Vincent Kessler/Reuters
Rafael Nadal reached the final in five of the last seven Wimbledon tournaments.
WIMBLEDON, England — The seedings for Wimbledon were announced Wednesday, and there were no surprises: the top five seeds mirrored the top five players in the ATP rankings and were unchanged by the formula tournament organizers use to account for prowess on grass courts.
Novak Djokovic was named the top seed, followed by Andy Murray, Roger Federer and David Ferrer. Rafael Nadal was seeded fifth, meaning he could face any of the other four as early as the quarterfinals.
Though all Grand Slam tennis events maintain the right to change seeds, adjustments are rarely made. In 2000 three Spanish players boycotted the tournament after Wimbledon declined to include them in the 16 seeds, which ultimately led to the more transparent formula.
“Maybe they set up this formula so they could be devoid of controversy, but to me, there’s no human test or no eye test,” said Brad Gilbert, an analyst and coach who thinks Wimbledon should have seeded Nadal higher. “Eye test tells me that the last few months, Rafa’s been the best player in the world. And the human test that Rafa’s five times been in the final of Wimbledon, twice winning, three times final. And David Ferrer has never made it past the quarters.”
The formula takes the players’ current ranking points total, adds to it 100 percent of points won on grass in the previous 12 months, then adds 75 percent of points earned at the player’s strongest grass court event in the 12 months before that.
The formula is not used to determine the women’s seeds, which this year mirror the rankings exactly, adjusting for withdrawals from Venus Williams and Svetlana Kuznetsova.
The biggest bounce from the formula was for the Russian Mikhail Youzhny, who was ranked 28th but seeded 20th.
But the formula left Ferrer at No. 4 and Nadal at No. 5, despite the vast disparities in their grass court pedigrees and recent form. Ferrer has never made it past the quarterfinals in 10 appearances at Wimbledon, making the final eight for the first time last year and compiling a 20-10 record at the event.
Nadal, by contrast, has reached the final in five of the last seven Wimbledon tournaments, missing only when he skipped the tournament because of knee tendinitis in 2009 and when he was upset in the second round last year by 100th-ranked Lukas Rosol. Nadal won Wimbledon in 2008 and 2010, and has an overall record there of 36-6.
He has also had the stronger 2013, winning seven titles and making two additional finals, compiling a record of 43-2. Ferrer is 37-11, including four losses to Nadal, most recently a 6-3, 6-2, 6-3 loss in the French Open final two weeks ago.
But because of the formula’s emphasis on 2012 results, Ferrer managed to stay ahead of Nadal. He reached the quarterfinals of Wimbledon and the third round of the Olympics, and won a warm-up tournament in ‘s-Hertogenbosch, the Netherlands. Nadal lost early at events in Halle, Germany, and Wimbledon, and did not play in the Olympics. Nadal has yet to play on grass this year, but Ferrer lost his first match of the grass season in straight sets Tuesday in ‘s-Hertogenbosch, which does not bode well for his chances at Wimbledon.
Not only does Nadal become an incredibly difficult potential quarterfinal opponent, but the Big Four now lose the opportunity to play Ferrer at that stage of the tournament. Ferrer has served as something of a punching bag for the group, with a 5-10 record against Djokovic, a 5-7 record against Murray, a 4-20 record against Nadal and an 0-14 record against Federer.
Several of his more recent losses to them have been especially lopsided. In a loss to Nadal in the Acapulco final in February, Ferrer won one game. In the Australian Open semifinals in January, he won five games in three sets off Djokovic.
Ferrer does, however, have winning records against three of his potential quarterfinal opponents, No. 6 Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, No. 7 Tomas Berdych and No. 8 Juan Martín del Potro.
Federer, one of the players who could potentially be hurt by a quarterfinal meeting with Nadal, said that Ferrer had earned his seeding by playing “rock solid” over the past year and that Nadal should not leapfrog him.
“Clearly it changes the draw, the dynamics of it, but not more than that, really,” he said after winning the tuneup event in Halle Sunday. “I mean, the quarterfinal is not the first round. It’s still far away in the draw, if you think about it.”
Visit Source: NYT > Global Home http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/sports/tennis/nadal-made-a-dangerous-fifth-seed-at-wimbledon.html?partner=rss&emc=rss