Wimbledon 2011: Men's Singles Seeds (Top 16)

Jack's math held up, so these are now the actual Top 16 seeds.

Tennis historian and statistician to the stars Jack Cunniff (@jcunniff), who I know from way back in my earliest internet tennis days, has used the formula used by the All-England Club to project what the seeds should look like for the Gentlemen's Singles draw at The Championships, Wimbledon 2011.

The women's seedings for the Ladies' Singles draw allows for considerably more subjectivity and flexibility, but the men's seeds should be knowable in advance.  They take into account not only the players current ATP ranking (the sole basis of seeding at every other event), but also the player's success (or lack thereof) on grass courts in the previous two years.

Here are the projected seeds for Gentlemen's Singles for Wimbledon 2011, with their current ATP rankings in parentheses (affected seeds are bolded):

1. Rafael Nadal (1)
   
2. Novak Djokovic (2)
   
3. Roger Federer (3)
   
4. Andy Murray (4)
   
5. Robin Soderling (5)
   
6. Tomas Berdych (6)
   
7. David Ferrer (7)
   
8. Andy Roddick (10)
   
9. Gael Monfils (8)
   
10. Mardy Fish (9)
    
11. Jurgen Melzer (11)
    
12. Viktor Troicki (12)
    
13. Stanislas Wawrinka (14)
    
14. Jo-Wilfried Tsonga (18)
    
15. Gilles Simon (16)
    
16. Nicolas Almagro (15)
    

So there you have it.  The top seven seeds stay true to the rankings, but from there on there's some mild shuffling of the deck.

The biggest bumps are given to Andy Roddick (a three-time Wimbledon finalist), who now wouldn't have to play a higher seed until the quarterfinals at the earliest, and to Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, a 2010 Wimbledon quarterfinalist (with an impressive 9-3 career record at SW19) who made the finals of Queen's Club on grass last week. 

The biggest dropper is Richard Gasquet, the current ATP #13, who falls out of the top sixteen altogether under the formula.  Ironically, Gasquet's only career grand slam semifinal appearance came back in 2007, when he beat Roddick in the quarterfinals of Wimbledon, on grass.  The formula does not account for this however, only reaching back to cover 2009 and 2010, both years in which Gasquet missed Wimbledon due to injury.

(h/t Jack, again)