Expected Points, my new short, daily podcast, highlights three numbers to illustrate stats, trends, and interesting trivia around the sport.
Up today: Hubert Hurkacz has been unbreakable, Madison Keys is poised for a grass-court breakthrough, and Zverev couldn’t ask for a better fourth-round draw.
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 42, the number of service games that Hubert Hurkacz has held through the first three rounds at Wimbledon without giving up a single break, according to Chris Oddo on Twitter. He’s faced only four break points and made plenty of inroads in his own return games. Against Lorenzo Musetti, Marcos Giron, and Alexander Bublik, he’s won nine of nine sets and been pushed to only a single tiebreak. Thanks to a ranking boost after his title in Miami, Hurkacz is seeded 14th, suggesting he belongs in the fourth round. Yet it’s his first time in the second week of a major, and he remains one of the longest shots to win this title. The Tennis Abstract forecast gives him only a 14% chance of upsetting Daniil Medvedev today and one-in-one-thousand odds of winning his first slam. That’s reasonable enough for a player who entered the fortnight with a 4-6 career record on grass. But no one else in the bottom half of the draw got through the first week so convincingly. Bookies put long odds on Hurkacz back in Miami, as well.
Our second number is 1, Madison Keys’s number of first-round losses at WTA events on grass. Since Keys’s first appearance at Wimbledon as a 17-year-old nine years ago, the American has played 16 grass-court tournaments. The only woman to knock her out of an opening-round match was in Eastbourne in 2015, when Belinda Bencic straight-setted her and went on to win the tournament. Keys has had her share of missed opportunities on turf, losing to Camila Giorgi, Evgeniya Rodina, and Polona Hercog in her last three appearances at the All England Club. But thanks to a pair of titles and the dearth of early exits, she has won nearly three-quarters of her career matches on grass. That fast-court prowess makes Keys the favorite today to reach her first-ever Wimbledon quarter-final, as she takes on one of the tournament’s many fourth-round surprises, 66th-ranked Viktorija Golubic. The American is coming off a straight-set win over Elise Mertens, making three of four slams where she has beaten the Belgian. She won her only previous meeting against Golubic as well, so the stars are aligned for Keys to finally reach her grass-court potential.
Today’s third and final number is 60.3%, Alexander Zverev’s rate of total points won in three career matches against Felix Auger Aliassime. Zverev continues to benefit from the ATP’s lack of any domestic violence policy, as he ignores lingering accusations and maintains a full schedule on tour. In his career, he has played at least three matches against 63 different opponents, and his record against Auger Aliassime is his best. He’s won 71% of serve points against the Canadian and more than half on return, a remarkable success rate against a strong server when two of the matches have come on hard courts. So while it’s good news for Auger Aliassime that he’s reached his first Wimbledon fourth round, the bad news is that his opponent today is Zverev. The Elo-based Tennis Abstract forecast ignores the head-to-head and gives Auger Aliassime ample credit for his six wins in eight matches on grass in warm-up events last month, including a victory over Roger Federer. That leaves Zverev as a modest 53% favorite. The German will surely show up today with more confidence than that, and for good reason.
