It’s a Thursday night. The draw is posted. Anxiously clicking on the bracket, you spot your name paired up against the first seed. You may approach the match as if there is nothing to lose, but you might also enter this match in the same manner that you would go into a match against any other player in the draw because who said that the number one seed is always the highest skilled player? Is it all perception? This week during the Australian Open 2015, numerous unseeded players have proved themselves and possibly the invalidity of the ranking system.

Over the past few days of the Australian Open 2015, professional tennis has seen a significant amount of qualifiers and lower ranked players consistently challenging the top seeds. Beginning with qualifier Lucie Hradecka ousting the women’s fifth seed Ana Ivanovic, many qualifiers outplayed the seeds. Seeded fifth, Ivanovic was expected to win; however, a qualifier, who almost lost in the second round of qualifying, defeated her. Based on this match, is Ivanovic skillfully superior to Hradecka just because of her rank? It seems as though the qualifier who is well outside the top one hundred possesses the skillset to defeat a well-experienced top ten player. Similarly, sixth-seeded Kerber and sixteenth-seeded Safarova both lost to unseeded opponents in the first round. In her second round match, the second seed Maria Sharapova faced two match points, which she ultimately saved, against the qualifier Alexandra Panova. How can a qualifier cause so much trouble to a five-time Grand Slam champion? Can it really just be that everyone at this level possesses more or less of the same skills and that the ranking system does not truly express one’s full tennis potential? Up against qualifier Tim Smyczek, fourteen Grand Slam winner Rafael Nadal fought a GrUeLiNg second round battle, finally emerging victorious with a 6-2, 3-6, 6-7 (2), 6-3, 7-5 score line. Only dropping one set in his first two rounds, Roger Federer lost to Andreas Seppi, ranked 46 in the world, in four sets during his third round match.

Based on the Australian Open 2015’s first week matches, it is evident that the qualifiers can challenge the top seeds on numerous occasions. Did the qualifiers play great tennis as a result of believing in their skills and containing a winning mindset? Are rankings and seeds insignificant to skill level? Or was it solely just based on the mindset of the qualifiers and the early round jitters of the seeds?