Expected Points, my new short, daily podcast, highlights three numbers to illustrate stats, trends, and interesting trivia around the sport.
Up today: Zverev barely gives his opponents a chance, Aryna Sabalenka forces the clay to play her way, and the 2021 ATP Masters Series is a young man’s game.
Scroll down for a transcript.
You can subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and elsewhere in the podcast universe.
Music: Love is the Chase by Admiral Bob (c) copyright 2021. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial (3.0) license. Ft: Apoxode
The Expected Points podcast is still a work in progress, so please let me know what you think.
Rough transcript of today’s episode:
The first number is 12, the total number of break points faced by Alexander Zverev in five matches in Madrid last week. He saved seven of them, admitting exactly one break of serve in each contest, which was good enough for his 4th title at the Masters 1000 level. On average, in best-of-three on clay, top 50 players face almost 7 break points per match; against an elite group that included Rafael Nadal, Dominic Thiem, and Matteo Berrettini in the final three rounds, the German allowed just 2.4. All is not entirely well for the 24-year-old, who continues to contend with an inconsistent second serve as well as unresolved domestic violence allegations. Off court, most of the media seems content to let Zverev’s behavior slide; on court, he’s too good a server to let an above-average double fault rate bring him down. Early in yesterday’s final, it seemed that the second serve would be the story of the match, when Zverev missed a 140 mile per hour second serve at 8-8 in the first set tiebreak. He lost that set, but in keeping with how he played to reach the title match, he faced only one break point the rest of the way.
Our second number is 3.0, the average rally length of Saturday’s final between Aryna Sabalenka and Ashleigh Barty. In a post-match interview after her victory, Sabalenka said she had made her peace with clay, accepting that she’ll have to play longer rallies. In reality, she hardly adjusted to the surface: she bent the environment to her own will. It was the 8th match between the two women, and while they’ve never been much for rallying, the Madrid final featured the shortest points of any of them, surpassing even their six meetings on hard courts. The Belarussian came out swinging in every round, posting nothing but positive winner-to-unforced error ratios, and needing a third set only once, in the final against Barty. The biggest title of Sabalenka’s career means a new career high ranking of #4, bringing her official standing in line with where Elo has placed her for a long time. Meanwhile, Barty lost her 16-match winning streak on red clay but continued to solidify her status as a top contender on the surface. A test awaits both women in Rome, where the altitude is lower, the surface isn’t as quick, and not even Sablaenka can get things done in three shots or less.
Today’s third and final number is 23.2, the average age of the six men who have reached Masters 1000 finals this year. Alexander Zverev and Matteo Berrettini are 24 and 25 years old, respectively, and combined for the oldest championship pairing at this level in 2021; of the other four finalists, Hubert Hurkacz is the only one to have reached his 24th birthday. 30-somethings Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal are still looking for their first Masters titles of the year, and 27-year-old Dominic Thiem, the usual standby on clay, fell short in Madrid. All three men will aim to reverse the trend in Rome this week, while Casper Ruud, a 22-year-old who has reached three straight Masters semi-finals on clay, would push the average age down even further. All is not lost for children of the 80s, though—the doubles titlists in Madrid were 35-year-old Marcel Granollers and 36-year-old Horacio Zeballos. The more things change in singles, the more doubles aging trends stay the same.
