Your place is not to judge another persons skill in a you said it….open tournament. Who cares if lower tier players want to play, you’re saying take that money out of the tournament….in a game where the best in the US make severely mediocre amounts of money for the level of skill they have at the game. Money filters up in these things, the sponsors are a joke for the most part and you absolutely need the absolute bottom tier to be paying entry fees to feed the top tier. Your point is invalid and ridiculous in multiple facets. Also FR is a very mediocre metric to say “when”’anyone should enter a tournament on top of that.
I think that Nick B does have somewhat of a well taken point here. There is no reason to have a US Open with such a large number of participants that half of them really do not belong. It should be a true test of skill in every match. It seems conceivable to me that by allowing such a non- vetted Open, a true pro could move through at least a few opening matches truly untested, while another true pro could have to face really top elite competition in 2 early matches and be out of the running. I firmly believe that EVERYmatch should be a true test of the highest skill levels in the game.
I don't like high level Pro tournaments where pro levels compete evenly with much lower level players. I believe that regional/ local tournaments should be the place where non- pros test their skills against pro levels if they so desire. Personally, I am willing to compete with a pro level player, when I know up front what my max $ loss possible will be - but a place like the U S Open would not be where that should occur IMO.
When you have enough true pro level players to fill out a field- and the US Open certainly had enough of them- why dilute the tournament? Regional tournaments like those run by Mike Zuglan seem a much better place for the 500/600 level players to test their skills.
