Expected Points, my new short, daily podcast, highlights three numbers to illustrate stats, trends, and interesting trivia around the sport.
Up today: Next week’s ATP rankings will feature a new American #1, Ashleigh Barty closes out Aryna Sabalenka in style, and Alexander Bublik needs to figure out how to return Jannik Sinner’s serve.
Scroll down for a transcript.
You can subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and elsewhere in the podcast universe.
Music: Love is the Chase by Admiral Bob (c) copyright 2021. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial (3.0) license. Ft: Apoxode
The Expected Points podcast is still a work in progress, so please let me know what you think.
Rough transcript of today’s episode:
The first number is 29, the likely ATP ranking next Monday of Taylor Fritz, who would be the top-ranked American man. Fritz will take over the throne from John Isner, who has held a spot in the top 30 since 2011, but lost yesterday to Roberto Bautista Agut. In failing to defend his finalist points from the 2019 Miami Open, the big man will fall to around #38. All told, the Miami round of 16 was a bleak one for American players. The only US woman to make it that far, Jessica Pegula, failed to convert six match points and lost to Maria Sakkari, while Isner, Fritz, and Frances Tiafoe lost Bautista Agut, Alexander Bublik, and Daniil Medvedev, respectively. All is not quite lost, though. Sebastian Korda scored a second straight upset, defeating Diego Schwartzman yesterday, securing the home country a token representative in the quarters. Korda also has a tiny chance of becoming the American #1 on Monday—if he wins the Miami title, he’ll overtake Fritz in the rankings, 1861 points to 1855.
Our second number is 9, the number of consecutive points that Ashleigh Barty won to finish off Aryna Sabalenka in the Miami quarters. In one of the many great WTA matchups that fans have missed since 2019, the women battled through a 67-minute second set that Sabalenka ultimately won in a tiebreak, forcing a decider. Even before her demoralizing nine-point streak, Barty played better at the big moments. She faced 7 break points in the match and saved them all, while converting two of her four opportunities on the imposing Belarussian’s serve. Out of six total meetings, the only previous time these two women went three sets was in their first encounter, in the opening round at the 2018 Australian Open. The Australian narrowly advanced that day, but she has nonetheless come a long way since. In that first match, she won barely 60% of first serve points, a mark she hasn’t failed to clear since a 2019 loss in Cincinnati. Yesterday’s 73% is right in line with her average rate of first serve points won, one of the best marks on tour and a big reason she remains at the top of the ranking list.
Today’s third and final number is 26.2%, the percentage of return points won by Alexander Bublik against Jannik Sinner when they met 15 days ago in Dubai. They meet again in today’s Miami quarter-finals. At 23 years old, Bublik is still a rising star on tour, but he has already been eclipsed in the rankings by the 19-year-old Italian, who beat him in their only previous meeting. After the match, Bublik expressed wonder at Sinner’s focus on tennis—at his age, according to the Kazakh, he was drinking a beer. That’s one explanation for Bublik’s futility on return, the part of his game that is likely to keep him from joining the tour’s elite. 26.2% on return is worse than the average rate of Reilly Opelka, the weakest returner among the top 50. Bublik is usually better than that, though not much, and it’s tough to forget his helplessness in the Singapore final last month when he won a mere six return points. To win today’s revenge match against his young Italian foe, he’ll need to defend much better—in the 24 matches the 19-year-old has lost on tour, his opponents have always won at least one-third of Sinner’s service points.
