Post by Teresa on May 8, 2005 20:18:47 GMT 3
The Rankings
We said it above: This is the week that settles the Roland Garros seeds. We'll concentrate mostly on those. There is, after all, no contest for #1; Roger Federer, despite having champion's points come off, will have at least a 2000 point lead over #2.
Though we don't know who will be that #2. Lleyton Hewitt at Hamburg last year had the best clay Masters of his career, making the semifinal. That puts him exactly 350 points ahead of Andy Roddick. If Roddick can make the Hamburg final, he would tie Hewitt (though our rough estimate is that Hewitt would win the tiebreak); if Roddick wins Hamburg, he's #2 free and clear. No matter what, he is safe at #3.
The #4 ranking, and #4 Roland Garros seed (and you can make a very strong argument that the single most important seeding gap is that between #4 and #5), is slightly up in the air. Marat Safin has third round points to defend. Rafael Nadal has nothing. This is written before the Rome final. If Nadal can win that, and win Hamburg, and Safin loses early, it's just possible that Nadal would take the #4 spot. In practice, it seems most unlikely
We may not have much of a contest for the #8 seed. Right now, Nadal, Gaudio, Agassi, and Henman are #5-#8 in safe points. In the rankings, Guillermo Coria is right up there with those guys (ahead of Henman, in fact), but he has Hamburg finalist points to defend. If he wins Rome, he'll be in close contention; if he fails, life gets a lot harder.
At this point, we can say that Nadal and Gaudio are set for Top Eight seeds, and Agassi is very close. If anyone is in trouble, it's Henman. And even he has to worry about only Coria, Canas, and Nalbandian. And only Coria is a strong threat.
Chances are that the seeds from #9-#12 will go to Coria or Henman, Canas, Nalbandian, and one other. Joachim Johansson has the #12 seed now, despite being #13 in the rankings, because he doesn't have much to defend and #12 Ivan Ljubicic has semifinal points. And that means that even Johansson is fairly secure: Ljubicic or Carlos Moya would need semifinal points to overtake him, even if (as seems almost inevitable) he loses early. Anyone else would need at least finalist points.
Seeds #13-#16 currently belong to Ljubicic, Moya, Radek Stepanek, and Tommy Robredo, but Thomas Johansson, Dominik Hrbaty, Nikolay Davydenko, Mario Ancic, and David Ferrer are all within 120 points of Robredo (i.e. could potentially pass him with a quarterfinal), and all of them are within 220 points (i.e. semifinalist distance) even of Moya and Ljubicic. About 20 other guys could still theoretically overtake Robredo at least. It's simply too early to call these results; we will have updates during the week in Daily Tennis.
We aren't even going to try to predict the last 16 seeds. Again, we will have updates as the week progresses.
We said it above: This is the week that settles the Roland Garros seeds. We'll concentrate mostly on those. There is, after all, no contest for #1; Roger Federer, despite having champion's points come off, will have at least a 2000 point lead over #2.
Though we don't know who will be that #2. Lleyton Hewitt at Hamburg last year had the best clay Masters of his career, making the semifinal. That puts him exactly 350 points ahead of Andy Roddick. If Roddick can make the Hamburg final, he would tie Hewitt (though our rough estimate is that Hewitt would win the tiebreak); if Roddick wins Hamburg, he's #2 free and clear. No matter what, he is safe at #3.
The #4 ranking, and #4 Roland Garros seed (and you can make a very strong argument that the single most important seeding gap is that between #4 and #5), is slightly up in the air. Marat Safin has third round points to defend. Rafael Nadal has nothing. This is written before the Rome final. If Nadal can win that, and win Hamburg, and Safin loses early, it's just possible that Nadal would take the #4 spot. In practice, it seems most unlikely
We may not have much of a contest for the #8 seed. Right now, Nadal, Gaudio, Agassi, and Henman are #5-#8 in safe points. In the rankings, Guillermo Coria is right up there with those guys (ahead of Henman, in fact), but he has Hamburg finalist points to defend. If he wins Rome, he'll be in close contention; if he fails, life gets a lot harder.
At this point, we can say that Nadal and Gaudio are set for Top Eight seeds, and Agassi is very close. If anyone is in trouble, it's Henman. And even he has to worry about only Coria, Canas, and Nalbandian. And only Coria is a strong threat.
Chances are that the seeds from #9-#12 will go to Coria or Henman, Canas, Nalbandian, and one other. Joachim Johansson has the #12 seed now, despite being #13 in the rankings, because he doesn't have much to defend and #12 Ivan Ljubicic has semifinal points. And that means that even Johansson is fairly secure: Ljubicic or Carlos Moya would need semifinal points to overtake him, even if (as seems almost inevitable) he loses early. Anyone else would need at least finalist points.
Seeds #13-#16 currently belong to Ljubicic, Moya, Radek Stepanek, and Tommy Robredo, but Thomas Johansson, Dominik Hrbaty, Nikolay Davydenko, Mario Ancic, and David Ferrer are all within 120 points of Robredo (i.e. could potentially pass him with a quarterfinal), and all of them are within 220 points (i.e. semifinalist distance) even of Moya and Ljubicic. About 20 other guys could still theoretically overtake Robredo at least. It's simply too early to call these results; we will have updates during the week in Daily Tennis.
We aren't even going to try to predict the last 16 seeds. Again, we will have updates as the week progresses.
