Seeded private tournaments
My proposal how it can work:
- 25% of the tournament field would be seeded (for example 32 players in case of a 128 players tournament, or 16 players in case of a 64 players tourney, etc.)
- If the tournament creator set the seeded option, then the invitation sending order will be important. So the first invited player will be the first seeded, the second will be the second seeded, etc. All invited players will have a seeded number but only the top 25% joined players will be seeded in the end (so if the first invited (=first seeded) player doesn't join, but the second one joins, then the second invited player will be the first seeded in the tourney, and so on). Every invited players can see the seeding list (what is his invitation seed number, and what are the ohters' seed numbers too) so can decide if he/she wants to join with the actual seedings or doesn't.
- After the tournament is filled, the bracket still randomly drawn but based on the 25% seeding.
For better understanding here is a link where the random drawing procedure with seeding is more detailed for a 128 players tennis tournament:
http://beta.itftennis.com/media/64108/64108.pdf
Quote from the link:
"The Grand Slam Drawing Procedure:
In general, at the Grand Slam tournaments players are entered in the draw sheet based on their current standing on the ATP rank list. There are 128 players in the Grand Slams: 32 seeded players and 96 unseeded players. The first seed is placed on line 1, while the second seed is placed on line 128 at the very bottom of the draw sheet. This ensures that the two best players cannot meet before the finals. Thereafter, 3rd and 4th seeded player are hand-drawn from the cup: the first drawn is placed on the line 33 and the second drawn is placed on the line 96 in the draw-sheet. This way the best four players cannot meet each other before semi-finals. The names of 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th seeded players are then placed into the cup and hand-drawn to fill places on lines 32, 64, 65, and 97 in the draw. Similarly, 4 more groups of seeded players are drawn and placed on their predetermined line in the draw-sheet. Any seeded player has 50% of the chance to be drawn in first seeded player’s half of the draw, and corresponding 50% to be drawn in part with second seeded player.
For unseeded players the computer programme randomly selects the names to fill in 96 remaining vacant places.
For details concerning the draws see p. 25 of the Grand Slam Rulebook 2011"