Italian Open hit by 17 late withdrawals, seeds and alternates reshuffled

The Italian Open draw is supposed to settle things. This week, it didn’t. Rome got hit by a messy run of late withdrawals, and that set off the chain reaction tennis fans know well but casual viewers usually only notice when a strange new name suddenly appears in the bracket. Basically, once players pull out after the draw, the tournament has to keep refitting the field around seeds, qualifiers, alternates and lucky losers. (internazionalibnlditalia.com) ### Why did this feel so chaotic? Because Rome is huge. The ATP and WTA events both run 96-player singles draws, with seeded players getting byes, qualifying still feeding into the main event, and late absences arriving right as matches are about to start. In that setup, one withdrawal is manageable. A cluster of them means the bracket keeps changing under everyone’s feet. (atptour.com)e ATP side? The clearest example is Valentin Vacherot. He was sitting in the men’s main draw as the No. 14 seed on the Rome site, then withdrew late enough that the replacement story mattered immediately. Martin Landaluce, who had lost in qualifying, got pulled into the main draw instead. That is a big swing for a 20-year-old who thought his week was over. (internazionalibnl([atptour.com)such a big deal? Because Vacherot is not some fringe name anymore. He came into the week ranked No. 16 in the world, and his Rome seeding gave him a bye plus a protected path that now disappears from the bracket. When a seeded player exits that late, the tournament usually doesn’t just “swap in a similar guy.” It opens a door for whoever is next in line, and the section can get a lot more volatile. (atptour.com) ### What happened on the WTA side? Emma Raducanu pulled out before playing, with the reason given as a post-viral illness. Marta Kostyuk also withdrew after winning Madrid, citing a right hip injury. Those are the kind of exits that ripple outward — not just because of name value, but because qualifiers and lucky losers get promoted into slots that had already been drawn. (wtatennis.com)## What’s a lucky loser, exactly? It sounds harsher than it is. A lucky loser is a player who loses in the final round of qualifying but still gets into the main draw because someone withdraws late. Rome’s women’s draw already shows Elena-Gabriela Ruse marked as “LL,” which is the cleanest proof that the churn wasn’t theoretical — it had already changed the actual bracket. (wtafiles.wtatennis.com) ### Why do seeds and byes get weird here? Because a 96-player draw is built like a machine. Seeds are placed in fixed spots. Top 32 seeds get byes. Qualifiers and alternates drop into specific lines. So when somebody leaves after the machine is assembled, you do not rebuild the whole thing. You patch it. That keeps the tournament moving, but it can leave one section suddenly softer and another section unexpectedly dangerous. (internazionalibnlditalia.com) ### Why does this matter beyond Rome? Rome is the last big two-week clay event before Roland-Garros. Players use it to test fitness, bank ranking points, and sharpen up against top opposition. So late withdrawals are not just administrative noise — they are signals about health, readiness and opportunity. For someone like Landaluce, it is a bonus life. For players in the same section, it can completely change the week. (atptour.com) ### Bottom line? The real story is not just that players withdrew. It’s that Rome’s bracket stopped being stable after the draw came out. Once that happens, the tournament turns into musical chairs — and the people still standing can get a very different path than the one they expected 24 hours earlier.