Expected Points, my new short, daily podcast, highlights three numbers to illustrate stats, trends, and interesting trivia around the sport.
Up today: Sofia Kenin’s losing streak continues, Davidovich Fokina steadily climbs the ATP ranks, and a few men are raising hopes for an eventual Italian titlist in Rome.
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 123, the number of days since Sofia Kenin defeated a top 50 player. Since she narrowly overcame 28th-ranked Yulia Putintseva in Abu Dhabi, she has lost five straight to top-50 opponents, adding to the tally yesterday with a listless 6-1 6-4 loss at the hands of Barbora Krejcikova. It’s better than Kenin managed last year at the Foro Italico, when Victoria Azarenka double-bageled her, but that’s the extent of the good news. The 22-year-old American is barely 16 months removed from a grand slam championship at the 2020 Australian Open, and she is the reigning runner-up at Roland Garros. In barely half a year, the creative counterpunching that earned her a peak ranking of world no. 4 has gone missing. Kenin knows that something has to change, announcing last week that her father would no longer serve as her coach. It may be a case of addition by subtraction, but she’ll likely need to add a lot more, as her Tennis Abstract Elo rating has fallen to 24th in the world. Plenty of coaches will jump at the opportunity to work with the young American, as the gap between her potential and her current performance is as big as anyone’s on tour.
Our second number is 17, the number of clay-court matches won this year by Alejandro Davidovich Fokina, second-most among top 50 players. It’s a club that the Spaniard joined only last month, improving from 58th to 48th on the ATP computer after a run to the Monte Carlo quarter-finals. He is competing for the sixth consecutive week since the tour shifted to European clay, and after going through qualifying in Rome, he’s already won four matches there, including an upset of 16th seed Grigor Dimitrov. It’s fantastic progress for a 21-year-old who has yet to play his 60th match at tour level. His full-out, physical style of play has reserved him space on highlight reels as he seems to fall down at least once per match, but the dirty tennis gear is just a distraction: He’s up to 32nd in the Tennis Abstract Elo ratings, 26th overall. The Spaniard isn’t quite ready for the big time, as he lost to Novak Djokovic today in just 71 minutes. Still, the tournament was another step forward for an entertaining young prospect.
Today’s third and final number is 45, the number of years since an Italian man lifted the trophy at the Italian Open. For the first time since Adriano Panatta won the tournament in 1976, the male half of the local federation is moving in the right direction. Matteo Berrettini, 9th seed in Rome this week, came within a set of winning in Madrid on Sunday, and my Elo-based forecast gives him a 2.9% chance to go all the way at his home event, a longshot if not an impossibility. The man with a better chance to keep the title drought under a half century is Jannik Sinner, who delivered a blockbuster second-rounder last night. For the second time since the restart, the 19-year-old gave a stiff challenge to Rafael Nadal, even if his ranking-point haul won’t reflect his quality of play. Perhaps the best argument in favor of an Italian resurgence is sheer quantity: My pre-tournament forecast gave six different men at least a one-in-a-thousand shot at the title—distant odds, but evidence that home-country contenders like Lorenzo Musetti and Lorenzo Sonego are superior to the obligatory wild cards of years past. While they wait, Roman fans can get behind top seed Novak Djokovic, who can, at least, give a credible victory speech in their native tongue.
