Expected Points, my new short, daily podcast, highlights three numbers to illustrate stats, trends, and interesting trivia around the sport.
Up today: Jelena Ostapenko overcomes both her opponent and her serve, Rendy Lu makes a long-awaited return to the winner’s circle, and a pair of prospects take a step forward at the Lugano Challenger.
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 5, the number of double faults committed by Jelena Ostapenko yesterday in her opening service game… which she still held. Usually, if you cough up four doubles, the game is over. If you win some points in between, you might get a lifeline at deuce, but even then, five double faults is usually a bridge too far. Not so for Ostapenko, who not only held, but won the first set and the match against Chinese wild card Wang Xiyu. While she didn’t miss another second serve in the first set, she ended up with 10 doubles in the match, the 7th time in her last 16 matches that she’s double faulted on more than 10% of her service points. Like in the yesterday’s opening game, service inconsistency doesn’t seem to hold her back—she’s won 5 of those 7 matches. Next up for the 2017 Roland Garros champion is lucky loser Kirsten Flipkens, who seems to bring out in the best in the Latvian. In each of their two previous tour-level meetings, Ostapenko has double faulted only once.
Our second number is 1702, the number of days between Masters 1000 wins against non-wild cards for Yen Hsun Lu. The 37-year-old from Taiwan beat Sam Querrey yesterday, his first tour-level win since 2017, a span in which he has rarely been seen on the circuit. Lu, commonly known as “Rendy,” had won his last few Masters-level matches against subpar competition, against two Chinese wild cards in Shanghai in 2016 and 2017, and over a very young Casper Ruud in Miami four years ago. For his last Masters win over a direct entry, you have to go back 1702 days, to the 2016 Toronto event, when he beat Alexander Zverev. For back-to-back wins, you need to dig even further, to Cincinnati in 2014. That’s unlikely to be the big story this weekend, though, since Lu’s reward for his comeback win is a daunting one: a second-round date with top seed Daniil Medvedev.
Today’s third and final number is 7, the number of sets won so far this week by the young Swiss duo of Dominic Stricker and Leandro Reidi. Both were born in 2002, are ranked in the 800s, and received wild cards into this week’s Lugano Challenger. It’s Reidi’s first challenger and Stricker’s second, and six months after they captured global attention by reaching the 2020 Roland Garros junior final, both have made the best of the opportunity. They won their first-round matches on Monday against veteran competition, Jay Clarke and Adrian Menendez Maceiras. Reidi lost yesterday in a three-setter against top-seed Yuichi Sugita, while Stricker advanced in a third-set tiebreak over Tim Van Rijthoven. Stricker, who turns 19 in August, will break into the top 700 with his quarter-final showing, good for the top-ten among players his age and younger. Reidi is seven months older, and having lost the French Open juniors final to his countryman, he’s already something of the underdog of the pair. Regardless of who is the better of the pair, Swiss fans have an emerging duo worth watching.
