Expected Points, my new short, daily podcast, highlights three numbers to illustrate stats, trends, and interesting trivia around the sport.
Up today: Karolina Pliskova opens the grass court season against her least favorite opponent, Richard Gasquet holds a unique Challenger-level winning streak, and it’s been 60 years since Margaret Court started winning titles in Britain.
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 4, the number of times Karolina Pliskova and Jessica Pegula have drawn each other at WTA events this year. After Pegula destroyed Pliskova in Doha in 60 minutes, Czech fans had good reason to say next time would be different. The following week, Pegula won even faster. Later that same month, the two faced off in Miami, where Pliskova came closer to holding her own, but still lost in three. Those three top-ten wins for Pegula are a big part of why Pliskova no longer has a single-digit ranking. But this time—on the grass in Berlin—might really be different. The Czech former number one is one of the best players on turf, ranking fourth in the Tennis Abstract Elo ratings for the surface. The last time the WTA played on grass, she won 10 straight sets for an Eastbourne title, and followed it up with a fourth-round showing at Wimbledon. Pegula, on the other hand, had never won a tour-level main-draw match on grass before advancing due to retirement on Tuesday. Assuming Pliskova’s memory of her drubbings in March isn’t too vivid, she should finally record a win against the pesky American.
Our second number is 12, Richard Gasquet’s current match winning streak at the Challenger level. Winning a dozen matches in a row isn’t that uncommon—it’s just two titles then a quarter-final in a third event. What makes Gasquet’s run unusual is that it started in 2010. He won the Bordeaux Challenger that year, played another in Szczecin in 2017, and has returned this week in Nottingham. The current tournament has yet to offer much in the way of competition. He’s lost an average of three games per set, and tomorrow’s quarter-final will give him a third-straight opponent ranked outside the top 150. Yet a strong week here could give him momentum that will carry over to a tour-level event. After winning Bordeaux 11 years ago, he went straight to the ATP tourney in Nice, where he won another title. If nothing else, a semi-final could highlight just how long Gasquet has excelled on the Challenger tour. One possible opponent is the young Anton Matusevich, who was born in 2001. A year later, Gasquet made his Challenger debut, winning the first tournament he played, only a few weeks after his 16th birthday.
Today’s third and final number is 60, the number of years ago today since Margaret Court won her first grass court title outside of Australia. Then unmarried and known as Margaret Smith, she made her first overseas trip in 1961. She began on the clay-court Riviera circuit in the spring, winning four titles and 22 straight matches before Maria Bueno stopped her in Turin. After Roland Garros and a semi-final showing on grass in Manchester, the 18-year-old Court proved that her Australian Open title that year wasn’t a fluke from down under. In Beckenham, she won her first British title, beating Karen Hantze, Ann Haydon, and Christine Truman in the final three rounds. The Truman match, decided at 8-6 in the third set, was a sign of things to come: The women would meet again in the fourth round of Wimbledon, after Court had won another title at Queen’s Club. In the rematch, the veteran won, as Truman took it, 9-7 in the third. It would be two more years before Court won a Wimbledon title, but after her showing in 1961, there was little doubt that the young Australian was one of the best players in the world.
