main draw, but is doing very well in European, WTA-level, clay court events.  And he does bring up an interesting, and valid point.  Why should players challenging themselves in Europe be punished for that by having to go through the qualifying draw in Paris, while players competing in smaller tournaments in the United States get rewarded.  Let me try to dissect the reasoning behind it as best I can.

I think that there are multiple reasons why the wildcard is given in this manner.  First of all, like I've mentioned earlier, I commend the USTA for wanting players to work for the wildcard as opposed to just being handed one, based on some internal discussions that the public will never hear.  The proces of obtaining the wildcard is very clear, and there is no subjective discussion for "who is more deserving than who".  Rewarding the wildcard in this manner would open up a huge hornets' nest of subjective wild card selections previously only reserved for the US Open if the USTA stopped their wildcard challenge in lieu of an opinionated process with no clear standards.

In addition, like I touched on before, the USTA is also helping the American tournaments involved by having the wild card.  Instead of going to Europe, a lot of players are enticed to stay in America and compete in these smaller prize money events now, giving the tournaments more American players to advertise, and the fans more American players to watch compete.  Sponsors are also helped as more eyes means more potential financial gain for them.  And if sponsors are happy and butts are in sears, then tournaments can flourish.  So, beyond the players themselves, the USTA is helping the actual American tournaments by bestowing the wildcard in this fashion.  Ultimately, it's a lot better, and certainly more enticing, for the casual American fan to watch a Final between Taylor Townsend and Grace Min, or Bjorn Fratangelo and Jared Donaldson, than between two lower-ranked foreigners who the casual fan might not know, and if more Americans are in these tournaments, the probability of that occurring decreases, and probability of increases ticket sales increases.

Ultimately, though, for a player like Chirico, she knows the rules of how to get the wildcard, and seeing her level of play in Europe, would definitely have had a huge chance at getting it, but decided not to.  This isn't a knock on her, but rather, the recognition of a conscious decision on her part.  Because higher ranked players, such as Shelby Rogers and Anna Tatishvili, did stay home to compete in these tournaments, but Louisa decided against it to go to Europe.  And, based on her results in Stuttgart and Madrid, it seems like a brilliant move so far.  She has gotten a lot more money and a lot more ranking points than she would have gotten by staying in America.  And based on her level of play in these tournament, she seems like a good bet to make the main draw of the French Open anyways.

 However, let's not pretend as if Chirico didn't know about this wild card challenge.  She knew the parameters for receiving the wild card and chose not to participate, which is totally her choice, but the wild card rules are clear, and she chose to go to Europe anyways.  And while this is absolutely her right, it just means that she 100% did not deserve the wild card.  I liken it to this, let's say a teacher gives you two choices for a final paper, and for the class, either paper topic is totally fine totally ok to write on, however an outside company is giving $100 for writing the best paper for only one of the topics.  If you write the best paper in the world about the topic the company doesn't care about, while it's absolutely your right to do that according the specifications for the class itself (in this case, the ATP/WTA), it doesn't still mean that the outside company (in this case, the USTA), should give you the $100.  Just some food for thought here.

This article is not a dig at Tyler Green, nor is it a dig at Louisa Chirico.  This is merely a careful analysis of why the USTA gives out the wildcard in this format.  And trust me, I don't agree with every decision the USTA makes, but in this case, the wildcard is definitely handed out in a just format.