The third round of matches are now complete and the line up for the round of 16 is known. Of the 4 favorites to win Wimbledon, In the top half Roger Federer and in the bottom half Andy Murray have the toughest matches, whilst Andy Roddick and Rafael Nadal both have unseeded opponents.

Federer takes on the resurgent Jurgen Meltzer, in recent months, the talented Jurgen Melzer has produced some of his best tennis and has risen to a career high of 16 in the world. He reached a career best semi final at Roland Garros last month only losing to Rafael Nadal and along the way came back from two sets down to eliminate Novak Djokovic. If Federer  is not on the top of his game, then this one could well be another stonker!

Andy Roddick faces unseeded Yen-Hsun Lu and the winner of that match will play the winner of probably the match ofthe day between two of the best outside bets for the title. 3rd seed Novak Djokovic will take on former Wimbledon winner and former world number 1 Lleyton Hewitt.

In the bottom half of the draw Andy Murray will take on the winner of Queens this year and 18th seed Sam Querrey, see a Murray Querrey preview here. The winner of that match will definitely play a Frenchman as 32nd seed Julien Benneteau takes on 10th seed Jo-Wilfried Tsonga.

Meanwhile Rafael Nadal will face another Frenchman, Paul-Henri Mathieu and will play the winner of what should be another great match between 6th seed Robin Soderling and 9th seed David Ferrer. Soderling as so far negotiated his way through the first 3 rounds with consummate ease and is looking supremely good – Watch out the rest of the draw for this Swedish dark-horse!

Andy Murray and Lleyton Hewitt’s brief encounter with doubles ended on Tuesday evening with a straight sets defeat against the 5th seeded doubles team Lukasz Kubot and Oliver March. The Aussie-Brit duo went down 6-4 6-3 in just under an hour.

Lukasz Kubot and Oliver March are currently 6th ranked best doubles team in the world and will next face the winners of the 2nd round match between 2nd seeds Bob & Mike Bryan and Colin Fleming & Ken Skupski.

Fleming & Skupski is an all Brit combo who had a good first round victory against Andrei Pavel & Horia Tecau 76(3) 64 on Tuesday.

Colin Fleming is another fellow Scot and his victory yesterday was his first ATP tour level (not challenger) win of his career, though he has only been given 2 previous chances, Wimbledon 2006 in the doubles and earlier this year in the very closely fought Davis Cup doubles rubber where he played with Ross Hutchins.

Fleming took a 2 year sabbatical from tennis to finish uni and worked for a year, since returning he steadily improved and recorded numerous good result on the challenger circuit in both doubles and singles, recognised recently with his place in the Davis Cup after Andy Murray pulled out. Fleming is currently the 10th ranked best singles player and 5th ranked best doubles player in Britain.

Skupski is from Liverpool and yesterday was also his first ATP tour level win, his only previous shot was at Wimbledon 2008 in the doubles. Skupski is now the 4th ranked best British doubles player

Since Skupski and Fleming have joined forces they have been rapidly climbing the doubles rankings and are now ranked in the 100 best teams, a decent run at Queens and Wimbledon could see both players break into the doubles top 100 players and the team in to the top 50 doubles team.

Standing in Fleming and Skupski way is probably the most renowned team on tour the Bryan Brothers! Fleming knows this is a great opportunity to further push himself, he told reporters.

We’ve achieved what we set out to at Queen’s now, the aim was to get to a tournament like this and get the opportunity to test ourselves against some of the best players in the world and we have that now. But it will just be a tennis match at the end of the day. We look at it as two guys against two guys and it’ll be 50-50 when we get out there. The Bryans are a pair we’ve watched a lot of. It’ll be a great challenge for us.

Fleming & Skupski received a further boost yesterday when they received a wild card for Wimbledon Doubles and Fleming is attempting to gain a wild card place for Wimbledon qualifying in a 16 man play off tournament arranged by the LTA, he won his first match this morning in the play-off , 6-3 6-1 beating GBs James Feaver.

Jamie Murray and Ross Hutchins should also be in action with their respective partners today. Murray partners Jonathan Erlich against Leos Friedl & David Skoch and Number 1 British doubles player Ross Hutchins partners Aussie Stephen Huss against Julien Benneteau & Michael Llodra. Huss & Hutchins are the 8th seeds.

Andy Murray has been handed 12th seed for Wimbledon 2008 this is one position lower than his 11th place in the current world rankings. Most tournaments seed players exactly on their world ranking the week before the tournament begins only altering these for certain extreme circumstances like long term injury, defending champions.

Wimbledon historically have used much more than world ranking to determine the seedings, they include the previous 24 months grass court results as an additional factor and this year has meant that Wimbledon has handed out some generous seedings to those players with previous good grass court performances and some serious penalties to those with poorer results on grass. The exact way the seeding are determined is as follows,

The seeds are the top 32 players on the ATP Entry System Position (ESP), BUT then rearranged on a surface-based system. A seeding Committee is not required for the Gentlemen’s Singles since the seeding order is determined using an objective and transparent system to reflect more accurately an individual player’s grass court achievements: The formula is:

• Take ESP points at 16 June 2008
• Add 100% points earned for all grass court tournament in the past 12 months
• Add 75% points earned for best grass court tournament in the 12 months before that.

With 3 players in the top 32 of the world rankings already withdrawn from Wimbledon, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga (13th),  Juan Monaco (20th) and Carlos Moya (24th), many players will be given an automatic boost especially the players ranked 33 to 35 who now are included as seeds.

Andy Murray missed last year’s Wimbledon and Queens club due to injury and even had to pullout last week from Queens due to an injured thumb. Murray seemed unhappy with his seeding, he said

I feel I am one of the top grass-court players but because I missed Wimbledon I’m going to lose out which I think is a little bit tough. I think it should just be done on the rankings, which is much easier.

A strange gripe from Murray as 11th or 12th does not really make a difference to who potentially he could meet and if he really is one of the best grass court players he will benefit in years to come as he should be able to prove his ability this year at Wimbledon. Maybe it’s just his pride that is hurt.

The biggest beneficiary this year is Marcus Baghdatis who has been seeded 10th, which is a huge 15 places boost from his current world ranking of 25.  The Cypriot has played at Wimbledon in the last three years and reached the quarters last year and the semi’s in 2006, which is why he has been given such a seeding reward.

Other big winners are Tomas Berdych, who gains 8 places up to 11th seed from world ranking of 19th, Berdych reached the fourth round 2 years ago and quarter finals last year, but has also had some great grass court wins, winning Halle in 2007 and reaching the final in 2006. Former Wimbledon winner Lleyton Hewitt been given a 7 place boost from 27th in world rankings to 20th seed, as well as winning in 2002, he has been a semi finalist in 2005, two time quarter finalist in 2004 and 2006 and reached the 4th round last year. Dmitry Tursunov and Nicolas Kiefer both received 6 position boosts from their current world rankings.

Marcus Baghdatis and Tomas Berdych both Jumped Andy Murray and Stanislas Wawrinka, but Andy Murray also jumped Wawrinka which meant Murray lost just 1 position whilst Wawrinka was shifted down 3 places. The biggest loser in the seeding switch around was Nicolas Almagro who was dropped 7 places from world ranking of 12th to 19th seed,  which means he could face one of the top 3 in the 3rd round rather than 4th – Almagro can have no complaints though and is unlikely to make it as far as the third round, has he has never won a match on grass, the only tournament he attempts on grass is Wimbledon, losing in the first round in the past 3 years. Other big losers were Tommy Robredo who was dropped 5 places, with Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and  Juan Monaco not even competing it means 7 players have jumped the Spaniard Robredo.

The top 7 were unaffected by these changes. Andy Murray will potentially meet Roger Federer, Rafael nadal or Novak Djokovic in the 4th round, this is the farthest Murray has ever progressed at Wimbledon, though lets not forget he has only played twice, losing to former finalist David Nalbandian (and fatigue) in the third round on his debut and the next year in the fourth round to Marcus Baghdatis, who’s skills on grass should be clear and apparent from his massive 15 place boost in these seeding.