Expected Points, my new short, daily podcast, highlights three numbers to illustrate stats, trends, and interesting trivia around the sport.
Up today: Rublev continues his winning ways just outside of the sport’s biggest stages, Misaki Doi is more than the usual lucky loser, and Frances Tiafoe comes through a nailbiter in Santiago.
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 4, the number of titles won Andrey Rublev at the ATP 500-level since the restart last August. His victory over qualifier Marton Fucsovics in Sunday’s Rotterdam final extended his win streak in this tournament category to an even 20. Four is also the total number of 500s played since the restart—the Russian has run the table, with previous championships on multiple surfaces, in Hamburg, St. Petersburg, and Vienna. Last week’s title was the most dominant of the lot, as Rublev lost only a single set, and scored a minor upset with a straight set semi-final win over Stefanos Tsitsipas, who had beaten him in their last two meetings. The 23-year-old’s latest trophy is good for bragging rights and a tidy 107,000 euro, but he’ll need to do more before his ranking will budge. He remains ranked 8th on the ATP computer, where he has been since October, and while Tennis Abstract Elo likes him better, at number 4, the Rotterdam title merely narrowed the gap between him and #3 Daniil Medvedev. Rublev is entered in Doha this week, but if the trend holds, he’ll be even more dangerous in Dubai next week—that’s the next ATP 500 on the calendar.
Our second number is 3, the number of times this season that Misaki Doi has reached a WTA main draw as a lucky loser. This week in Dubai makes it three in a row, including Adelaide and Doha. Even with several months remaining, she is one of only about 25 women to have gotten into three events in a single season as a lucky loser, and only one—Petra Kamstra in 1994—has lucked into four. What makes Doi’s last month even more remarkable is that she has won her first-round match in all three events—something no woman has done before. Lucky losers are the ultimate underdogs—they weren’t good enough to qualify, they just lost a match, and they are almost always ranked lower than their main draw opponents. As lucky—and good—as Doi has been, Martina Trevisan was even more fortunate. The Roland Garros quarter-finalist also lost in Dubai qualifying and got into the main draw as a lucky loser, replacing 7th-seed Victoria Azarenka and receiving Vika’s first-round bye. While Doi needed to win a match just to earn a second-round encounter with Iga Swiatek, Trevisan got a bit of rest and faces unseeded Caroline Garcia.
Today’s third and final number is 7, the digit that dominated the scoreline last night between Frances Tiafoe and Nicolas Jarry in the first round in Santiago. After two hours and fifty two minutes, Tiafoe finally broke away, winning 7-6, 6-7, 7-6. Remarkably, all three tiebreaks were nailbiters, each going to 7-all before the American won the last two points. It was close, with only four break point chances in 36 service games, but it wasn’t quite as close as the scoreline suggests. Tiafoe won 52% of total points, tallying 127 to Jarry’s 115. He also won 32% of return points against Jarry’s 24%. Still, that didn’t prevent the Chilean from coming within two points of victory. All these breakers are even more remarkable coming on a clay court—there have been 190 best-of-three matches that ended in three tiebreaks since the turn of the century, but Tiafoe-Jarry was only the 30th on dirt. Fortunately for the American, he probably won’t need quite so much time in his next match against Facundo Bagnis. He has won both of their previous meetings, playing only one tiebreak in five sets. They faced off last week in Buenos Aires, where Tiafoe won 6-1 6-3.
