Expected Points, my new short, daily podcast, highlights three numbers to illustrate stats, trends, and interesting trivia around the sport.
Up today: Cornet keeps almost beating Victoria Azarenka, Max Purcell is the season’s most surprising quarter-finalist, and the women’s field at Wimbledon is so deep that there are contenders in qualifying.
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 8, the number of times Victoria Azarenka has beaten Alize Cornet in eight career meetings. Yesterday, Azarenka improved her record to 8-0 against the Frenchwoman, but it wasn’t easy. For the fourth time in the pair’s nine-year history, Cornet pushed Vika to a third set, and in the Bad Homburg second round, it could hardly have been closer. Cornet saved four match points in the decider, and earned two match points of her own in a wild tiebreak that Azarenka finally won by a score of 9 to 7, despite losing half of her service points. Cornet won exactly half of the contest’s 228 points—remarkably, not even the best she’s done in her history of suffering against Vika. At Montreal in 2014, Cornet won 51% of the total points played, including 48% on Azarenka’s serve, losing that day 6-4, 2-6, 6-4. On paper, it’s one of the most lopsided matchups in women’s tennis. Should they meet again, though, Cornet has plenty of reason for optimism.
Our second number is 283, the ATP ranking of 23-year-old Australian Max Purcell. Purcell is one of the most surprising quarter-finalists of the year, reaching the final eight this week in Eastbourne after yesterday’s upset of top seed Gael Monfils. Even Purcell himself had little reason to see this coming: Injuries kept him out of action for nearly four months after the Australian swing, and in his first two matches back, in Parma and Nottingham, he retired in the first qualifying round. Even this week in Eastbourne, he lost in qualifying to Ilya Ivashka before sneaking into the main draw as a lucky loser. Lucky indeed: He drew qualifier and countryman James Duckworth in the first round, then a decidedly out-of-form Monfils in the second. Today, he faces another lucky loser, 37-year-old Andreas Seppi. Seppi won the title here a decade ago, and is the overwhelming favorite against Purcell. Seppi may be on the decline, but the Australian has only one main-draw match win to his name. The real favorite is the winner of today’s adjacent quarter-final between Lorenzo Sonego and Alexander Bublik. Whichever hard-hitting youngster advances, a lucky loser in the semi-final is better fortune than they could’ve hoped for.
Today’s third and final number is 5, the number of women in the Wimbledon qualifying draw who once reached a grand slam quarter-final or better. One of the five, Sara Errani, lost in the first round, but the other four are still standing, and 2018 US Open quarter-finalist Lesia Tsurenko is only one win away from the main draw. Two more women with impressive grand slam resumes are playing their second-round matches today. Tsvetana Pironkova has made it to the final eight at three of the four majors, including a Wimbledon semi-final in 2010 and a US Open quarter last fall. She blasted through her first-round qualifying match in less than an hour. Pironkova’s potential final qualifying-round opponent is Ana Konjuh, a quarter-finalist in New York in 2016, when she was only 18. She reached the Wimbledon fourth round the following year, and her game is built for fast courts. Should they reach the main draw, neither Pironkova or Konjuh would be favored to make another second-week appearance. But the WTA field is so deep that a qualifier in the quarter-finals—especially one of these two—would hardly even register as a surprise.
