This year’s Wimbledon starts on Monday, and the seedings are out. The draw will be held Friday, and after that it’ll be easier to see who has the best chance to win. Even without the draw, there’s little reason to look outside the top three for the men, and for the women, who the hell knows. Clijsters, unfortunately, reinjured her ankle and withdrew today. I wonder if we’ll see her again before 2013, although I figure she will try to play in the U.S. Open.
Wimbledon is the only one of the majors that doesn’t automatically seed the players according to their rankings (based on the rankings a couple of weeks before the tournament). They explain their system and not that Tsonga, Llorda, and Tipsarevic were moved up several spots based on their past play on grass. Chela, Raonic, and Nalbandian moved down a few spots.
Just when you thought the women’s side couldn’t get any more unpredictable, the Williams sisters are back. Serena played two matches this week - she won one three-setter and then lost in another - and those are the only tour matches she’s played since winning Wimbledon last year. She’s ranked 26 and seeded #7 based on having women Wimbledon four times. Venus’ is seeded 23rd, having won five times.
John Isner is not seeded. I am not sure about Nicolas Mahut’s status. He didn’t get a wildcard, and based on his ranking, he should be one of the seeds in qualifying play, but I don’t see his name there. I can’t be the only one hoping they somehow end up playing each other again.
Seeding Serena and Venus is the right thing to do. IMO. Very possible that a top seed could have faced Serena or Venus in the first round. heck, it would have been possible that they could have faced each other in the first round. (1 in 127). If they do not make a big run in this tournament, and don’t play again until NYC, they will be unseeded at US Open.
I agree with moving them up. Serena would have been seeded anyway and Venus might have just sneaked in there at 32. I just think it’s interesting to see where they decided to place them. They’ve kicked a lot of as at Wimbledon in the past, that’s for sure. I don’t know if they can win the tournament with this little preparation, but nobody else is dominating right now.
It’s not just a twisted ankle. She hurt her it pretty badly in April- tore a couple of ligaments among other things. She aggravated the injury again this past week. Clijsters has been saying that she is likely to cut back on her playing after this year. I think the implication is that she wants to have another baby. My reckoning is that if the ankle recovers this summer, she’ll play the U.S. Open, then take a break, have a baby, and maybe be back in 2013. If it doesn’t recover, the time frame on that might be moved up a little.
Thanks Marley. I had to shoot that off before I proof read it as the kitchen guy turned up.
I’m trying to get my mind around how Henin and Clijsters can take considerable time off and come back and win majors- same with the Williams sisters I guess. I can’t say it is recent as I recall Evonne Cawley (Goolagong) winning a major after having a baby.
I can’t recall a male player coming back after such a long lay off. I wait for someone to prve me wrong.
Henin didn’t win any more majors in her comeback, but for both of them, I think it was primarily mental. They already knew they had the ability to win majors and compete with the best players on tour, and their time off really seemed to help them enjoy the game more. Henin in particular was famous for her unrelenting focus and when she retired she was simply burned out. Clijsters has a very athletic game and I think her body took a real beating, so time off probably helped her there. And she no longer had to worry about all that ‘too nice to win’ nonsense.
I can’t really think of a guy who went through something comparable. This doesn’t seem to be something they struggle with to the same extent some of the women do. The closest might be Agassi, whose desire to play really came and went a few times in his career. He did recommit himself and when he decided he was going to play because he enjoyed it, he was able to train very hard and continue playing long after some of his contemporaries had retired. And for much of that time, he was playing at a very high level.
Sick? Not at all. That was one of the best things that ever happened to tennis. Wouldn’t it be something if they took every set to tiebreakers, though?
I’m curious about what’s going to happen before the match starts. I’m sure there will be some sort of recognition and perhaps some humorous self-awareness from the players.
I wonder where they will play this match. Are they big enough names to play on one of the main courts? The other humorous thing is that they’ll play on Tuesday. Too bad they couldn’t start on Monday just in case.
Hi maplekiwi, I merged your post into the thread I started last week- hope that’s alright. I think it’s going to be interesting for the men because we’ll get to see if Djokovic can improve on his grass court record and Federer can continue the bounceback we saw in Paris. I think Nadal’s section looks somewhat challenging. He could get Raonic in the third roundand the grass might work for Raonic’s huge game. He could get del Potro in the fourth. For the women, same as ever, nobody knows what’s going to happen. The Williamses are so much better on grass than everyone else that it’s not even funny, but we don’t know if they’re healthy enough to finish the tournament. While I’d like to see Schiavone do well, her record at Wimbledon is pretty bad. She’s 11-10 there in her career. She made the quarterfinals in 2009, other than that, she’s only been as far as the third round once.
Nadal starts things off today against Russell (youngish American player), with Schiavone playing Dokic after that. Venus also starts around 7, with Roddick, Berdych, and Raonic playing later.
Meanwhile I love the heavy exposure ESPN is giving to Isner-Mahut II. They talked about it all weekend and they’re showing it live (7 a.m. Eastern) tomorrow morning.
gonna be a real interesting one this year. no longer just fed vs nadal, djokovic is a real threat, playing the best tennis anyone’s played this year. and murray has got one in him, as long as the others don’t hit their very best heights. i do think that to win he’ll have to beat two of those three, and that would probably prove too much, but you never know. my money, as ever, is on nadal, but i hope it’s a romp of a tournament
I read his bio incorrectly - Russell is a 33-year-old journeyman. Russell is up 4-2 in the first set but it looks like Nadal could get the break back in a minute.
Serena won in three sets, and spent a minute crying into her towel after the match was over. Other early winners included Erakovic, Kvitova, Petkovic, and on the men’s side, Del Potro, Chela, and Karlovic, when Tipsarevic had to retire. Jankovic lost, and Verdasco is in trouble. Roddick is closing in on a straight-sets win.
