The fact that Roger Federer tops the seedings for the men's singles at the 2007 Championships comes as no surprise, since the Swiss world number one will be aiming for his fifth straight victory on the lawns of the All England Club. Also as expected are the second and third seedings awarded to Rafael Nadal and Andy Roddick, in line with their world rankings.

There are, however, some significant differences in the remaining 29 of the 32 seeding places, in line with Wimbledon's previous intentions "to reflect more accurately an individual player's grass court achievements." This includes not only adding 100% points earned by a player on grass over the past 12 months but also 75% of the points in the 12 months before that.

Thus the player ranked fourth on the ATP list, Nikolay Davydenko of Russia, drops to sixth in the seedings, with the fast-rising Serb, Novak Djokovic, and the Chilean runner-up at the 2007 Australian Open, Fernando Gonzalez, moving above Davydenko to take fourth and fifth spots.

The Czech Tomas Berdych, who triumphed at the German grass event in Halle last weekend, vaults from 11th place in the rankings to seventh seed, one place ahead of Britain's main hope (and lone singles seed, man or woman) Andy Murray, whose fitness and availability remain unresolved because of a wrist injury suffered last month. Murray's seeding matches his world ranking, which has improved from 11th to eighth despite not playing for more than a month.

The biggest leap is recorded by the 35-year-old Swede, Jonas Bjorkman, in recognition of his feat in reaching the semi-finals at the 2006 Championships and the final at last year's Nottingham event. He moves up from 31st in the rankings to take the 20th seeding spot.

The next most significant mover is the Cypriot, Marcos Baghdatis, up from 16th in the world to tenth seed thanks to his semi-final appearance at Wimbledon last summer, while another beneficiary, and a welcome one, is the 2002 champion, Lleyton Hewitt of Australia, who improves his ranking of 19 by three places to 16th seed.

Unsurprisingly, many of the clay court specialists from Spain and Argentina find themselves seeded lower than their rankings, though a notable exception is David Nalbandian, the Argentinian who was runner-up to Hewitt in 2002 and a quarter-finalist two years ago.

Written by Ronald Atkin

0 Comments