Claims the men's singles draw at Wimbledon has been rigged to benefit Tim Henman and Greg Rusedski among others have been denied by the organisers.

Spanish trio Alex Corretja, Albert Costa and Juan Carlos Ferrero have hit out furiously over the seedings for the competition, which gets underway at the All England Club today.

Corretja is ranked 11th in the world while Ferrero and Costa are 13th and 15th respectively, yet none have been seeded at Wimbledon, while Henman and Rusedski, both acknowledged grass court specialists, are ranked significantly lower than their eighth and 14th seedings.

But Tim Phillips, chairman of the All England Club, said the criteria used at Wimbledon have always been different to those employed on the ATP Tour.

''The situation of the seeding is that we have a different philosophy from the ATP Tour,'' he said. ''The ATP Tour like seeding to be a reward for 52 weeks hard labour on all surfaces.

''Wimbledon's view of seeding for the last 114 years has been to keep apart the players most likely to progress on grass, and that creates a vulnerability because some of the players could say 'Who the hell are you to decide which players are going to do best on grass? At least our system is objective', they would say.

''But what I say and the reason why we do it is that you could have had this year for instance the following players unseeded because they're all outside the top 16 in the ATP list and therefore they could all have come out of the hat straight after (Pete) Sampras at the top of the draw.

''You could have had Sampras, (Pat) Rafter, (Mark) Philippoussis, (Richard) Krajicek, Rusedski and (Todd) Martin as the first six names on the list and that would not have been a great draw.

''You could quote the case of Thomas Muster, who was a great clay court exponent who never ever won a match on grass.''

However, Phillips' explanation is likely to cut little ice with the Spanish trio.

Correjta reportedly said: "They (Wimbledon) manipulated the draw. They are playing with our future, they do whatever they want.