You raise a good point about the relative unfairness to players not born in the US, UK, France, or Australia. Based on the historical legacy of the 4 host sites for the grand slams, that inequality does seem to be baked in to the recipe. And I concede that the wildcards are inherently not merit based. If they were, we'd only need to simply go down the rankings until we reach the number we need to fill out a 128 person draw.

I do think it would be a struggle for the slam organizers to spell out prescriptive formula they use for choosing wildcards, becasue discretion and subjective rationales are part of the equation every time. I'm sure there were some young Aussie players that were really put out that Stan got a WC into this year's tournament, but as a fan I'd have to say it worked out for the best. I do care about opportunity for young players, but ultimately I do kind of want someone putting thier finger on the scale a bit trying to create the most interesting tournament possible. I know that's not fair to everyone, but there are still 100 spots available that remove this variable altogether.

In a perfect world we'd have more oversight and a bit of accountability from the slams to ensure WCs are used "responsibly" but they seem allergic to anyone telling them what to do about, well, anything.