Expected Points, my new short, daily podcast, highlights three numbers to illustrate stats, trends, and interesting trivia around the sport.
Up today: Tauson follows in the imposing footsteps of Caroline Wozniacki, Zizou Bergs leads a pack of qualifiers to unlikely feats, and Dubai becomes the first 1000-level event in the WTA’s puzzling new system.
Scroll down for a transcript.
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Music: Love is the Chase by Admiral Bob (c) copyright 2021. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial (3.0) license. Ft: Apoxode
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Rough transcript of today’s episode:
The first number is 53, the number of days separating Clara Tauson’s age from that of Caroline Wozniacki’s on the day of their first tour-level titles. The 18-year-old Tauson raced through seven wins in Lyon this week, qualifying, eliminating the top seed, and winning the tournament without dropping a set. Despite their very different game styles, the similarities between Tauson and Wozniacki are irresistible, as Caroline is one of the few Danish women among the greats of women’s tennis. On her 18th birthday, Wozniacki had just broken into the top 30 with a third-round showing at Wimbledon, and would win her first title two weeks later in Stockholm—also without the loss of a set—with wins over Angelique Kerber and Agnieszka Radwanska. It was just the start, as she would win two more tour-level titles in 2008, reach a third final, make the second week at the US Open, and end the season ranked 12th in the world. Tauson won’t quite match that, having just cracked the top 100 today. But the young Dane has as much promise as any WTA teenager—the only player younger than Tauson to be ranked higher is Coco Gauff.
Our second number is 5, the number of qualifiers who played in tour-level or Challenger finals yesterday. Tauson was one, along with her Lyon title-match foe, Viktorija Golubic. Marton Fucsovics reached his career-best final in Rotterdam the hard way, winning two qualifying matches and withstanding a three-tiebreak duel against Reilly Opelka in the first round. In Buenos Aires, Francisco Cerundolo came just short of matching his brother’s heroics the previous week in Cordoba, winning seven matches before hitting the wall that is Diego Schwartzman in the championship tilt. Topping them all as underdog of the week was Zizou Bergs, a Belgian ranked 435th, who wasn’t even seeded in qualifying for the St. Petersburg Challenger. He scored seven straight upsets to win his first Challenger title and jump more than 100 places in the rankings. / These particular players are unlikely to repeat their feats, as their ranking boosts will allow them to skip many qualifying events. But the pandemic-adjusted ranking system essentially considers two years’ worth of results instead of one, making it harder for up-and-comers to climb the ladder. There will probably not be quite so many breakthroughs again in a single week, but 2021’s qualifiers will continue to be a bit better than those of past years.
Today’s third and final number is 900, the number of points awarded to the winner of a tournament in the new WTA “1000” category. The women’s tennis tour finally ditched their confusing classifications of Premier Mandatory, Premier 5, Premier, and International tournaments in favor the ATP’s system of 1000, 500, and 250 events, but they didn’t take the logical step of aligning point totals with the names of the events. And 1000-level tournaments, like this week’s event in Dubai, are categorized still further as mandatory or not. The Dubai event is decidedly not mandatory, with only four of the WTA top ten turning up to play. Ashleigh Barty, Naomi Osaka, and Serena Williams are taking time off and minimizing travel, while defending champion Simona Halep is resting her back. The field remains a strong one, as one would expect with 900 points on offer. After all, it’s almost double the 470 points at stake at the WTA 500 in Doha last week, and more than three times the 280 points on the table at the WTA 250 in Guadalajara. One could be forgiven a bit of nostalgia for old system which, at least, didn’t pretend to be transparent.
