Ivanovic Gets Tough Draw; Williamses May Meet in QFs

The season's final Grand Slam event is just days away as the 2008 US Open kicks off this coming Monday. Among the 128 pairs of eyes on the prize are America's three best players, all former champions in Flushing Meadows, as well as the Serbian 1-2 and lots of Russians.
 
Ana Ivanovic and Jelena Jankovic, ranked No.1 and No.2 in the world, are the Top 2 seeds this year. Although Monica Seles hailed from the Serbian region of the former Yugoslavia, Ivanovic and Jankovic are the first to crack the upper echelon since Serbia became its own nation in 2006, and this year have assumed control of the Top 2, the third country to do so since the inception of computer rankings in 1975 (following the United States and Belgium). The US Open hasn't seen the best of Ivanovic yet, her best result in her first three appearances being a fourth round finish last year; but Jankovic has had her fair share of air time after falling early in her first two two tries in 2004 and 2005, reaching the semifinals in 2006 and the quarterfinals last year.
 
A little further down on the rankings but definitely at the forefront of just about everybody's radar are the Williams sisters, who find themselves in the same quarter of this year's draw. Serena, the No.4 seed and a champion here in 1999 and 2002, has had a strong season, picking up titles at Bangalore, Miami and Charleston; Venus, the No.7 seed and a champion here in 2000 and 2001, was having a somewhat up-and-down season until heading to the lawns of the All-England Club, where she won her fifth career Wimbledon crown. When put together their Grand Slam tallies are more than twice that of the rest of the field combined, so anyone facing them before or after the quarterfinals is facing the greatest Grand Slam competition currently out there.
 
The Russian contingent is, as always, very strong, with the other four Top 8 seeds all hailing from Russia. No.3 seed Svetlana Kuznetsova is the only one to have won a Grand Slam before, taking this title in 2004. No.5 seed Elena Dementieva has been to two Grand Slam finals previously and has been having one of her best career seasons, most notably winning the gold medal at the Beijing Olympics last week. No.6 seed Dinara Safina has won 32 of 36 matches since the European clay court season, most impressively going 10-2 against Top 10 players in that stretch, as well as becoming the first player in Sony Ericsson WTA Tour history to beat three reigning world No.1s in the same season. No.8 seed Vera Zvonareva has worked her way back into the Top 10 on the strength of a 43-15 season, including reaching the quarterfinals or better at nine tournaments.
 
Rounding out the Top 16 seeds are No.9 seed Agnieszka Radwanska, Poland's first ever Top 10 player; No.10 seed Anna Chakvetadze, a semifinalist here last year; No.11 seed Daniela Hantuchova, who is finding her form again after missing several months in the spring with a foot injury; No.12 seed Marion Bartoli, who has been playing some of her best tennis on summer hardcourts after shaking her Wimbledon final points from 2007; No.13 seed Agnes Szavay, who made a shock run to the quarterfinals here last year; No.14 seed Victoria Azarenka, the youngest of the Top 16 seeds; No.15 seed Patty Schnyder, who has reached the second week here four times previously, including three of the last four years; and finally No.16-seeded Flavia Pennetta, Italy's No.1 player and a recent re-addition to the world's Top 20 after nearly falling out of the Top 100 last summer.
 

Other players to watch and looking ahead...

Lower seeds to keep an eye on include former world No.1s Lindsay Davenport and Amélie Mauresmo, seeded No.23 and No.32, respectively. Davenport was the 1998 champion here and a two-time runner-up, in 1999 and 2000; she has been playing on the Tour again for almost 12 months now after taking a break to become a mother and her results have been more than impressive, winning four titles and notching wins over the likes of both Ivanovic and Jankovic. Mauresmo's season began looking like a write-off as she continued to struggle with injury through the grass court season, but in the last two weeks she has really asserted her talent again at Cincinnati and New Haven. Other lower seeds in strong form of late are rising stars Alizé Cornet, Dominika Cibulkova and Caroline Wozniacki, seeded No.17, No.18 and No.21; and Nadia Petrova, the No.19 seed and a former world No.3, who won her first title of the year in Cincinnati.
 
Unseeded players to watch include Chinese stars Li Na and Zheng Jie, who have both reached high-profile semifinals this year, Li at the Olympics and Zheng at Wimbledon; and Aleksandra Wozniak, who became Canada's first Tour singles titlist in over 20 years with her surprise run to the Stanford title in July.
 
Should the seeds hold, Ivanovic would face Safina in the top quarter, the Williams sisters would square off in the second quarter, Kuznetsova and Dementieva would meet in the third quarter and Jankovic and Zvonareva would meet in the bottom quarter. Davenport is in Jankovic's quarter; Mauresmo is in Ivanovic's.
 
The only player who would have made the seedings to not be in New York this year is Maria Sharapova, the 2006 US Open champion, who withdrew from this year's event due to a right shoulder injury.

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