Expected Points, my new short, daily podcast, highlights three numbers to illustrate stats, trends, and interesting trivia around the sport.
Up today: Samsonova puts on a week-long service clinic, Ugo Humbert wins all the break points, and the newly-enlarged WTA winner’s circle isn’t likely to keep growing anytime soon.
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 81%, Ludmilla Samsonova’s first-serve winning percentage in five main draw matches in Berlin this week. Samsonova is a 22-year-old from Russia who had never broken the top-100 or won a single tour-level grass-court match. After qualifying and sweeping through the Berlin field to her first WTA title, Samsonova is #63 in the official rankings and earned the last wild card into the Wimbledon main draw. The Russian upstart didn’t exactly dominate from start to finish, squeaking through a quarter-final against Madison Keys in which she won only 48% of total points. But her first-serve performance is truly impressive. For reference, Serena Williams’s career first-serve winning percentage on grass is 77%, a mark that Samsonova eclipsed in three of her five main draw matches. Against Veronika Kudermetova in round two, she was particularly ruthless, losing only three serve points in the second set. The staggeringly deep women’s field at Wimbledon just gained another player capable of an unseeded run to the second week.
Our second number is 32, the number of ATP tour-level matches this year in which one player won every break point, on both serve and return. Ugo Humbert did exactly that yesterday in winning the Halle final, saving both of break chances against him, and converting the single break point he earned on the otherwise outstanding serve of Andrey Rublev. It’s not the rarest of statistical feats, but it illustrates how Humbert delivered his best when it mattered. He’s no stranger to dominating service performances, once winning all of his first-serve points for an entire match. But on return, John Isner is the only man in the top 50 to convert break points at a lower rate. Perhaps it’s best that Humbert only needed one to secure his first grass-court title and a new career-high ranking of 25th. Big serving and tight margins define grass-court success, and sure enough, he reached the fourth round of Wimbledon in his 2019 debut. The wiped-out 2020 season makes it easy to forget which young players showed promise on the surface, but Humbert’s performance in Halle this week offers an emphatic reminder.
Today’s third and final number is 39, the WTA ranking of Nadia Podoroska. Podoroska is now the highest-ranked woman without a tour-level title to her name, after Ons Jabeur won her first WTA tournament in Birmingham. For Jabeur, it’s a long-awaited, much-deserved accomplishment. For Podoroska, it’s a spotlight that she’s unlikely to shake anytime soon. The Argentine’s top-40 ranking relies almost entirely on her shock run to last year’s French Open semi-finals, and she’s never come any closer to a top-level title. Despite an opening round win yesterday against an unranked wild card in Bad Homburg, she’s unlikely to do better on a surface other than clay. According to the Tennis Abstract Elo rankings, Podoroska is far from the best player without a title to her name, regardless of what the WTA computer says. The relevant Elo honor belongs to Ann Li, a 20-year-old American ranked 37th by the more sophisticated formula. But Li has a probable second-round date with Petra Kvitova in Bad Homburg. Now that Jabeur and Ludmilla Samsonova have earned a spot in the WTA winner’s circle, we’ll probably have to wait a few more weeks before seeing another first-time titlist
