Wimbledon Draw Out–Early Musings

Wimbledon released its draw today. I’ll give early thoughts and more complete ones later, but there appears to be a lot of intrigue early on.

The biggest question, which may be answered today, is whether Nadal chooses to defend his title. After a more casual practice week than usual, Nadal played Hewitt in an exhibition and lost 6-4, 6-3. He plays Stanislas Wawrinka today, and will make his final decision whether to defend his title. Due to the nature of his loss, and the kind of comments his uncle Toni was making, Nadal doesn’t seem fully himself which leads his participation in Wimbledon more uncertain than usual. Still, Wimbledon is played on a soft surface and Nadal seems very likely to lose number 1, if he doesn’t play.

If he plays, Nadal starts his defense with last year’s quarterfinalist, Arnaud Clement. Should he win, he might have to play the guy who just beat him at the Hurlingham exhibition, Lleyton Hewitt, in the second round. They met quite early in the French Open where Nadal had one of his easier matches.

Tursunov (who is in a semifinals this week), Acasuso, and Stepanek are in his eighth of the draw.

Roddick starts off with a tough Frenchman, Jeremy Chardy. Chardy just lost a very close match against last year’s Wimbledon semifinalist, Rainer Scheuttler. After that, he’d play the winner of Dimitrov and Kunitsyn. Peter Lundgren, Federer’s former coach, claimed Dimitrov is better than Federer at the age of 18. While most of the praises fail to pan in results, it does at least say that Dimitrov can hit the ball.

Britain’s hope, Andy Murray, starts his Wimbledon (apparently referred to locally as SW19) against big serving, Robert Kendrick. Kendrick was one of the few Americans to make it to the second round (he and Roddick). He’s lost in the first round of the two AEGON grass court events. In the following round, he might play underachieving but dangerous, Ernests Gulbis. Murray appears to have a pretty easy section of the draw.

At the bottom of the Murray quarter is Gilles Simon, who continues to struggle in 2009. In that section, a tough opener has Fabrice Santoro playing James Blake. Santoro is in the semifinals at Eastbourne this week.

Murray is in Nadal’s section of the draw.

In the third quarter, del Potro meets tough Italian, Andreas Seppi in the first round. This section of the draw doesn’t look so bad either. Tommy Haas is in this quarter. Apparently, in a last minute move, Wimbledon revised the seedings it posted and gave Haas a seed. He is the 24th seed. Basically, the change was due to Gael Monfils withdrawing, which opened up a slot. Haas had been the highest ranked player to be unseeded, so he benefits from Monfil’s last minute withdrawal.

Djokovic is in this quarter, and he opens against Julien Benneteau.

Federer opens his Wimbledon against Yen-Hsun Lu, once the top junior in the world. Baghdatis-Lopez is an interesting first round match. Baghdatis normally plays quite well at Wimbledon, and Lopez has played well on grass too. Soderling plays hard hitting Gilles Muller who played well at the US Open last year. Steve Darcis and Frank Dancevic, both good grass court players, play each other in the first round. Federer is probably happy that Nadal and Murray are taking up most of the press, while he can work on his preparations to win a sixth Wimbledon.

Going to be an interesting Wimbledon. The word is, if Nadal drops out today, Murray would become the second seed and Federer the top seed.

The revised seedings, mostly the same as before, minus Gael Monfils, plus Tommy Haas: