There's no sport quite like tennis. In our explainer series, we de-code everything you need to know about scoring, draws, seedings, tournaments and all the other intricacies of this great game. You'll be a tennis expert come Australian Open 2025!
As Aryna Sabalenka played at Rod Laver Arena during Australian Open 2024, a conversation was overheard in the stands.
“What does that number next to her name mean?” a spectator asked her friend, looking at the giant scoreboard, where the number “2” preceded Sabalenka’s name.
“I think that’s her ranking,” the friend replied.
The friend was right – but she was also wrong.
Sabalenka was indeed the world No.2 when she competed at AO 2024, but the number next to her name on the scoreboard reflected her seed, not her ranking.
This is easy enough to follow when those numbers match the rankings. But this is not always the case. Two weeks earlier, Sabalenka was also ranked No.2 when she competed at the Brisbane International, but she was the No.1 seed.
Are you still following?
You might be, if you’re a die-hard tennis fan. But we understand things can get confusing when there are different numbers – one for seed, one for ranking – associated with each player at the same tournament.
We break it down so you know exactly what each means when Australian Open 2025 begins.
What are rankings?
Rankings are a year-round method used to determine entry into tournaments.
While the men’s and women’s ranking systems differ slightly, they follow the same basic structure – a rolling 52-week points tally.
This sees points from the current week’s tournament added to their ranking, and points earned in the same week of the previous year removed. Therefore, a player’s ranking reflects their total points earned at tournaments within the previous 52 weeks.
A professional player always has a ranking, unless they don’t compete for 52 weeks, earn zero points, and therefore drop off the rankings list altogether.
But that ranking fluctuates depending on their performances at any given time, and this impacts whether or not they can enter certain tournaments, and if they’ll be seeded once there.
What are seeds?
As defined in the 2024 Official Grand Slam Rule Book, seeds are “players who are given preferential positions in the draw.”
[Editor’s note: Unsure what 'the draw' is? Look out for our explainer coming soon on how tournament draws work.]
Seeds are awarded to players with the highest rankings, and they’re given a seeding for several reasons.
Strategically placing seeded players gives a tournament draw more balance and structure, ensuring top players are distributed across all sections and cannot meet until the later rounds.
This is partly business-driven, as fan interest spikes with the promise of match-ups between top players late in the event, and the presence of top players in the field for as long as possible.
Plus, preferential draw positions reward players for their prior performance – which, in turn, leads to a higher ranking, and seeding – and stature in the game. The reward is a measure of protection (i.e. they can’t meet another seed until at least the third round, meaning they’ll play lower-ranked players first up).
Imagine a seed-less scenario, where all 128 names in a Grand Slam singles field were dropped in a bowl and drawn at random. You could have a situation where the world’s top eight men landed on the top eight lines of the draw, and Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz met in the first round.
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Aside from the extreme concentration of talent in a tiny segment of the draw, this would mean half the world’s top eight players would be gone after the first round, and the biggest blockbuster in men’s tennis right now – Sinner v Alcaraz – would be over very early in the tournament.
Rankings determine seedings
The 2024 ATP Official Rulebook explains that rankings are “the objective merit-based method used for determining qualification for entry and seeding in all tournaments for both singles and doubles.”
At Grand Slam tournaments, 104 players receive direct entry into the main draw, based on their ranking at the entry deadline six weeks before the event. But only the top 32 players are seeded, according to the rankings released at the start of the week the draw is conducted.
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Players entering a Grand Slam on a protected ranking, no matter how high, are not seeded. For example, Belinda Bencic, Pablo Carreno Busta and Nick Kyrgios have entered AO 2025 using protected rankings of 15th, 18th and 21st respectively, but will be unseeded when the draw is made.
Seeding 32 players is unique to Grand Slams and other tournaments with 128-line draws. Smaller tournaments, comprising 64- and 32-line draws, typically have 16 and eight seeds respectively. The basic formula? Twenty-five per cent of players in any tournament draw are seeded.
You can assume every top player will play a Grand Slam tournament, barring injury, illness, pregnancy/childbirth, or another exceptional circumstance. And that’s why the seed list often exactly mirrors that week’s rankings, as was the case in both the men’s and women’s singles draws at Australian Open 2024. Every member of the world’s top 10 rankings entered both draws, and they were seeded 1 through 10 in the same order.
But not all tournaments attract every member of the top 10 – which is where seeding numbers begin to differ from rankings.
At Brisbane International 2025, Sabalenka was the highest-ranked woman at world No.1, and thus seeded No.1. But the second highest-ranked woman entered was world No.8 Emma Navarro, who became the No.2 seed.
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If fans watched Navarro compete in Brisbane, looked at the scoreboard, and wondered what the number “2” next to her name meant, it was her seeding, not her ranking – her ranking is No.8.
Placing seeds
Without getting too deep into the weeds of this, seed No.1 is automatically placed on the top line of the draw, and seed No.2 automatically on the bottom line, meaning they can only meet in the final if both continue to progress through the draw.
Then seeds No.3 and No.4 are drawn, and placed on specific lines in opposite halves of the draw, ensuring two top-four seeds in each half of the draw, and one in each quarter. Balance!
Want to know more? You can read about the “procedure for placing seeds” on page 27 of the rule book.
As for Australian Open 2025 seedings?
They’ll be revealed in the days leading up to the draw ceremony on Thursday 9 January, based on the rankings released on Monday 6 January.
But you can check out the current rankings any time, on both the ATP website (for men) and WTA website (for women).