Is this the best on show?

Rankings and seedings show how women's tennis seems to be losing its competitive streak.

It is a peculiar situation now at the Australian Open, where of the top four women’s seeds, three — Serbia’s Jelena Jankovic, and the two Russians Dinara Safina and Elena Dementieva — have never won a Grand Slam. Jankovic is the first woman ever to finish a year as No. 1 without having won a Grand Slam title. Her best showing so far is her only Grand Slam final at last year’s US Open, which she lost to Serena Williams.

Ranking and seeding at Grand Slam tournaments in tennis have often been a contentious affair, not only at Wimbledon, where the tournament organisers sometimes ignore the ATP ranking, but also at the other three.

Chile’s Marcelo Rios was once the top-ranked male tennis player, but he never won a major. Ivan Lendl, Kim Clijsters and Amélie Mauresmo became became No 1 prior to winning a slam. The year in which Steffi Graf first became number one, Martina Navratilova dismissed the ranking since she had herself won the Wimbledon and US Open that year. Still, the trends in the men’s and women’s game are starkly different.

In the men’s section, the top four seeds are indeed the four players most likely to win. That cannot be said about the women’s draw, though. It is in part because of the Williams sisters.

Perhaps the last true number one in women’s tennis was Justine Henin, but she, too, was never certain to win against the sisters. Since Henin retired (a decision that surprised many), things have become more fluid. The Williams sisters have never tried to hide the fact that they have things to do outside the tennis court — fashion designing, for instance. So, they do not play enough on the WTA tour to collect the points that will give them the ranking due to them, and thereby the seeding at tournaments. So often they end up being dangerous floaters and the nightmare of the top seeds, who run into them early on. They cause little surprise when they win tournaments despite a low seeding or despite being unseeded.

From time to time, it appeared that a woman player would emerge to dominate the game like a true No1 does. Maria Sharapova, when she sashayed to her first Grand Slam title at Wimbledon at a young age, appeared most likely tofill that void. But she did not keep the early promise. Her shoulder keeps letting her down.

Ana Ivanovic seemed the next big hope. Given her pinup status, advertisers and marketers would have been salivating at the prospect of Ivanovic having an extended run at the top. But she looks a shadow of the player who reached the final in Melbourne last year.