Not every double bagel is created equal. Today in Melbourne, Ashleigh Barty beat Danka Kovinic without losing a game, dropping only ten points. By contrast, a memorable Stuttgart first-rounder from 2015 saw Sabine Lisicki lose 6-0 6-0 to Zarina Diyas, requiring 88 points and well over an hour to play. Lisicki won 37.5% of total points played that day, while Kovinic snuck off with just 16.7%.
Barty’s performance was among the most dominant in recent WTA history. I have mostly complete match stats for the women’s tour going back to about 2010, and in that time frame, only two main draw double bagels have finished in fewer than 60 points:
Points Year Event Round Winner Loser 57 2017 Hua Hin R32 Golubic Wisitwarapron 59 2019 New Haven R32 Cepelova Small 60 2021 Aus Open R128 Barty Kovinic 60 2019 Madrid R16 Halep Kuzmova 61 2010 Estoril R32 Garrigues De Lattre 62 2017 Bol R32 Mrdeza Thombare 63 2013 Aus Open R64 Sharapova Doi 63 2015 Bastad R16 Barthel Zanevska 64 2015 Toronto R64 Vinci Knapp 64 2017 Tokyo R32 Krunic Date 64 2011 Luxembourg R32 Garrigues Kremer 64 2012 Copenhagen R32 Cornet Ejdesgaard 65 2010 Moscow R16 Kirilenko Bondarenko
Today’s drubbing is even a bit more impressive than it looks on that list. Barty lost only 10 points–among the matches listed above, that’s equal to Jana Cepelova, two more than Viktorija Golubic, and fewer than everyone else. Not all 60-pointers are identical: Because Kovinic forced one deuce game today, Barty had to win 50 points instead of the minimum 48. Simona Halep only needed 48 in her 2019 Madrid double bagel, meaning that she lost 12 of the 60 points played that day.
Double bagel probability
There’s a bit of luck involved in winning twelve games in a row, even for a player at the top of her game. Kovinic won 10 points today, so even if she did exactly the same thing in her next match, one can imagine her “bunching” her points differently and putting a game or two on the board. Unlikely, but possible.
For any match, we can take the winner’s rate of service points won and return points won, and then generate the probability that she wins twelve games in a row. I did this exact exercise last January during the ATP Cup when Roberto Bautista Agut handed a 6-0 6-0 loss to Aleksandre Metreveli. Metreveli lasted 97 points, or 61% longer than Kovinic. If Metreveli had continued to play at that level, his chances of losing twelve games in a row would have been a mere 14.8%.
Barty won 88.9% of her service points and 78.8% of her return points against Kovinic today. If she continued at those rates, assuming no unusual streakiness or significantly better or worse performance at certain point scores, she would hold serve 99.8% of the time and break in 97.2% of return games. (By contrast, Bautista Agut’s probabilities were “only” 98.9% and 73.6%.)
The likelihood of a 6-0 6-0 bagel is simply that of six holds and six breaks. For Barty: (99.8% ^ 6) * (97.2% ^ 6), or 83.6%. In other words, the way she was playing today, Ash would score the double bagel five out of six times.
This probability is the number that really tells you how dominant a player was, even if it’s a few levels more complex than counting points and points lost. And by this measure, only Golubic’s great day holds a place on the list ahead of Barty’s. The p(DB) column shows the probability of a double bagel.
p(DB) Year Event Round Winner Loser 88.7% 2017 Hua Hin R32 Golubic Wisitwarapron 83.6% 2021 Aus Open R128 Barty Kovinic 80.0% 2019 New Haven R32 Cepelova Small 76.8% 2019 Madrid R16 Halep Kuzmova 75.4% 2017 Tokyo R32 Krunic Date 68.8% 2011 Luxembourg R32 Garrigues Kremer 66.9% 2010 Estoril R32 Garrigues De Lattre 64.9% 2017 Bastad R32 Krejcikova Beck 64.1% 2017 Bol R32 Mrdeza Thombare 62.0% 2010 Moscow R16 Kirilenko Bondarenko 60.7% 2016 US Open R128 Suarez Navarro Pereira 59.2% 2013 Aus Open R64 Sharapova Doi 59.2% 2018 US Open R128 Gavrilova Sorribes Tormo
Gotta love the coincidence here. 13th on this list is a 2018 US Open first-rounder between Daria Gavrilova and Sara Sorribes Tormo. Both players are still going strong (except when Sorribes Tormo was up 6-0 4-0 on Aryna Sabalenka in Ostrava last October), both are in Melbourne, and they drew each other again this week. Gavrilova won again, though not quite as easily. Her reward? A second-round match on Thursday with Ashleigh Barty.