Murray, Kerber top seeds; Federer 17th
MELBOURNE: Andy Murray and Angelique Kerber, world No 1 s, were named the top seeds on Thursday for next week’s Australian Open with organisers aligning with the current rankings.
Scotland’s Murray is chasing his first title at Melbourne Park after losing in the final five times, including in 2011, 2013, 2015 and 2016 to Serb rival Novak Djokovic, who is seeded two.
Kerber will be defending her first Grand Slam having upset Serena Williams, seeded two this year, in the decider last year.
Big-serving Canadian Milos Raonic, who lost to Murray in the 2016 semi-finals, is the third men’s seed with 2014 champion Stan Wawrinka fourth and Japanese hope Kei Nishikori fifth.
Swiss legend Roger Federer starts at 17 as he makes a comeback after six months out with a knee injury. His old foe Rafael Nadal, also returning from injury, is ninth.
Serena Williams, gunning for a 23rd Grand Slam title to beat Steffi Graf’s Open-era record, is scheduled to again meet Kerber in the women’s final. But there are a host of dangerous players looking to stop her, with Poland’s Agnieszka Radwanska seeded three and Romania’s Simona Halep four. US Open finalist Karolina Pliskova rounds out the top five.
A long injury layoff and a fall in the rankings have created a tough draw for 17-time Grand Slam winner Federer .
Federer slipped to No. 17 in the rankings this week after Grigor Dimitrov won the Brisbane International and moved up to No. 15.
The Australian Open tends to stick with the rankings when its seeds 32 players in each of the men’s and women’s 128player singles draws, meaning the 35-year-old Federer gets less protection than usual and could potentially face a top 10 player as soon as the third round.
Federer has won the Australian Open four times, his first in 2004, and also reached the final in 2009, but he hasn’t won the title here since 2010.
He spent six months out of action last year following surgery on his left knee and finished 2016 at No. 16, ending a year in which his record run of 65 Grand Slam appearances ended when he couldn’t contest the French Open. He also missed the US Open.
He returned to action at the international mixed teams exhibition at the Hopman
Cup in Perth last week. For Nadal and the other stars of tennis, there’s a familiar ring to the questions being raised as the first ball is about to be struck at the Australian Open.
Recent match-fixing sanctions and a new case are bringing fresh scrutiny to the integrity of the sport a year after corruption allegations cast a pall over the first Grand Slam of the year. “(It’s) obviously negative, always in the first month of the season starts to happen,” Nadal said in Brisbane. “You get tired about this kind of stuff, but the most important thing is fight against these kinds of things.” The headlines started appearing early in the new year. On Jan. 5, police in Australia charged an 18-year-old player with a match-fixing offense at a lower-tier tournament last October in Traralgon, near Melbourne. Days later, another Australian player, Nick Lindahl, now retired but once ranked in the top 200, was handed a sevenyear ban and $35,000 fine from the Tennis
Integrity Unit
(TIU) for offering to throw a match at a minor tournament in the city of Toowoomba in 2013.
Lindahl had already been fined after a criminal trial. Two other Australian players received lesser punishments in connection with the incident.
While Traralgon and Toowoomba are far removed from the glittering lights of Melbourne Park, the timing of the developments was troubling nonetheless. Last season began similarly beneath a cloud of suspicion after a report by BBC and Buzzfeed alleged that tennis authorities had suppressed evidence of match-fixing and failed to investigate possible cases of corruption. The reports went over old ground, but the timing and the headlines overshadowed the tournament.
THE SEEDS