Expected Points, my new short, daily podcast, highlights three numbers to illustrate stats, trends, and interesting trivia around the sport.
Up today: The Italian teen scores his first top-ten win, the WTA Monterrey field has an improbable favorite, and fans will have to wait for clay season for their next glimpse of Rafael Nadal or Dominic Thiem.
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 19, the age of Italian prospect Lorenzo Musetti, who scored his first-ever top ten win yesterday. Musetti qualified for the ATP 500 draw in Acapulco, and overcame a tough opening-round test by knocking out third-seed Diego Schwartzman in three sets. It was even closer than the 6-3 2-6 6-4 scoreline appeared, as the Italian won only 49.1% of total points played. Still, it’s good enough to advance, which is more than some of the other up-and-comers in Acapulco can say for themselves. 17-year-old Carlos Alcaraz went out quietly to Alexander Zverev, snatching fewer than one in seven of the second seed’s first-serve points. Brandon Nakashima, the 19-year-old American, did better, but ultimately feel in a third-set tiebreak to countryman Frances Tiafoe. Joining Musetti in the round of 16 is another 19 year old, wild card Sebastian Korda, who knocked out Marin Cilic yesterday. That sets up today’s marquee match, between Korda and Felix Auger Aliassime.
Our second number is 29.6%, the Elo-based probability that 8th seeded American Ann Li will win the title in Monterrey this week. Li was one of the few seeds to survive the first-round carnage, as #1 Sloane Stephens and #5 Heather Watson fell to lucky losers, and #2 Nadia Podoroska and #6 Anna Blinkova lost to qualifiers. With Americans Jessica Pegula and Coco Gauff dominating headlines this season, the 20-year-old Li has flown under the radar, and ranked 72nd on the WTA computer, she’s hardly the typical image of a favorite. But she began the season with a six-match winning streak, going unbeaten in the unfinished Grampians Trophy event, then winning her first two rounds at the Australian Open before losing to Aryna Sabalenka. According to an Elo-based metric I devised using only 2021 results, she has had the 19th best season of anyone on tour—just behind that of Sara Sorribes Tormo, last week’s Guadalajara winner who is the favorite to reach the final in the other half of the Monterrey draw.
Today’s third and final number is 9, the combined number of matches won this season by Rafael Nadal and Dominic Thiem, who will take that total into the clay season next month. Thiem lost yesterday to 81st-ranked qualifier Lloyd Harris, the latest of many underdogs to knock the Austrian out of a lower-level event. Thiem reached the title match of last November’s tour finals, but hasn’t beaten a top-25 player since. He and Nadal are both skipping the Miami Open, the top of a growing list of withdrawals from the Masters 1000 event. Rafa will switch to the clay having played only one hard court event—the Australian Open, when Stefanos Tsitsipas came back to beat him in a five-set quarter-final. The King of Clay continues to manage a back issue, while Thiem deals with a nagging foot problem. The European clay court season will be almost unrecognizable if these injuries keep 2019’s Roland Garros finalists from playing at their best.
