2014 U.S. Open seed analysis: Bouchard seeded too high, Azarenka too low

How well did the official ATP and WTA rankings seed the U.S. Open, and where are the biggest imbalances?

During the last Slam, the general weirdness of grass courts and the transition period between clay and hard season causeda couple of big imbalances in the seeding at Wimbledon. Most of the glaring errors have been ironed out by now, and players' rankings have reverted to where they "should" be, but there are a couple imbalances remaining. Let's see where they are.

Here are some plots comparing each seeded player'sAB hard-court rank compared to their official tournament seed.

The top half of the seeds follow the line pretty tightly, so there's not a glaringly easy path into week 2. Stan Wawrinka has probably the easiest path for a breakthrough semi run -- looking at you, Nishikori/Raonic -- but it's still miles more balanced than Wimbledon was at the top this summer.

The bottom half definitely has its standard flukes, with Joao Sousa taking the crown for most over-seeded player. I had to do a double-take when I saw his ATP ranking:he lost eight straight matches at one point this year, and on his best surface no less. But when he has won, he's managed to win all at once, taking a couple titles and making semifinal runs to balance out the losses. The ATP point system is so top heavy, it's skewed toward the "predictably inconsistent" players who can do really well in certain spots, so winning a tournament once is much better than consistently above-average runs. It's a major reason why the ATP rankings aren't as predictive as they should be.

I know it's not a popular opinion, but I don't think Eugenie Bouchard has done enough to justify her top-eight ranking to date. I've written about this subject before, and her play since has followed the same pattern, most notably with a first-round loss to sub-100 Shelby Rogers in her home country tournament. Then again, her high ranking comes from the fact that she's done really well at Slams. I'm still on the fence if Slam-specific over-performance is a repeatable and predictable characteristic (that used to be Sloane Stephens' thing, until it wasn't), so for now, I'm happy to take a little bit of a stance and say Bouchard is over-seeded.

The bottom half of the draw is more marked by under-seeding than over-seeding. The most over-seeded player is 50th in AB hard ranks, and performance-wise, there's not a huge difference between 32nd and 50th. On the other hand, low-volume players like Victoria Azarenka and Venus Williams (still under-seeded, even after a finals run in Montreal) lurk as dangerous land mines, and just generally under-seeded players like Caroline Wozniacki and Ekaterina Makarova are right there as well. The women's side might have all of its best matchups in the fourth round this year.

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2014 U.S. Open seed analysis: Bouchard seeded too high, Azarenka too low