Expected Points, my new short, daily podcast, highlights three numbers to illustrate stats, trends, and interesting trivia around the sport.
Up today: Bianca Andreescu continues her long-running clay-court winning streak, Alex Molcan gets an easy road to the Belgrade quarter-finals, and Corentin Moutet draws and quarters his way to an exhibition title.
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 1097, the number of days since Bianca Andreescu lost a match on a clay court. Her streak isn’t quite as impressive as Ashleigh Barty’s multi-year run, since the Canadian has barely played on the surface since losing to Richel Hogenkamp in French Open qualifying three years ago. In 2019, she won a first-rounder at Roland Garros against Marie Bouzkova before withdrawing, and she’s cut it short again this week in Strasbourg. Making her European season debut after a battle with Covid, the world #7 won two easy matches against qualifiers, losing only eight games and spending barely two hours on court between them. But due to abdominal discomfort, Andreescu won’t play the quarter-final, in hopes her body will recover in time for the French. It’s been a tough road for the 2019 US Open champion, who has played only 20 matches since her grand slam breakthrough. Her fans are in the unusual position of hoping that her clay-court winning streak will finally end, because that, at least, would mean that she’s able to take the court.
Our second number is 285, the best ATP ranking of the four players faced by Alex Molcan so far this week in Belgrade. The 23-year-old Slovakian is ranked a mere 255th himself, and got through qualifying with the help of a favorable draw, facing 337th-ranked Bosnian alternate Nerman Fatic and 360th-ranked Carlos Gomez Herrera, who needed a wild card just to get into the qualifying draw. The main draw brought more of the same. Molcan has faced two Serbian wild cards, 672nd-ranked teen Hamad Medjedovic and #285, Pedja Krstin. Molcan has little tour-level experience, but the level of competition is familiar enough: He’s beaten 9 top-200 players this season, mostly at Challengers. And he’s clearly ready for something more challenging than Belgrade has offered him so far: He crushed Krstin 6-0 6-0 yesterday. In tomorrow’s quarter-finals, he’ll finally feel like he’s reached the big leagues, drawing Fernando Verdasco, who scored a bagel of his own yesterday against Adrian Mannarino. A win against Verdasco would put Molcan on the cusp of the top 200 and decrease the chances that he’ll get a draw like this again anytime soon.
Today’s third and final number is 7, the number of “quarters” played by Corentin Moutet yesterday en route to a title at the Ultimate Tennis Showdown in Nice. The exhibition format splits matches into segments of eight minutes each, enough time for Moutet and company to play about 25 points. The 22-year-old Frenchman—dubbed “The Tornado” for the purposes of Patrick Mouratoglou’s tennis carnival—went undefeated in five matches, beating Taylor Fritz twice, along with Daniil Medvedev, Fabio Fognini, and Cristian Garin. The UTS format emphasizes a fast pace, with a 15-second shot clock, and a short format aimed a engaging a younger audience. The end result often just emphasizes the quiet brilliance of the traditional rules. As the clock on each quarter runs out, the losing player has no reason to continue making an effort—there’s no coming back from the equivalent of love-40 if there’s only time for two more points. Unlike World Team Tennis, which has seen many of its innovations reach the mainstream, UTS looks like an irrelevant sideshow, albeit a briefly entertaining one.
