Expected Points, my new short, daily podcast, highlights three numbers to illustrate stats, trends, and interesting trivia around the sport.
Up today: Anastasia Pavlyuchenova is into her first grand slam final despite not playing her best-ever tennis, Alexander Zverev needs a good day on return, and this year’s French Open mixed doubles title didn’t require much work.
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 2066, Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova’s peak Elo rating, which she achieved a decade ago at the 2011 French Open. 2066 would be good for 6th on the current list, and it’s 190 points better that Pavlyuchenkova’s rating entering Roland Garros in 2021. In the first half of the 2011 season, Pavs beat Jelena Jankovic to win the Monterrey title, then made a run to the quarter-finals in Paris, beating 3rd seed Vera Zvonareva. That was enough to send the Russian into the rarefied air of a 2000-plus Elo rating before her 20th birthday. A couple of months later, the WTA computer caught up, rewarding her with a ranking of 13th, which remains her career high. Pavlyuchenkova advanced to Saturday’s women’s final with a win yesterday over Tamara Zidansek, and because of the Covid-adjusted ranking system, even a title this week wouldn’t get her past 13th on the official list. Seven straight wins at Roland Garros won’t get her back to her career-best Elo rating, either, but I suspect that a grand slam championship would be consolation enough.
Our second number is 38%, Alexander Zverev’s rate of return points won in seven career matches against Stefanos Tsitsipas. The pair meet again today in the French Open semi-final, with Zverev looking to improve on a 2-5 record against the Greek. The German’s ability to handle his rival’s serve will be a decisive factor. Their most recent encounter came in the Acapulco final in March, when Zverev won in straight sets, winning 44% of Tsitsipas’s serve points. But in their previous two matches, Zverev won less than 25% on return, losing by correspondingly lopsided scorelines. All three of these contests came on hard courts, so it seems unlikely Tsitsipas will manage to replicate the best of his serve performances. But it’s Zverev’s first real test of the tournament. Just as the media has elected not to raise the lingering domestic violence allegations against him, the draw has made his job easy, handing him five opponents ranked outside the top 40. The German has won at least 39% of return points against all of them, including 49% or better in each of his last three matches. Tsitsipas is the best server he’s faced yet, so Zverev will need to raise his game to reach his second career grand slam final.
Today’s third and final number is 7, the number of sets played by Desirae Krawczyk and Joe Salisbury to win this year’s French Open mixed doubles title. The draw was limited to 16 teams, meaning that only four victories stood between any team and the title. Making matters even simpler, Krawczyk and Salisbury’s semi-final opponents, Giuliana Olmos and Juan Sebastian Cabal, withdrew. Thus, the American-British duo earned a grand slam championship despite playing barely three and a half hours, only a bit more than Barbora Krejcikova needed to win her women’s singles semi-final yesterday. For the 27-year-old Krawczyk, it’s a maiden major title, and for the one-handed backhand hitting Salisbury, it’s a first mixed title to complement his men’s doubles victory at last year’s Australian Open. The pair’s three matches in Paris hardly make a case for them as the greatest of all time, but they might be a well-matched team anyway: They also won three matches in Australia this year, coming within two points of knocking out home favorites and eventual finalists Sam Stosur and Matt Ebden. This year’s Roland Garros mixed draw was a bit more like an exhibition than usual, but a first-class duo nonetheless finished on top.
