Will this year’s Top 4 Wimbledon seeds avoid the 2008 fate?

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Fifth seed Samantha Stosur lost in the second round of Wimbledon on Day 3, becoming the highest-seeded WTA loser of the tournament so far. But judging from the previous 44 years, the upset fever should not infect the Top 4 seeds soon. Women’s Tennis Blog’s contributor Omair went through the history of Wimbledon and realized that in the entire Open Era only once did all the Top 4 seeds lose before the semifinals.

I was looking for something particular, but I ended up finding facts revealing that since the beginning of the Open Era it has happened only once that all the Top 4 Wimbledon seeds fell before the semifinal stage of the tournament. Surprising! Isn’t it? If you go to the ATP Tour, it has happened twice there.

WHICH YEAR WAS THE WEAKEST YEAR FOR THE TOP 4 SEEDS AT WIMBLEDON? 2008!

2008 – very recent past! Yes, the year Justine Henin retired for the first time, the year Ana Ivanovic won her first Grand Slam and the year Sharapova suffered from her shoulder injury.

Let’s have a look at the results of the Top 4 seeds at Wimbledon 2008. The Top 4 seeds were: Ana Ivanovic (1), Jelena Jankovic (2), Maria Sharapova (3) and Svetlana Kuznetsova (4).

ANA IVANOVIC

Ivanovic got the top spot courtsey of her first (and to date only) Grand Slam, the French Open title, but she could not sustain the form that took her to the trophy. She won the routine first round at Wimbledon, but needed three sets to overcome Nathalie Dechy in the second round, where she saved match points in the second set before winning the match 6-7(2) 7-6(3) 10-8. The win over Dechy squeezed the energy out of Ivanovic and she went down meekly in her third-round encounter at the hands of Chinese wild card Zheng Jie. Ivanovic became the first top seed in nine years to fall before the quarterfinal stage of Wimbledon.

JELENA JANKOVIC

Jankovic was the second seed and a condenter for the No.1 ranking. She could have overtaken the No.1 spot, had she made the semifinals of Wimbledon 2008. Jankovic won her first two matches easily, but in the third round against Caroline Wozniacki, future No.1, she injured her knee. She went on to win the match in three sets, but went down in straight sets in the fourth round against Tamarine Tanasugarn.

MARIA SHARAPOVA

Sharapova lost in the second round to then world No. 154 Alla Kudryavtseva. However, later in the year an MRI revealed that Sharapova had been suffering from rotator cuff tear since April that year.

SVETLANA KUZNETSOVA

Kuznetsova needed three sets to overcome the challenge put forth by Mathilde Johansson in the first round, however she won her next two matches in straight sets before running into Agnieszka Radwanska. Kuznetsova lost the first set 6-4, but rebounded to take the second set 6-1 and lead by a break in the third set, however, Radwanska fought back to outlast the last standing member of the Top 4 group, thus making it the first time in the Open Era that none of the Top 4 seeds made it to the semifinals of Wimbledon.

Will the Top 4 seeds this year – Maria Sharapova (1), Victoria Azarenka (2), Agnieszka Radwanska (3) and defending champion Petra Kvitova (4) – fall before the semifinals? Will this year add to the above list or will the Top 4 make it to the semifinals or better? What do you say?

Omair has started his own blog entitled Tennis Stat and you can visit it at http://tennisstat.blogspot.com/. He’ll mostly analyse the ATP Tour, but he also wrote an in-depth preview of the WTA Wimbledon draw. (photos: © Neal Trousdale)

8 COMMENTS

  1. did you notice that in 2008, 2011 and 2012 the finalist of Australian Open won Roland Garros??I’m talking about Ivanovic, Li and Sharapova 😉

  2. I think the title should read “Will this year’s Top 4 Wimbledon seeds avoid the 2008 fate?” Nice post by the way.

  3. Hingis lost early in 1999 and was the number one seed (so your comments about Ana being the first to lose before the QF is incorrect). Thanks anyway for the stats!

    PS. Elena D was the highest seed to make it through to the QF/semis 🙂

  4. Omair, thank you for contributing to my blog with the always-unique articles.

    Nadalina, nice observation! 🙂 The abundance of tennis stats is overwhelming, Omair could make a life-long work out of them haha 🙂

    Karunya, isn’t that my title as well? Or I’m not noticing something?

    Marco, thank you for pointing out the Hingis fact, I corrected it.

  5. Marija – You are always welcome and thanks for providing me this opportunity 🙂 You will always be my mentor 🙂 and yup I can make a life-long work out of it 😉

    Nadalina – True indeed! There are so many stats, it is really amazing, and the way you look at them can reveal whole lot of different things 🙂

    Karunya – The title reads ‘faith’, it should be ‘fate 😉 Thanks for liking it though 🙂

  6. Oh I’m blind! 😛 Thanks Karunya and Omair for pointing out to the spelling mistake, I corrected it.

  7. Well, I wonder how long will they last because,as expected, the top 10 is not complete already. I though this time they’d last at least until R3 but no.

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