i wonder how top players train for clay...they must practice sliding in and out,but other than that what more can they do....hit a lot of balls,do endurance training.....get familiar with the high bounce...???

The anticipation and the attack are different. Because of the surface, all your strokes are going to feel different, and the serve impacts differently. They have to practice their timing.

On another note -- I notice the articles are saying the Djoker is ranked fourth, Murray is ranked fifth. So does Rafa have his #2 ranking back?

mara, djokovic is still #2, Rafa #3 and Murray has regained #4.

Slam tournaments can seed as they like can't they? Surely at FO Rafa should be 2 or even 1 based on current form? And surely they should take different surfaces into account? In which case Andy M would be about 10. Yes, I am a realistic fan!

deuce,

only at Wimbledon the seedings are different than normal.
At the other GS, the ATP ranking determines the seeding.

Bonker: cheers, but is that convention or some obscure rule?

at wimbledon it is a convention..
they always seed the players by his/her performance on grass..
such seeding was common in becker/lendl time when becker was defending champ and lendl was not the best on grass...
even now it is there but they avoid such seeding among top 4 players..
last incident i remember of such seeding in top 4 was before nadal came when a-rod & lleyton had different seeds than rankings..

Actually the seeding doesn't matter so much as the luck of the draw. Sometimes the No5 seed even gets a kinder draw to the No 1 seed. Rafa was Nos 2 and 3 in MC and Rome, but he still won the title.

I remember recently when Serena was seeded 80 something in OZ because she'd been out with injury, and she still won the title. Unseeded Kim Clijsters won the USO as an unseeded player, so did Goran Ivanisevic, and Boris Becker at Wimbledon, and Rafa at RG for that matter.

Murray should have played Estoril.

nadline: I was just thinking that it makes more sense, on clay, to up Rafa and down Andy. I also suspect that at the moment all tournament organisers want Rafa and Roger to meet in all finals and would seed with that in mind!

well deuce,
french open has seeded by atp rankings for a long time (don't know from when)..
so its like a tradition and it will continue..
as for this year, nadal will most probably be no. 3..
it may be possible he is seeded 2 without being no. 2 on rankings, but since french open has not given out seedings like that for long time, there is no reason to believe that will happen..
of course final decision is with them..
as for murray, whatever happens he won't fall down in seeding.. delpo and davy are not there.. so he cannot slip..