Currently, Soderling has 5580 points to Andy Murray’s 5760 which means Soderling is 180 points behind Murray.  With Soderling’s win at Brisbane, he will replace a quarterfinal result in Marseille worth 45 points with a 250 point win or a net of 205 points, and just move ahead of Andy Murray.

This means, with both players not playing the week before the Australian Open, that Murray will become the 5th seed.  A similar thing happened to Murray last year when Juan Martin del Potro just slipped ahead of Andy Murray and became the fourth seed and Murray slipped to fifth seed and met Nadal in the quarterfinals.

At number 5, Murray has a 1 in 4 chance of meeting Djokovic while Soderling can not meet Djokovic until the finals, an unlikely scenario.  Thus, Murray could meet one of Federer, Nadal, Djokovic, or Soderling in the quarterfinals.  The two didn’t play each other in 2010.

As a side note, Juan Martin del Potro will face Feliciano Lopez in the opening round at Sydney.  Coincidentally enough, del Potro’s last opponent he played in 2010 was Feliciano Lopez and he lost easily to him.  Indeed, Lopez has beaten del Potro the last 3 times they’ve met, although del Potro won their first two encounters.  This will be a tough opening round for del Potro as Lopez is no slouch, and might have been tough even had del Potro been 100%.

Sydney has a relatively small draw of 28 players with the top 4 seeds having byes.  This includes Sam Querrey, Ernests Gulbis, Victor Troicki, and Marcos Baghdatis.  Baghdatis is the defending champ.

Auckland (New Zealand) has a similar draw of 28 players with the top 4 seeds getting byes.  The top 4 seeds are David Ferrer, Nicolas Almagro, John Isner, and Albert Montanes.  It seems the clay courters have headed to this tournament to prep for the Aussie Open.  John Isner is the defending champ.