Big Upsets (?) at Mutua Madrilena Masters Madrid

On a day of upsets, if upset is the correct term when discussing the top players facing off against each other, five of the more seeded players found themselves on the negative side of the ledger. Ivan Ljubicic (third-seeded and last week's winner in Vienna), Nikolay Davydenko (fifth-seeded and last week's winner in Moscow), James Blake (eighth-seeded and last week's winner in Stockholm), Marcos Baghdatis (ninth-seeded) and Mario Ancic (twelfth-seeded) were overthrew by lower ranked opponents in the second round of the Mutua Madrilena Masters.
Do you remember the previous post about “the working class”? They all fell victim to their respective “hot”opponents here in Madrid. They all are Masters Cup contenders, so they should have been extremely motivated to do well here. So the scoreboard says two important things:
- First, and obvious, the ATP calendar is so exhausting that overwhelms also the fittest players on the field. During the bottom half of the season, they get too much tired to have back-to-back good results, so they can bow out of the Master Series too. That’s why tournament scheduling should be monitored and eventually adjusted.
- Second, and less obvious, the “Bye” rule doesn’t work so much and sometimes can be dangerous. As many of you know, when a player is given a bye he/she is allowed to skip a match and automatically move to the second round of a tournament. He/she will play against an (frequently) hot player who just won a match and just tested the court, become comfortable with it and climatized to the venue very quickly. So he might kick seeded players’ ass. It isn’t like the most stunning thing you can see on the tour.
Where am I wrong?