Forget the painful hard-court warm-up losses to Roberta Vinci (Toronto) and Christina McHale (Cincinnati), Caroline Wozniacki will be the top women’s singles seed at the Aug. 29-Sept. 11 U.S. Open in Flushing Meadows, N.Y.
Wozniacki, the ’09 USO runner-up, is the No. 1 seed in New York for the second consecutive year. But the Dane hasn’t exactly been a lights-out force on the WTA Tour as of late and is still seeking her first Grand Slam title. She’ll be followed by ’10 finalist Vera Zvonareva, No. 3 Maria Sharapova, No. 4 Victoria Azarenka, No. 5 Petra Kvitova, No. 6 Li Na, No. 7 Francesca Schiavone and No. 8 Marion Bartoli. Three-time U.S. Open champ Serena Williams — in many people’s eyes the favorite for 2011 despite the toe injury that forced her to withdraw from the Western & Southern Open in Cincinnati — will come in as the No. 28 seed. This year, the U.S. Open followed the WTA rankings to determine the seeds.
“After careful deliberation regarding Serena Williams’ seeding, we decided to maintain the objective criteria in place to determine the women’s singles seeds,” said U.S. Open tournament director Jim Curley.
“I have a real problem with it,” said ESPN’s Cliff Drysdale on a pre-U.S. Open conference call. “I think it’s ridiculous. I think that the majors years ago, they allowed themselves the opportunity to reseed or not to go with the seedings according to the tour’s ranking system. I think this is a perfect example of what they should not do, which is go with the rankings. I think they should have seeded her a lot, lot higher. I feel very strongly about that.”
Drysdale said he would have seeded Williams at No. 8.
“It really doesn’t hurt Serena as much as it hurts the other players. One of the top seeds will get her in the third round,” echoed Chris Evert. “I think they could have made a much better judgment call just on the fact that she won both warm-up tournaments [Stanford and Toronto]. I mean, that’s shouting loud and clear, ‘I’m back, I’m beating the field, I’ll still the best player in the world when I’m healthy.'”
This is the 10th straight year that 32 players will be seeded in singles. The singles draws will be revealed on August 25.
