By Charles E. Vasoll

If you lose in the first round of the tournament, you play in the consolation. You play against other teams that lost in the first round of the main draw. The losers of this play move to the Consolation Reprieve and the winners move on. So far, so good.

If you lose in the second round of the main draw, you play in the second round of the Consolation against the winners of the first round of the Consolation. These are teams that beat you in the first round of the main draw and if the Tournament Director is not alert to it, you may play the same team that beat you in that first round. The trouble begins.

If you lose in the third round of the Main Draw (the quarter-finals of a 16 team draw) you are moved to the Consolation where you play the winners of the second round played in that draw. Your team is without question one of the best four teams. (in a draw of 16) You have already defeated the teams in the semi-final of the Consolation that you are about to face. The plot thickens.

The result is very predictable. Your team wins and you face the other quarterfinalist of the Main Draw in the finals of the Consolation. Instead of a Consolation contest, you have a Main draw “Reprieve” as the finals of the Consolation. Teams that won the first round of the Consolation become losers when they play the losers of the second round Main Draw, who, in turn, become losers when they encounter the third round losers of the Main Draw. Simply, it’s a losing situation. I’ll agree that there can be “upsets” but they seem unlikely.

To summarize, the top four teams in the tournament are most likely to be the winners and finalists in both the Main Draw and the Consolation. So it’s not really a “consolation”.

Below is the draw of the Long Island Invitational played on December 4, 2004 at the Huntington Country Club. Seeded teams are in red. Note how the losing teams in the Main Draw are fed into the Consolation.

As I understand it, one of the purposes of this new format was to discourage teams from defaulting. The Long Island Invitational was played in one day, except for the finals of the Main Draw. As a result there was little pressure for teams to leave because they did not have to report back for a second day any way.

This “throw-back” system only defeats the purpose of allowing teams to eventually meet teams of similar talents so they get a fair competitive match or two. In this format, the best teams are most likely to survive and take home the consolation silver. It seems to me that a true Main Draw Reprieve consisting of the teams defeated in the quarterfinal matches would be much more satisfying to the players and be more testing of their skills for purposes of ranking. Likewise the Consolation, as in the old format, would provide teams which lose in the early rounds a better opportunity to develop their skills against opponents of similar ability.

With the “throw back” or “feed in” format, the early losing teams in the Consolation become cannon fodder for the better teams.

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