Wimbledon and seeding

Sir, – With so many of the top 32 seeded players “crashing out” of Wimbledon this year, is it time to abandon the practice of seeding altogether?

The key intended purpose of seeding is to ensure that the best players don’t knock each other out in the early stages, leaving only unknown players in the finals and thereby reducing spectator excitement and pleasure. However, player rankings are moving up and down more quickly than they did in previous years, resulting in seeding no longer being as reliable an indicator of how well a player will finish.

As an experiment, Wimbledon should abandon seeding and return to a completely random draw for a few years. I suspect little would change in terms of spectator enjoyment. – Yours, etc,

FINBAR KEARNS,

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Piercestown,

Co Wexford.