Picking 32 Qualifiers

Australian Open qualifying starts in just a few hours. 128 men and 128 women stand three wins away from a spot in a grand slam main draw. Only 16 of each will remain at the end of the week.

Forecasting is particularly tricky during qualifying. Unlike most tournaments, when the top seeds far outrank the field, there’s little difference between a player on the fringes of the top 100 and one in the middle of the 200s. Andrej Martin, the top seed in the men’s qualifying draw, has the lowest hard-court Elo rating of the eight players in his section!

Let’s run through the 32 eight-player sections. I’ve posted pre-tournament forecasts for men and women. Keep in mind that these numbers don’t (yet) include any results from the week of January 3rd. For most players it doesn’t matter. For a few, like Melbourne semi-finalist Qinwen Zheng, it misses a major ranking boost.

To make things more interesting, let’s compare Elo’s preferences to those of two guys who pay more attention to Challenger-level tennis than I do, Alex Gruskin* and Damian Kust. At the end of the week, we’ll see how the experts fared against the machine. Unless, of course, they make the machine look bad, in which case I’ll delete this post and deny this ever happened.

Men’s qualifying draw

1. Mikhail Kukushkin. Elo likes the veteran, giving him a 22.9% chance of qualifying. Damian picks NCAA star and 2021 breakout Nuno Borges (Elo: 13.7%), while Alex prefers big-hitting American Ernesto Escobedo (Elo: 16.9%, which will be higher after the algorithm includes EE’s challenger win this week.) Top seed Andrej Martin could hardly be a longer shot.
2. Mats Moraing (23.9%). Both of our experts like Dominic Stricker (10.8%), the 19-year-old Swiss. Damian acknowledges a bit of wishful thinking here.
3. Maximilian Marterer (29.6%). Elo prefers alliterative German names. Damian agrees, while Alex goes with the high seed in the section, #3 Daniel Galan (12.7%).
4. Gilles Simon (34.1%). Gilles Simon is playing grand slam qualifying! Damian and Alex are both too young to remember Simon’s prime, which explains their pick of Tomas Machac (23.4%).
5. Joao Sousa (31.7%). Damian agrees. Alex boldly picks Geoffrey Blancaneaux (5.7%), the fifth favorite in the section according to Elo.
6. Jiri Lehecka (23.9%). Another vote of confidence from Damian. Alex picks Michael Mmoh (11.7%) for the first-round upset of the higher-ranked Lehecka.
7. Salvatore Caruso (28.2%). Shockingly, Alex is finally on board with an Elo pick. Damian prefers the top seed in the section, #7 Taro Daniel (23.2%).
8. Quentin Halys (21.6%). The most even section we’ve seen so far. Damian concurs, calling him “underrated,” while Alex goes with Yannick Hanfmann (18.1%).
9. Damir Dzumhur (27.9%). Both of our experts go with Rinky Hijikata (1.1%). Rinky is the hipster pick, but he did get broken four times by Maxime Cressy this week.
10. Christopher Eubanks (30.5%). I really thought we’d see Alex agree with Elo here, since the algorithm finally picked an American. But no, Gruskin goes with the formerly mulleted JJ Wolf (25.1%). Damian prefers Roman Safiullin (5.8%), the surprise star of Russia’s ATP Cup squad. It worked for Aslan Karatsev…
11. Hugo Grenier (31.8%). Damian agrees, while Alex goes with Juan Pablo Varillas (4.6%), a man who last won a main draw match on hard in 2019 at an ITF M15 in Cancun. Another “bold” pick from the intrepid podcaster.
12. Jason Kubler (29.9%). We all agree!
13. Frederico Ferriera Silva (23.4%). Alex goes with basically-tied-as-favorite Mitchell Krueger (23.1%), and Damian goes with a personal fave in Nicola Kuhn (6.8%).
14. Alexandre Muller (24.1%). Both experts pick Jurij Rodionov (23.7%), the top seed in the section and practically a co-favorite per Elo.
15. Cem Ilkel (20.6%). Damian correctly pegs this as a very balanced section–Ilkel is the least Elo-favored pick of the 16. Both Damian and Alex go with Zizou Bergs, a likeable player by humans, but apparently not by the machine (8.3%).
16. Alejandro Tabilo (32.0%). We all agree! I’m guessing both experts were tired at this point, so we all just went with the top seed.

We all agreed on two picks, and we all picked different players in three sections. Of the rest, Damian and Alex voted the same way five times, Damian went with the Elo pick five times, and Alex agreed with Elo once.

Women’s qualifying draw

Damian focuses on the men’s game, so here we have only two sets of forecasts: Elo and Alex Gruskin’s picks, along with a few of my personal preferences where they differ from the algorithm.

The gap between the seeds and field is much greater in the women’s game, hence the much higher probabilities that many of the top seeds (and/or Elo’s choices) reach the main draw.

1. Anna Kalinskaya (63.8%). Everyone’s on the same page here, even Nick Kyrgios.
2. Martina Trevisan (47.6%). Alex picks the clear second favorite, Olga Govortsova (27.0%).
3. Lin Zhu (45.6%). Again, Alex goes with the second fave, Anna Blinkova (25.5%).
4. Nina Stojanovic (42.2%). I’ll be cheering for Caty McNally (27.7%), even if wouldn’t put my money against Elo. Alex picks another American, Hailey Baptiste (8.4%).
5. Mariam Bolkvadze (26.1%). Sometimes it seems that Elo is trolling us, like this pick of an unseeded Georgian. Alex goes with Bolkvadze’s first-round opponent, Irina Maria Bara (9.8%), so at least one of the choices will be eliminated quickly.
6. Lesia Tsurenko (54.7%). Alex agrees. My sentimental fave, as always, is Kathinka von Deichmann (3.7%), who I know better than to actually pick.
7. Katie Boulter (40.6%). And sometimes it feels like Gruskin is trolling us. In a section with Boulter and Christina McHale (26.8%), he goes with Francesca Di Lorenzo (5.1%).
8. Kateryna Bondarenko (26.0%). A balanced section, where Alex goes with the top seed, Kamilla Rakhimova. If Damian had projected this draw, he’d surely make a wishful pick of Victoria Jimenez Kasintseva (6.4%), 16-year-old runner-up in Bendigo this week.
9. Rebeka Masarova (32.8%). I can only assume Alex is drinking heavily by this point, as he picked Kurumi Nara (13.0%) over both Masarova and top seed Sara Errani (28.7%). My only pick is that Errani reaches at least double digits in underhand serves.
10. Mihaela Buzarnescu (30.3%). Alex picks Jule Niemeier, who at 30.0% is Elo’s co-favorite. I’d love to see Miki launch a comeback in 2022, but she has a tricky first match against Bendigo champ Ysaline Bonaventure, and Niemeier is clearly the rising star here.
11. Harriet Dart (44.7%). Alex agrees, and in an uninspiring section, I’m guessing some of Harriet’s competitors do too.
12. Dalma Galfi (35.2%). The second-favorite is Stefanie Voegele (30.3%), and that’s the player both Alex and I expect to see playing in the main draw.
13. CoCo Vandeweghe (35.0%). It’s an absolute blockbuster of a first-round match (by qualifying standards, anyway) between Vandeweghe and Qinwen Zheng (16.8%). As noted above, Zheng reached the semis in Melbourne, so Elo will think more highly of her as soon as those results are included. It probably won’t swing things all the way in her favor, though–CoCo also reached a semi at the ITF W60 in Bendigo. Meanwhile, Alex is now doing vodka shots and picks Mai Hontama (13.9%).
14. Aleksandra Krunic (26.3%). Another very even section. Alex goes with Cristina Bucsa (17.2%), while to me it looks like it’s Anna-Lena Friedsam’s (19.3%) main-draw spot to lose.
15. Elisabetta Cocciaretto (36.7%). Every once in a while someone tries to explain to me how players could manipulate Elo ratings, if it matters. I don’t really buy the argument, but if anyone could game the system, it’s Cocciaretto. She seems to be doing it already. I don’t understand why she’s the favorite here, and I’m not sure I would even pick her in the first rounder against Lara Arruabarrena. Alex goes with the safe pick here, top seed Nao Hibino (20.7%).
16. Aliona Bolsova (30.2%). Tons of talent in the bottom section, with Viktoria Kuzmova (24.6%), last year’s discovery Francesca Jones (12.1%), and local slugger Destanee Aiava (2.4%). Alex takes the top seed here, Anastasia Gasanova (12.6%).

Qualifying really is anybody’s game. According to my traffic logs, Alex visits my Elo ranking pages even more often than the Russian spambots do, and we still only agree on 3 of 16 picks.

Thanks to Damian and Alex for letting me including their picks here.

* Full disclosure: Alex and I are both members of the board of directors of the Serena Williams Power Tennis Country Club. As tennis insiders, it’s only natural that we have a conflict of interest.