For the last few years, we’ve been hearing a lot about “depth” in women’s tennis. No player has emerged as a dominant force since Serena Williams began her maternity leave after the 2017 Australian Open. On yesterday’s podcast, I argued that this year’s French Open felt particularly wide-open, especially after seeing a Rome final contested between Karolina Pliskova and Johanna Konta, two women who aren’t known for their clay-court prowess.
When the tape stopped rolling, I generated a forecast for the tournament, using surface-specific Elo ratings for a field made up of the top 128 women in the official rankings. (The makeup of the actual draw will differ, but the exact qualifiers and wild cards typically don’t affect the results very much.) Reigning champ Simona Halep comes out on top, with a 22.2% chance of defending her title. Petra Kvitova is next, just above 10%, followed by Kiki Bertens, who narrowed missed double digits.
The forecast gives two more entrants a 5% chance at the title, five more a 3% or better probability, and another nine a 1% chance. That’s a total of 19 women (see below) with at least a 1-in-100 shot, including such underdogs as Anett Kontaveit and Petra Martic. Maria Sakkari, winner in Rabat and semi-finalist in Rome, is 20th favorite, just below the 1% threshold. There isn’t much to separate the players in the bottom half of this list, and when the draw dishes out shares of good and bad fortune, the order will surely shift.
This all seems … pretty wide-open. It’s certainly a shift from the French Open of 30 years ago, when a dominant Steffi Graf entered with a 68% probability of securing the title, one of only five players with better than a 1% chance. (The tennis gods scoffed at our future retro-forecasts: Arantxa Sanchez Vicario carried her 1.5% pre-tournament odds to the championship.)
The 19-strong gang of one-percenters is, indeed, a very recent development. In the previous 30 years, the average number of players going into the tournament with 1%-or-better title odds was 11.5, and it only reached 19 three times, two of which were 2017 and 2018. (The other was 2010, with a whopping 23 one-percenters, and not a single player above a 13% chance of winning.) As recently as 2004, only eight women had reason to be so optimistic before the first balls were struck.
The second-tier group of favorites–entrants with a 1% shot at the title, but not much more–is the most distinctive feature of recent French Opens, and it lends credence to the argument that women’s tennis is particularly deep these days. You may not take the chances of 17th-seeded Kontaveit too seriously, but she is more a factor than similarly-seeded players 15 years ago.
When we narrow our focus to competitors meeting higher thresholds, like 3% or 5% title-winning probabilities, the present era looks less novel. From 1989 to 2018, the typical field included 6.5 women with 3%-or-better chances, and 4.8 women at 5% or higher. This year’s group includes ten in the first category and five–roughly the historical average–in the second. Only the army of one-percenters sets the 2019 bracket apart from, say, the 1997 field, when nine women headed to Paris with a 3% shot, seven of them at 5% or better.
What has changed is the dominance of the player at the top of the list. The average favorite of the last three decades opened with a one-in-three chance of winning, while Halep hasn’t exceeded 23% in her three years as frontrunner. Here are the ten “weakest” Roland Garros favorites from 1989 to 2019:
Year Favorite Fave Odds 2010 Venus Williams 12.9% 2018 Simona Halep 19.1% * 2011 Caroline Wozniacki 22.0% 2019 Simona Halep 22.2% 2017 Simona Halep 23.0% 2006 Justine Henin 23.3% * 2005 Justine Henin 23.4% * 2012 Victoria Azarenka 24.1% 2008 Maria Sharapova 24.5% 2009 Dinara Safina 24.7%
* Favorites who went on to win
The French Open has traditionally made the women’s field look deep, even when it wasn’t particularly so. The favorite has only claimed the trophy in 8 of the last 30 tournaments, a 27% mark that would almost qualify for the above list. Sanchez Vicario twice won with sub-2% pre-tourney odds, Anastasia Myskina’s 2004 title was a 0.8% shot, and Jelena Ostapenko entered the 2017 event as 27th favorite, behind Mona Barthel and Katerina Siniakova, with a 0.4% probability of winning.
Surprises, then, have always been part of the program in Paris. Without an overwhelming force at the top of the draw with a “1” next to her name, the field has finally caught up. No individual has a particularly good chance of going on a victory tour, but a staggering array of contenders have reason to hope for a magical fortnight.
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The complete list of “favorites” sorted by chance of winning: Halep, Kvitova, Bertens, Pliskova, Ashleigh Barty, Angelique Kerber, Elina Svitolina, Caroline Wozniacki, Garbine Muguruza, Naomi Osaka, Sloane Stephens, Marketa Vondrousova, Madison Keys, Konta, Serena, Kontaveit, Caroline Garcia, Victoria Azarenka, and Martic.