2015 Projected Wimbledon Seeds

We are just a week away from the Wimbledon seeds being announced. After the tournaments at Queen's Club and Halle this week, the Wimbledon seeds will be set. This is what the Wimbledon seeds are as of now. The players in bold are the ones still in action this week with a chance to improve their point total.

*The first three seeds have all been clinched. Almost everything else is still in the air.

1. Novak Djokovic 16745
2. Roger Federer 10733
3. Andy Murray 8990
4. Stan Wawrinka 6263
5. Kei Nishikori 6087
6. Tomas Berdych 5590
7. Milos Raonic 5374
8. David Ferrer 4805
9. Marin Cilic 4124
10. Rafael Nadal 3618
11. Grigor Dimitrov 3338
12. Jo-Wilfried Tsonga 2799
13. Gilles Simon 2630
14. Kevin Anderson 2488
15. Gael Monfils 2305
16. Feliciano Lopez 2303
17. David Goffin 2178
18. Tommy Robredo 2048
19. John Isner 2043
20. Viktor Troicki 1810
21. Leonardo Mayer 1794
22. Richard Gasquet 1768
23. Roberto Bautista Agut 1733
24. Ivo Karlovic 1714
25. Nick Kyrgios 1676
26. Bernard Tomic 1625
27. Pablo Cuevas 1467
28. Guillermo Garcia-Lopez 1363
29. Philipp Kohlschreiber 1353
30. Jack Sock 1350
31. Fabio Fognini 1348
32. Dominic Thiem 1235

Unseeded
Adrian Mannarino
Andreas Seppi
Gilles Muller
Jerzy Janowicz

Scenarios
There are only a few seeds which actually matter. The seeds going into the draw are put into groups: 1, 2, 3-4, 5-8, 9-12, 13-16, 17-24, 25-32.

The first three seeds are locked in place, so the only distinctions that still are up for grabs and actually matter are 4/5, 8/9, 12/13, 16/17, 24/25, 32/unseeded.

The 4/5 seed battle
This one was made simple with Wawrinka's loss to Anderson today. If Nishikori reaches the final in Halle, he will be the No. 4 seed, and if not, Wawrinka will be the No. 4 seed. Berdych and Raonic both would need to win the title at their respective tournaments to enter the conversation. Nishikori's path to the final shouldn't be too challenging. He will play Janowicz in the quarterfinals. In the semifinals, he could meet the winner of Monfils and Seppi. Nishikori would be the favorite against either of them.

The 8/9 seed battle
Ferrer has clinched the No. 8 seed.

The 12/13 seed battle
In reality the distinction between these two seeds hardly matters, but there is a slight distinction. As of now, Tsonga has the No. 12 seed, while Nadal and Dimitrov have both clinched a top 12 seed. Tsonga could lose his No. 12 seed to a number of players. Simon would need to reach the final in London to catch up to Tsonga. Anderson, Isner and Monfils each need to win a title to surpass Tsonga.

The 16/17 seed battle
This battle got a lot more simple today. Anderson and Monfils have now clinched a spot in the top 16. If Isner reaches the final in London, he will take a top-16 seed from Lopez.

The 24/25 seed battle
This is another distinction that isn't too important, but the scenarios are simple. Garcia-Lopez needs to reach the final to have a chance at stealing the No. 24 seed from Troicki or Karlovic. Each of them can protect themselves from that threat with just one more win. If Garcia-Lopez wins the title, either Karlovic or Troicki are likely in trouble. Also, it is mathematically possible for Seppi to swipe the No. 24 seed. He would need to reach the final of Halle to enter the mix.

The 32/unseeded battle
This race is completely different from the other ones in that the special Wimbledon formula is no longer relevant. This is based strictly on ATP rankings. The ones that can possibly lose their seed are Kohlschreiber, Garcia-Lopez, and Sock. The challengers are Seppi, Muller, and Janowicz. Seppi only needs to reach the final of Halle, while the other two need to win the title.

A lot would have to go wrong for Sock to lose his seed. Garcia-Lopez would have to beat Anderson. Then Muller would have to win the title in London. On top of that, Seppi would have to reach the final in Halle or Janowicz win the title in Halle.

As of now, if there were a withdrawal from a seed, Mannarino would fill the spot of the No. 33 seed.

Future of French Tennis

The 2015 French Open has been one of the most successful grand slams recently for French tennis players with five players reaching the second week with Jo-Wilfried Tsonga already into the quarterfinals, while Richard Gasquet, Jeremy Chardy, and Gael Monfils try to join him tomorrow.

All five of the Frenchmen that reached the second week are except Chardy make up the top four in France and will all likely be in the top 20 when the new rankings come out on June 8. Those five players are the main reason France has been the second best tennis country in the world behind only Spain.

However, each of the five players in the second week are at least 28 years old, while Tsonga and Gilles Simon are 30, meaning the outlook of French tennis is about to go through a drastic change. Even Nicolas Mahut, who reached the third round, is already 33 years old, and Julien Benneteau, the seventh ranked Frenchman, is 33 years old as well.

So which players will make up the future of French tennis in five or six years time? Benoit Paire and Guillaume Rufin seemed to be the answer to that question a few years ago, but Rufin hasn't played a tour-level match since 2013. Meamwhile, Paire just got his ranking back into the top 100 after having his ranking drop with injury. He is already 26 years old and could have a decent second half of his career, but he couldn't replace one of the top four, let alone all four of them.

Adrian Mannarino has notched some good results in his career, including a round of 16 finish at Wimbledon in 2013. However, he is already 26 years old as well and just got his first career top 10 win this year. He simply lacks the weapons to ever be much better than his career-high ranking of 29 reached this year.

When the current top four French players begin to drop in the rankings, the ones that will really be taking their place are the players who were born in 1994 or later.

Lucas Pouille was the first of that group to break through reaching the top 200 in 2013. Then at the end of 2014, he had his breakthrough moment by reaching the round of 16 at the Paris Indoors as a qualifier, where he defeated Fabio Fognini in two tiebreak sets. However, now at 21 years old, he has only one career grand slam victory and has only barely cracked the top 100 at No. 90 currently.

Laurent Lokoli got the tennis world's attention when he pushed Steve Johnson to five sets in the first round of Roland Garros with highlight reel shots and charisma. However, pushing an American to five sets on clay is hardly an accomplishment for a Frenchman. Since then, he has struggled to live up to the hype and was doing nothing with the wildcards he was receiving. He still hasn't won a tour-level match, hasn't cracked the top 200, and is on a four-match losing streak in challengers right now.

The rest of the young French hopefuls are mostly players that tennis fans don't recognize. Quentin Halys played Rafael Nadal in the first round of Roland Garros this year. At just 18 years old, Halys has just cracked the top 300 for the first time this week after qualifying in Nice. He has three futures titles, but that's all that is keeping him in the top 300. He has only one career Challenger tour win, which is likely the lowest amount of anyone in the top 300.

Finding upcoming French talent after that requires some digging. Corentin Moutet is only 16 years old and has reached a futures level final. In fact, he is the only player born in 1999 that is in the top 1000. Corentin Denolly is currently at a career-high junior ranking of No. 6. The left-hander hasn't had as much success in futures tournaments as Moutet, but he has focused more of his efforts on junior tournaments, which will be good to help him develop more.

Other names that could make up the future of French tennis are Theo Fournerie, Maxime Hamou, Enzo Couacaud, and Mathias Bourgue. There certainly are a number of hopefuls in France, but finding four of them that can replace Tsonga, Monfils, Gasquet, and Simon seems very unlikely. France is going to fall in the world tennis rankings, and it will be interesting to see which countries take their place.

Measuring Major Dominance

Comparing the greatest tennis players from each era is always very hard to do, but in the Open Era of tennis, one thing has remained consistent - the four grand slam events. Those four events give analysts the best measuring stick for comparing players who never played against each other.

Rather than simply counting how many majors a player has won, a more complete picture can come from finding the total number of ranking points earned at grand slams in a career. Since the ranking system has gone through various changes over the years, I used the current system (W-2000, RU-1200, SF-720, QF-360, R16-180, R32-90, R64-45, 1R-10) to analyze the results of the players.

This is hardly a definitive way to say who is the GOAT, since it completely ignores non-major events. The other issue with this stat is that the importance of the Australian Open has grown over time, while decades ago some of the best players skipped the event. Still, it serves as a good starting point for analysis.

Let's get into the various lists that came out of this study now:

Career Total Grand Slam Ranking Points Earned:
1. Roger Federer 60,235
2. Novak Djokovic 45,080
3. Rafael Nadal 41,115
4. Jimmy Connors 40,480
5. Pete Sampras 40,385
6. Ivan Lendl 39,890
7. Andre Agassi 37,675
8. Bjorn Borg 31,015
9. John McEnroe 28,760
10. Stefan Edberg 28,490
11. Boris Becker 26,490
12. Andy Murray 26,655
13. Mats Wilander 25,025
14. Guillermo Vilas 20,630
15. John Newcombe 18,210
16. Ken Rosewall 17,715
17. Jim Courier 17,620
18. Arthur Ashe 16,295
19. Lleyton Hewitt 15,975
20. Andy Roddick 15,690

This graph shows how many ranking points each player has.
Each box is 1000 points and each color represents one of the four slams.

Career Average Points Earned per Major

1. Bjorn Borg 1148
2. Novak Djokovic 939

3. Rafael Nadal 893

4. Roger Federer 885
5. Rod Laver* 851

6. Ken Rosewall* 805

7. Pete Sampras 721

8. Jimmy Connors 710

9. John Newcombe* 700

10. Ivan Lendl 699

11. John McEnroe 639

12. Andy Murray 619
13. Andre Agassi 617

14. Boris Becker 575

15. Mats Wilander 568

16. Stefan Edberg 547

17. Arthur Ashe* 479

18. Jim Courier 429

19. Guillermo Vilas* 421

20. Jan Kodes* 344

*Includes only results starting in 1968

Most Points Earned at one tournament
1. Roger Federer 19,475 (Wimbledon)

2. Jimmy Connors 18,720 (US Open)

3. Rafael Nadal 18,630 (Roland Garros)
4. Roger Federer 15,730 (US Open)

5. Pete Sampras 15,370 (Wimbledon)

6. Pete Sampras 15,230 (US Open)

7. Roger Federer 14,870 (Australian Open)
8. Ivan Lendl 14,080 (US Open)
9. Jimmy Connors 13,995 (Wimbledon)
10. Boris Becker 13,365 (Wimbledon)

Career Points Earned at the Australian Open

1. Roger Federer 14,870

2. Novak Djokovic 13,280

3. Stefan Edberg 10,715

4. Andre Agassi 10,160

5. Ivan Lendl 9380

6. Mats Wilander 8345

7. Pete Sampras 7640

8. Andy Murray 7460

9. Rafael Nadal 6840

10. John Newcombe* 6820

Career Points Earned at Roland Garros

1. Rafael Nadal 18,630

2. Bjorn Borg 12,540

3. Roger Federer 10,160

4. Ivan Lendl 9825

5. Mats Wilander 9715
6. Novak Djokovic 9335

7. Guillermo Vilas 8095

8. Andre Agassi 7580

9. Gustavo Kuerten 7155
10. Jim Courier 6560

Career Points Earned at Wimbledon

1. Roger Federer 19,475

2. Pete Sampras 15,370

3. Jimmy Connors 13,995

4. Boris Becker 13,365

5. Bjorn Borg 12,010

6. John McEnroe 11,345
7. Novak Djokovic 10,125
8. Andy Murray 9070

9. Stefan Edberg 8215

10. Rafael Nadal 8015

Career Points Earned at the US Open

1. Jimmy Connors 18,720
2. Roger Federer 15,730

3. Pete Sampras 15,230

4. Ivan Lendl 14,080

5. Andre Agassi 13,295

6. John McEnroe 12,450

7. Novak Djokovic 12,340

8. Rafael Nadal 7630

9. Lleyton Hewitt 6640

10. Stefan Edberg 6630

One of the problems with looking at totals is that have been presented so far is that they reward players for playing many tournaments just as much as actually doing well in those tournaments. However, looking at averages doesn't solve the problem, because someone like Bjorn Borg, who retired at his peak, or players like Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal, who are still active, have an unfair advantage.

Of all the players I looked at, the average amount of points earned per tournament was about 475. Instead of looking at totals or averages, this time what I did was take off 475 points from the total for every event played. Therefore, any result that is less than a semifinal result will earn negative points. So a player must play a lot of events to do well, but also must do well in those events or else they are going to lose points.

Career Points Earned Adjusted

1. Roger Federer 27,935

2. Novak Djokovic 22,280
3. Rafael Nadal 19,265

4. Bjorn Borg 18,190

5. Pete Sampras 13,785

6. Jimmy Connors 13,405

7. Ivan Lendl 12,815

8. Andre Agassi 8700

9. John McEnroe 7385

10. Ken Rosewall 7265
11. Andy Murray 6230

12. John Newcombe 5860

13. Rod Laver 5650

14. Boris Becker 4640

15. Mats Wilander 4125 

16. Stefan Edberg 3790

17. Arthur Ashe 145

18. Jim Courier -1855

19. Guillermo Vilas -2645

20. Jan Kodes -4705

There are a lot of different ways of analyzing all of the data here, but one thing is for sure, and that's that the ATP World Tour is certainly in a Golden Era. Right now, three of the top four players in that final stat are all active and have all been at their peaks for the better part of the last decade.

In the list for totals, David Ferrer and Tomas Berdych finished 25th and 31st respectively despite having zero combined major titles and only one final each. However, they have done well enough against everyone other than Djokovic, Nadal, and Federer that they did better than players like Thomas Muster, Gustavo Kuerten and Sergi Bruguera in several categories. If it weren't for Djokovic, Nadal, and Federer, players like Ferrer and Berdych would be first ballot Hall-of-Famers most likely.

Opinion: Clay is the most boring surface

When I say boring, I am speaking comparatively, because the truth is that I find all forms of tennis exciting whether it is servebots or a grade 5 junior tournament qualifying. Having said that, of the three main surfaces clay is definitely the least entertaining.

The typical characteristics of a clay court are that it is slow and slippery with high bounces, and the ball grips the surface when it bounces. What this does is makes serves and shots with back spin both much less effective, leading to less free points on serve, less net approaches, longer points from deep behind the baseline, and ultimately more breaks of serve.

There is nothing wrong at all with longer rallies and less net approaches if you ask me, and even breaks themselves aren't a bad thing. However, the result of these things is that la terre battue produces the least competitive and therefore least entertaining matches of any surface.

Since almost every point is very similar the dirt in that a point stays neutral for a long time, what happens is that the better player wins the point more often than not. That means that the breaks that are happening more frequently are all going to the same player, which is the better player. Because of that there are more straight-set victories on clay than any other surface and less upsets, making it the most non-competitive and predictable of all the tournaments.

A while back, I wrote a piece on which set is the most important set. Out of the research I did for that article came other information about, which tournaments have the most lopsided results. I looked at the 2013 US Open and the first three grand slam events of the 2014 season on the men's side.

Among those four grand slams, Roland Garros, which is the only major on clay, had 76 straight-set matches. The 2013 US Open (hard) had 56 straight-set results, while the Australian Open (hard) and Wimbledon (grass) had 61 and 60 respectively.

One thing that does tend to happen on dirt is that players get worn out because of the long rallies, and many times give in to cramps. So the one way there can be upsets is when there is a drastic momentum swing, caused by fatigue. At Roland Garros in 2014 there were six comebacks from two sets down. The Australian Open had a surprisingly high number of five in 2014, but there were just two at Wimbledon and three at the US Open.

The ATP World Tour currently consists of just one grand slam on clay, while only three of the nine Masters Series events are on the brick dust. Plus, even the year-end championships in London are played on a hard court. Many of the best tennis players in the world right now grew up playing on dirt - Djokovic, Federer, Nadal, Del Potro, and Ferrer just to name a few. However, making the dirt a more common surface on tour would not be a good thing to do to bring in more fans to the sport.

Roland Garros Seeds Projections

Roland Garros seeds for 2015 will be announced on May 19, which means Rome is the final tournament for players to get points. Here are what the live seeds based on how many points each player has following play on Tuesday. The ones in bold are the ones still in action in Rome.

1. Novak Djokovic 12,935
2. Roger Federer 8725
3. Andy Murray 7130
4. Tomas Berdych 5140
5. Kei Nishikori 5130
6. Milos Raonic 4800
7. Rafael Nadal 4570
8. David Ferrer 4490
9. Stan Wawrinka 3665
10. Marin Cilic 3325
11. Grigor Dimitrov 2850
12. Feliciano Lopez 2325
13. Gilles Simon 2165
14. Gael Monfils 2155
15. Jo-Wilfried Tsonga 2045
16. John Isner 1980
17. Roberto Bautista Agut 1975
17. David Goffin 1975
19. Kevin Anderson 1970
20. Tommy Robredo 1755
21. Richard Gasquet 1670
22. Pablo Cuevas 1637
23. Philipp Kohlschreiber 1535
24. Ernests Gulbis 1490
25. Leonardo Mayer 1487
26. Ivo Karlovic 1480
27. Bernard Tomic 1385
28. Fabio Fognini 1315
29. Guillermo Garcia-Lopez 1290
30. Viktor Troicki 1272
30. Adrian Mannarino 1268
31. Nick Kyrgios 1230
Unseeded
Juan Monaco 1170
Jack Sock 1157
Fernando Verdasco 1135
Jiri Vesely 1125

As of now, it seems like a safe bet that everyone in the top 32 will be seeded at Roland Garros. Dominic Theim would have to reach the semifinals to knock Kyrgios out of the top 32. Thomaz Bellucci could be within reach of a seed with the help of withdrawals if he reaches the semifinals, but would have to reach the final to surpass Kyrgios. Even if that happens though, Kyrgios would likely get a seed anyways with a withdrawal.

Raonic, Monfils, Robredo, Karlovic, and Verdasco all opted out of playing in Rome, meaning there is a chance that they withdraw form Roland Garros. Even someone like Sam Querrey, who has 1115 points could wind up being seeded. Andreas Seppi has 1105 points, but didn't play in Rome.