The Grand Slam tournaments all used to have 16 seeds originally so that the Top 16 players were guaranteed not to meet until the 4th round or round of 16. Roland Garros in 2001 was the last Grand Slam to seed that way, since then there have been 32 seeds. OnCourt Advantage details who the 2013 Australian Open women’s seeds are and why, what country they represent plus a full list of the 32 seeds.
All of the 32 seeds are placed in preselected positions in the 128-player draw to guarantee that all of the seeds cannot meet another seed until the 3rd round. Therefore, the seeded players have the advantage of only playing against players in their first two rounds that are lower ranked players and outside the 32 highest ranked players in the draw.
The Top 8 countries that have the most seeded players in the women’s singles draw share 21 of the 32 seeds. These countries are Russia with 5, 4 from the USA, Germany and the Czech Republic have 3 each, whilst Poland, Italy and Serbia have 2 seeded players each.
The 11 remaining seeded players are the only representative from their country, these countries are: Belarus, China, Australia, Denmark, France, Slovakia, Belgium, Chinese Taipei, Romania, Kazakhstan and Austria.
World No.33 PENG Shuai will be the first player to become a seed should one of the current seeds be unable to play in the Australian Open because he was the highest ranked player who was NOT seeded originally. After Peng the next player in line to become seeded is Carla SUAREZ NAVARRO followed by Kaia KANEPI.
The 32 seeds are the highest 32 ranked players in order from 1 to 32 according to the latest WTA women’s rankings available (7 January 2013), prior to the main draw being conducted who are fit to compete. Thus far every player in the Top 32 is fit to compete, if any seeds withdraw they will be listed here…
The first 16 players names in the list of seeds below are bolded because according to seeding they are seeded to be the 16 players who win through to the round of 16. The first eight players have both their first name and surname bolded to highlight the eight players seeded to make the quarter finals.
- VICTORIA AZARENKA Belarus
- MARIA SHARAPOVA Russia
- SERENA WILLIAMS USA (pictured above)
- AGNIESZKA RADWANSKA Poland
- ANGELIQUE KERBER Germany
- LI NA China
- SARA ERRANI Italy
- PETRA KVITOVA Czech Republic
- Samantha STOSUR Australia
- Caroline WOZNIACKI Denmark
- Marion BARTOLI France
- Nadia PETROVA Russia
- Ana IVANOVIC Serbia
- Maria KIRILENKO Russia
- Dominika CIBULKOVA Slovakia
- Roberta VINCI Italy
- Lucie SAFAROVA Czech Republic
- Julia GOERGES Germany
- Ekaterina MAKAROVA Russia
- Yanina WICKMAYER Belgium
- Varvara LEPCHENKO USA
- Jelena JANKOVIC Serbia
- Klara ZAKOPALOVA Czech Republic
- Anastasia PAVLYUCHENKOVA Russia
- Venus WILLIAMS USA
- HSIEH Su-Wei Chinese Taipei
- Sorana CIRSTEA Romania
- Yaroslava SHVEDOVA Kazakhstan
- Sloane STEPHENS USA
- Tamira PASZEK Austria
- Urszula RADWANSKA Poland
- Mona BARTHEL Germany
Photo credit: Aleksandr Osipov
