LONDON, May 22, 2018 (News Wires) - Serena Williams could still be seeded at this year's Wimbledon championships despite being snubbed by French Open organisers, the All England Club said on Tuesday. The American is expected to play at Roland Garros next week, where she has won the title three times, but without being seeded she could conceivably meet champion Jelena Ostapenko in the first round. The French Tennis Federation (FFT) confirmed on Tuesday that its seedings would be based on the latest WTA rankings. Williams, who has won 23 grand slam singles titles, is ranked a lowly 453rd after returning to action this year following the birth of her daughter last September. She has not played a tournament since Miami in March and pulled out of the claycourt events in Madrid and Rome. While the French Open sticks rigidly to rankings, Wimbledon's tennis sub-committee allows itself some wiggle room. The men's seedings is usually based on ATP rankings in conjunction with a formula based on grasscourt results over the previous two years. In contrast, the women's seedings usually follow the WTA rankings list but can be tweaked by the All England Club in special circumstances. "The seeding order follows the WTA ranking list, except where in the opinion of the committee, a change is necessary to produce a balanced draw," is the All England Club's official line on its website. Williams has already benefited from this rule in the past as in 2011 she was ranked 25th before the start of Wimbledon but seeded seventh for the championships. The Wimbledon seedings committee will meet to discuss the order of the 32 seeds on June 26. The tournament begins on July 2. Williams has won Wimbledon seven times but missed last year's tournament while she was on maternity leave. Despite her lowly ranking she will be able to compete at Roland Garros under the WTA's protected ranking rule, which allows athletes returning from long absences to gain entry into tournaments using the ranking they had when they stopped playing. Rafa Nadal, meanwhile, returned to the top of the world rankings after winning his eighth Italian Open title at the weekend to confirm once more his status as the king of the clay court. Sunday's 6-1 1-6 6-3 victory over German Alexander Zverev on the Rome dirt ensured the 31-year-old would leapfrog Roger Federer and become world number one for a sixth time ahead of the French Open. If the rankings were based solely on claycourt play, however, the Spaniard would rarely have left the pinnacle in the 13 years since he won the first of his 10 Roland Garros crowns. With Federer skipping the claycourt season and top seeding long assured, Nadal will head to Paris next week a strong favourite to get his hands on the Coupe des Mousquetaires for a record-extending 11th time. "Everything will be different in Paris," Nadal said somewhat disingenuously after his victory at the Foro Italico. "Of course a win like this helps but in Paris the conditions will be different in every respect. Today is the time to enjoy this victory, not for thinking about Roland Garros." Despite losing his first service game on Sunday, Nadal removed any doubts over his fitness and form for the year's second major in the opening set. "I played one of the best sets that I played on clay this year. First set was fantastic, in my opinion, in terms of everything," he added. "Feeling, good shots, tactically -- everything was, in my opinion great in the first set, no. Returning great. All the things that I wanted to do happened. So, it was a great set."
