Round robin is the future

Alex Corretja lost out despite beating Lleyton Hewitt

BBC Sport's Iain Carter believes the round-robin format should be expanded throughout the Masters Series.

Forty seven weeks of trotting the tennis globe came to a climax in Lisbon this week, with the Portuguese capital staging the Master's Cup.

It is the one event of the year to use a round-robin format.

So we've all had to don thinking caps to work out the significance of matches and sets.

For example Alex Corretja had to beat Lleyton Hewitt in straight sets to have any chance of making the semi finals, and went out because he ultimately needed three sets to claim victory in their group match.

Which other major sport puts itself in the position of potentially losing it's biggest stars after just one match?

  Iain Carter

Critics of the format say it is too complicated and it goes against the ethos of the sport if you can lose a match and still win a tournament.

I can't agree, in my opinion round robin is a much more effective way of making sure the better players make it through to the closing stages.

After all, which other major sport puts itself in the position of potentially losing its biggest stars after just one match?

The World Cups of football, rugby (both codes) and cricket all use group matches to determine which teams make it to a knock out stage.

If fans know the big names are guaranteed to play at least three matches they are far more likely to buy tickets.

Another benefit is that a player's progress could be dependant on the result of another group match, so for example Tim Henman fans could suddenly find themselves taking much more interest in another contest if it's relevant to their hero.

Further more it is far more likely the big names will play against each other more regularly.

This is not happening at the moment despite being a stated aim of the elite Masters Series.

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There are logistical difficulties because extra matches would need to be scheduled. My solution would be to use a round robin format for the Masters Series events. These should live up to their name and feature just the very top players.

So why not guarantee whoever is in the top eight on the Entry Positions List a place in the round robin stage.

They would then be supplemented by a further eight players who emerge from a knock out qualifying process, to produce four groups of four.

The top two from each group form the quarter final line up.

Ranking points would be awarded for match wins at the group stage, so even if a player was out of contention for the tournament he would still have plenty for which to play.

The tournaments would need to be played over ten days, and to accommodate this in the calendar the number of Masters Series events should be cut from nine to seven.

The ATP seriously considered using round robin for their Masters Series events in Stuttgart and Paris, but decided against the idea.

There appears little prospect at the moment of them changing their minds, but that doesn't alter my view that it would be worth a go.