Italian translation at settesei.it
In the first-ever match at the US Open’s new Louis Armstrong Stadium yesterday, No. 1 seed and reigning French Open champion Simona Halep lasted barely an hour, losing to the big-hitting Kaia Kanepi. Halep has held the top ranking for more than six months running, and only ten women have owned the top spot for more total weeks than she has. But Halep fans aren’t exactly the the target market for second-week tickets at the majors.
As Christopher Clarey pointed out on Twitter, yesterday’s loss was Halep’s 12th first-round exit in 34 tries. That isn’t quite as bad as it sounds: Seven of the losses came in her first 12 entries, before she entered the top 50, and since Wimbledon 2013, she’s a more respectable 17-5, with one of those losses to Maria Sharapova in New York last year. Still, it’s not the type of winning percentage you’d expect to see from someone of her caliber.
Just how bad is it? To give us some context, I compared her record in her first 34 majors to other grand slam winners, as well as everybody else whose career lasted long enough to enter at least 30 slam main draws. The deeper we dig, the worse it looks.
Simona vs slam winners
I found 32 major champions who played at least 30 slam first rounds*. Most of them played more than that, but to make sure we compare like to like, I’m focusing on each player’s first 34 majors. The list is topped by some of the usual suspects: Chris Evert, Monica Seles, and Serena Williams all went undefeated in their first 34 round-of-128 matches.
* I’ve excluded majors with fewer than 128 entrants, and my database might be missing first-round results from a few more events early in the Open era. Technically, I’m looking only at round-of-128 results.
The average grand slam champion went 29-5 in her first 34 major first rounds. Only four, including Halep, lost at least 12 of those matches: Angelique Kerber also went 22-12, while Flavia Pennetta and Samantha Stosur lost 13. Only two others lost more than seven first rounders: Marion Bartoli went 24-10 in her first 34 first-round efforts, and Iva Majoli ended up at 23-11.
Simona vs the pack
I found 199 players in Open era history who have contested at least 30 round-of-128 matches at majors. That’s a fairly elite crew–as we’ve seen, more than 15 percent of them are slam champions. It’s challenge enough to maintain a high enough ranking to enter nearly a decade’s worth of majors.
Thus, our remaining 167-player sample of non-champions is still better than average: Considering each of their first 34 majors, they won 57.4% of their opening round matches. That translates into a record of 20-14, only a couple of wins worse than how Halep has fared so far. 58 of the 167 women, about 35%, won at least 22 of their first 34. 45 of them, or 27%, outdid Simona and won at least 23.
Two explanations spring to mind for the discrepancy between Halep’s status at the top of the game and her mediocre career performance at the majors. First, players are taking longer to develop into stars. Simona’s 5-7 record in her first 12 first rounds isn’t indicative of her current level. Standouts of prior generations, like Serena and Seles, skipped that level of development entirely, springing onto the scene as instant contenders. Even Jelena Ostapenko, the almost-still-teenage winner of the 2017 French Open, was a modest 7-5 in her first dozen major first rounds. Sloane Stephens, who won 11 of her first 12 (including one against Halep), currently sits at a more modest 19-8.
The other reason is more prosaic: the parity at the top of the women’s game. Even as Simona racks up weeks as number one, she just isn’t as good as many previous top-ranked players. Her greatness stems from managing to stay at a reasonably high level more consistently than any of her peers. That means lots of of second-tier titles, impressive (overall) won-loss records, and on the flip side, some unfortunate losses on big stages. On a tour without a dominant presence, that’s good enough to make her, by a healthy margin, the best in the game. But “best” is more fragile than it used to be, even in the first round of the grand slams.