Lucky Losers and Familiar Faces

In the final round of qualifying Monday in Moscow, Darya Kasatkina easily defeated Paula Kania. Thanks to a couple of late withdrawals, both players ended up making the main draw … and tomorrow, they’ll play each other again.

This scenario is rare, but not unheard of. Since the mid-1990s, there have been 30 other instances when two women faced each other in qualifying and then again in the main draw. Most recently, Lauren Davis defeated Svetlana Kuznetsova twice at the 2013 Canadian Open. One year earlier, in Sydney, Alexandra Dulgheru beat Sofia Arvidsson in the first round of the main draw despite losing to her in the final round of qualifying.

Tomorrow’s Kasatkina-Kania rematch is far from a sure thing. In those 30 prior matches, barely more than half of the qualifiers–17 of 30–have managed to win both matches.

This sort of rematch is similarly uncommon on the ATP tour. Since 2007 (the earliest year for which I have qualifying results), this has happened a dozen times. Most recently, Albert Ramos-Vinolas defeated Robin Haase in back-to-back rounds in Monte Carlo. Ramos was on the opposite side of things five years ago, when Pablo Cuevas beat him twice in Valencia.

Earlier this year, in a variation on the theme in Auckland, Kenny de Schepper beat Alejandro Falla to qualify, and after both players won their first-round matches, Falla triumphed in the second-round rematch.

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Programming note: After watching this sort of ad hoc research disappear into the barely-searchable void that is the Twitter archive, it occurred to me to post occasional brief notes such as this one. It’s not groundbreaking stuff, but at least it’ll be easier to find in the future. These curiosities won’t interfere with or replace my longer, more analytical posts.