Expected Points, my new short, daily podcast, highlights three numbers to illustrate stats, trends, and interesting trivia around the sport.
Up today: Elise Mertens is a favorite’s favorite in Istanbul, Barcelona’s final eight is dauntingly strong, and Svitolina tries to do to Petra Kvitova what she’s already done to Angelique Kerber.
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 5, the number of times that Elise Mertens has entered a tour-level event as the top seed. She’s the favorite in Istanbul this week, with a quarter-final on tap today against Katerina Siniakova. The Tennis Abstract forecast gives Mertens a 32% chance of winning the title; the biggest threat to upset her is 3rd-seed and recent Charleston champ Veronika Kudermetova, who has a 23% likelihood chance and could meet Mertens in the semis. The book on the Belgian says you can count on her to dispatch lower-ranked opponents, as she’s done in 35 of 40 opportunities since the restart last summer. But in her previous four outings with a #1 next to her name, she’s only taken a single title—in Rabat back in 2018. Since then, she’s lost twice in the quarters and once in the second round—all to opponents ranked below her, of course. Arriving as the favorite shouldn’t affect one’s performance, though players sometimes say it does, like Andrey Rublev in the Miami semi-finals last month. Istanbul is a bit further off the beaten track, and with most eyes on Stuttgart, Mertens has the opportunity to do what she does best—win a few matches against players outside the top 20.
Our second number is 1888, the average clay-court Elo rating of the eight quarter-finalists in Barcelona this week. It’s a meaningless number out of context, but consider that the equivalent average quarter-finalist rating last week, in Monte Carlo, was 32 points lower, at 1846. Barcelona is a mere 500-series event, compared to the Masters-level 1000 points on offer in Monte Carlo, and Novak Djokovic headed east for Belgrade instead of following Rafael Nadal and company to Barcelona. But most of the stars went to Spain, and they’ve done a better job at advancing through the draw this week. Nadal, Stefanos Tsitsipas, and Andrey Rublev are the three guys who made the final eight at both events, and in Barcelona they’re joined by three more clay-Elo top-tenners, Diego Schwartzman, Jannik Sinner, and Pablo Carreno Busta. Rafa was lucky to draw the biggest surprise still standing, Cameron Norrie, who brings up the Elo caboose with a clay-court rating of only 1616. Should he win the lefty-lefty battle as expected, he can count on a much tougher foe in both the semi-final and final. Whoever claims the 500 ranking points for the winner on Sunday will have truly earned them.
Today’s third and final number is 7, the number of consecutive victories for Elina Svitolina against Angelique Kerber. The two women, who met in the Stuttgart second round yesterday, have faced off a remarkable 14 times, with nine matches going the way of Ukrainian. Kerber is six and half years older, so she had the advantage early on, winning their first two contests as well as five of the first seven. Since Svitolina turned 22, it’s been one-way traffic, with the younger player taking the last 11 sets they’ve played. Svitolina is hoping to pull a similar trick on her next opponent, Petra Kvitova, who won seven in a row against her between 2014 and 2018. This head-to-head stands decidedly in the Czech’s favor, at 7 to 3, but just like with Kerber, Svitolina is making up ground on her veteran rival. She’s won their last two meetings, including a three-set nail-biter in Miami last month. The Tennis Abstract forecast says Kvitova is the narrow favorite, while the Tennis Abstract proprietor wouldn’t dare pick one over the other.
