French Open tournament director Gilbert Ysern was quoted by French sports daily L’Equipe that seven-time Roland Garros champion Rafael Nadal won’t get a seeding upgrade at the upcoming claycourt Slam tournament which begins later this month. Nadal is currently ranked number five in the world behind compatriot David Ferrer. The reason behind Nadal’s lower-than-usual ranking was his inactivity at the ATP Tour for seven months starting from his surprise second round exit at the Wimbledon Championships last year.
According to Ysern, the Roland Garros committee has discussed the matter and decided to stay with the usual format of seeding the players based on their rankings after the Rome Masters tournament.
“Given what is Nadal in Paris, the best player in the history of the tournament, it seemed incongruous that he’d come in here with a number four or five,” Ysern said.
“The damage was done, so we would have been talking about fiddling of the draw. What would have been viewed as a strong symbol — actually homage — was being seen as underhanded,” he added.
There is still a possibility for Nadal to regain at least the world number four ranking prior to the Roland Garros tournament. He’s currently less than 1,000 points behind Ferrer but being the defending champion in Rome, Nadal would need to perform well in both Madrid and Rome Masters and Ferrer would need to be eliminated in earlier rounds in both prestigious claycourt events. However, Ferrer has had impressive results on clay so it really depends on what happens in the next two weeks.
