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Reader question: Please explain this headline: Top seeds playing true to form. My comments: To paraphrase: Top players win as expected. In other words, no upsets – lesser players are falling by the wayside. Again, as they are expected to. In other words, no surprises. Top seeds, by the way, refer to the best players participating in a tournament. They’re “seeded”, given particular positions according to how well they’re likely to play. The player most highly expected to win is seeded No. 1. He will not meet the No. 2 seeded player until in the final. The seeding system is so designed that the top players play each other last, so that fan interest will be kept going, and going up, and up to a climax in the final, the last game of the tournament. This system is also meant to avoid the unsavory situation where some or most top players are gone in the early stages of a tournament because they have played each other first. In that case, fan interest will be gone too because the top players are the ones fans pay to see in the first place. Anyways, “true to form” is the idiom to learn here. Form as a sporting term describes an athlete’s physical condition – some say this term originates in racing, horse racing, that is. Anyhow, if a player is in good shape, no injury or illness that is, they say he’s “in form” or “in top form” (in the best condition). If he’s not “in form” or if he’s “off form”, then he’s not his good old self and is not expected to play as well as he once did. | 
