The Justice of the Grand Slam Tennis Tournaments on the Basis of Draw, Competition Format System and Final Result: a Case Study of the US Open 2017 Men’s Singles Tournament

Abstract

Abstract The tennis Grand Slam tournaments play a key role among the major sport events. Sport has also got a social interest to strive for justice. Is the main draw always fair? Is the competition format system right? Overall: can we achieve a just final result? When answering these questions, we need to focus on the telos of the sport event. Present study shows the relating theories of justice and examines them in connection with the US Open: from the evolutionist conception, through Aristotle’s excellence-based justice theory, to egalitarianism, meritocracy, equity and it also analyses some issues around positive discrimination. The study examines the justice theories of the US Open 2017 Men’s Singles Tournament’s with special focus on the draw, the competition format system and the final result. An important point: we can only talk about justice if it is consistent with the telos of the event – this is an exclusion criterion. In addition to the systematic processing of justice theories, the research is based on the International Tennis Federation’s (ITF) official documents and on the case study: the official competition regulation and final result of the US Open 2017 Tournament. As an outcome of the research, we can conclude that several theories of justice appear in accordance with the telos of the US Open 2017 Tournament. Each element, namely the draw, the competition format system and the final result can be fair, however, they all depend on the applied theory of justice. Which theories should be applied in certain cases and why? The research also confirms that certain theories of justice do not match the telos of the US Open Grand Slam Tournament. These theories cannot be applied in certain cases. For future search areas we can examine other justice theories, or other related tennis event’s justice.