15 years ago, the USTA president Les Snyder and the US Open tournament directro Jay Snyder decided to change the players seeding and do exactly what Wimbledon had been doing – not strictly follow the rankings when deciding about the seeding.
Back in 1996, this caused a huge uproar and Yevgeny Kafelnikov, who had just won the French Open title, had been seeden as nr.7 (his ATP ranking then was 4). He refused to play, and there was a good chance that more spanish players, amongs them Mantilla, would do the same. In the end Mantilla stayed as he had been given Kafelnikov’s seeding, but the mess that had been created is unforgettable.
So when the USTA was deciding about this years seeding, Serena Williams was the player to talk about. Her current ranking is 29 and they didn’t want to risk another criticism, so seeded Williams as nr.28 (world nr.3 Clisters won’t be playing).
You could argue that Serena Williams should be seeded much higher and avoid playing top seeds in the early rounds, but it will all come down to her form. She can beat any player when on fire and she will surely want to prove it at this years US Open.
To see all our predictions for upcoming matches, based on our machine learning model analysing results since 1960, see our tennis predictions page here.
