Five-time champion Venus Williams and four-time Grand Slam winner Kim Clijsters are unseeded at Wimbledon for the first time in more than a decade.
The seedings were announced on Wednesday for the Grand Slam tournament that starts on Monday, with top-ranked defending champion Novak Djokovic heading the men’s list and Maria Sharapova leading the women’s — both for the first time.
The women’s list follows the WTA rankings, while the men’s has minor changes to reflect a player’s prowess on grass.
Williams, who played in eight Wimbledon finals from 2000 to 2009, is unseeded for the first time since her debut at the All England Club in 1997.
She has dropped to 55th in the rankings while dealing with Sjogren’s syndrome, an autoimmune disease that can cause fatigue and joint pain.
Williams has played only five tournaments this year, last appearing in the French Open, where she bowed out in the second round. The last time she won Wimbledon was in 2008. Sister Serena, a four-time Wimbledon champion, is seeded sixth in line with her WTA ranking.
Clijsters, ranked 53rd, is unseeded for the first time since 2000. The Belgian has never reached the final at Wimbledon.
Since her Australian Open title defense ended in the semi-finals in January, Clijsters has been limited by ankle and hip injuries. She has played only in the Key Biscayne Masters in March, and this week’s Unicef Open, where she has reached the quarter-finals.
Twice a semi-finalist at Wimbledon, Clijsters intends to retire after the US Open.
The most notable unseeded man was former champion Lleyton Hewitt who, because of a ranking of 202, received a wild card for the 10th anniversary of his victory at the All England Club. He has not won consecutive matches this year since the Australian Open.
Andy Roddick, a three-time Wimbledon finalist, was ranked outside an automatic seeding, but was lifted by the club to No. 30.
Djokovic is followed in the men’s seedings by two-time winner Rafael Nadal, six-time winner Roger Federer and Andy Murray. The rest of the top 10 is rounded out by Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, Tomas Berdych, David Ferrer, Janko Tipsarevic, Juan Martin del Potro and Mardy Fish.
Fish was promoted two places above his ranking to a 10th seeding, one above fellow American John Isner, despite not having played since late March because of a heart problem.
Also promoted for good grass results were Spain’s Feliciano Lopez (14), Croatia’s Marin Cilic (16), Italy’s Andreas Seppi (23) and Mikhail Youzhny (26).
Sharapova was seeded only 13th when she won Wimbledon in 2004. She was runner-up last year to Petra Kvitova, who will be fourth this year. Australian Open champion Victoria Azarenka is seeded No. 2 and Agnieszka Radwanska No. 3.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier