Sunday, June 28, 2015

Wimbledon 2015: Dissecting the Men’s Draw

The field of battle on grass is drawn - the possible layout of potential seven matches before one hopes to lay hands on the elusive Wimbledon trophy. Here is the breakup of two halves of the draw with the top 32 seeds divided as per the draw.

               Top Half
Bottom Half
1st Quarter
2nd Quarter
3rd Quarter
4th Quarter
(1) Novak Djokovic
(4) Stan Wawrinka
(3) Andy Murray
(2) Roger Federer
(5) Kei Nishikori
(7) Milos Raonic
(8) David Ferrer
(6) Tomas Berdych
(9) Marin Cilic
(11) Grigor Dimitrov
(10) Rafael Nadal
(12) Giles Simon
(14) Kevin Anderson
(16) David Goffin
(13) JW Tsonga
(15) Feliciano Lopez
(17) John Isner
(19) Tommy Robredo
(22) Viktor Troicki
(18) Gael Monfils
(24) Leonardo Mayer
(21) Richard Gasquet
(23) Ivo Karlovic
(20) R Bautista Agut
(27) Bernard Tomic
(26) Nick Kyrgios
(25) Andreas Seppi
(29) G Garcia Lopez
(28) Pablo Cuevas
(32) Dominic Thiem
(30) Fabio Fognini
(31) Jack Sock

Potential Match-ups for the top four seeds (and Nadal):

(1) Novak Djokovic: Philip Kohlschreiber à Lleyton Hewitt à Bernard Tomic à Kevin Anderson à Kei Nishikori/Marin Cilic à Stan Wawrinka à Roger Federer/ Andy Murray

(2) Roger Federer: Damir Dzumhur à Sam Querrey à Jack Sock à Feliciano Lopez à Tomas Berdych à Andy Murray/Rafael Nadal à Novak Djokovic

(3) Andy Murray: Mikhail Kukushkin à Robin Hasse/A Falla à Andreas Seppi/Borna Coric à JW Tsonga à Rafael Nadal à Roger Federer à Novak Djokovic

(4) Stan Wawrinka: Joao Sousa à Benjamin Becker à Fernando Verdasco/Dominic Thiem à David Goffin à Dimitrov/Raonic/Kyrgios à Novak Djokovic à Federer/Murray

(10) Rafael Nadal: Thomaz Bellucci à Dustin Brown à Stepanek/Troicki à David Ferrer à Andy Murray à Roger Federer à Novak Djokovic

On paper the draw seems nightmarish for Murray and Nadal. While Nadal is seeded 10th and cannot expect anything else, Murray seems to have hurdles a bit too many for the title run. Djokovic, though avoids the other members of big four, has plenty on his plate with dangerous floaters and his newfound rival Stan Wawrinka. The two Swiss have somewhat favourable draws but the paper drawings result in nothing substantial. The last two matches (semis & final) are bound to be against the two top in-form guys and all the favourability or toughness of the draw goes straight out of the window.

And then, in the past few years itself, how many times have we seen the draws opening up with upsets by motivated floaters?

Anyone from the five above can win it or maybe even someone outside of them but that’s rather unlikely, not even remotely possible, actually impossible as it seems. One of these guys will claim it but not without some serious resistance. What we can be assured of are plenty of high intensity matches, match-ups both old and new, surging adrenaline, quality and passion.


Time to watch the white powder fly up from the painted lines on the green surface with the swirl of the racket and twirl of the tennis ball!

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