Expected Points, my new short, daily podcast, highlights three numbers to illustrate stats, trends, and interesting trivia around the sport.
On today’s episode: Jarry returns to tour-level competition with a win after an 11-month drug suspension, the ATP returns to Singapore with an uninspiring field, and former NCAA star Nicole Gibbs calls time on her tennis career.
Scroll down for a transcript.
Rough transcript of today’s episode:
The first number is 1165, the current ATP ranking of Nicolas Jarry. Jarry tested positive for banned substances during the 2019 ATP Finals and was banned from competition for 11 months. Lucky for him, the pandemic kept his peers off court for much of that time as well, and even luckier, Latin American tournaments are lining up to give him wild cards. Last night, the Chilean won his first tour-level match in 13 months, outlasting Jaume Munar in the first-round of the ATP event in Cordoba. Tournament wild cards for returning drug cheats are a sticky subject: On the one hand, they are an unearned leg up for the players who least deserve them; on the other, a one-year ban knocks a player out of the ranking system, leaving him to climb back through qualifying and low-level events, effectively extending the penalty. Even with the wild cards, Jarry has plenty of climbing to do. His career-best ranking was 38, in July 2019, and he was still in the top 80 when his suspension took effect a year ago. The win against Munar means that next Monday, he’ll return to the top 800.
Our second number is 22. 22 is the number of years since an ATP tournament was held in Singapore, the site of a tour-level event this week. Local fans could be forgiven if they mistook this week’s draw for one belonging to the Challenger tour, which has a more recent history on the island. The top entry in Singapore this week is 35th-ranked Adrian Mannarino, the eighth seed is Kwon Soonwoo, who barely rated a spot in the top 100 when the field was determined, and today’s slate featured a first-round match between 641st-ranked Japanese wild card Shintaro Mochizuki and the Turkish number 299, qualifier Altug Celikbelik. It’s a far cry from the 1999 event, when Marcelo Rios led a field that included the likes of Lleyton Hewitt, Mark Philippoussis, and Michael Chang. 22 years is a long time in tennis, so long that recently retired doubles stars Leander Paes, Daniel Nestor, and Bob Bryan were all in the draw—playing singles.
Today’s third and final number is 68, the career-high ranking of Nicole Gibbs, a 27-year-old American who announced her retirement last week. Playing opportunities have been limited and unpredictable throughout the pandemic, and women struggling to achieve a foothold at tour level have been particularly hard hit. Gibbs was a standout collegiate player at Stanford, where she won the national titles in both singles and doubles as a sophomore in 2012, and successfully defended her singles title the following year. She reached the third round of majors twice, took sets from both Simona Halep and Karolina Pliskova, and won seven titles at the ITF level. If nothing else, this month has proven that collegiate tennis can lead to just about anything: former UCLA star Jennifer Brady reached the Australian Open final, and the newly-retired Gibbs is heading to law school.