Expected Points, my new short, daily podcast, highlights three numbers to illustrate stats, trends, and interesting trivia around the sport.
Up today: Maria Sakkari closes in on the best-ever WTA ranking for a Greek player, Daniil Medvedev’s loss opens the door to a new Masters titlist, and Iga Swiatek looks awfully good on the doubles court.
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 14, the highest ever WTA ranking achieved by a woman from Greece. The all-time mark was set in 2003 by Eleni Daniilidou, and at the time, it was the best ranking for any Greek player—male or female. Stefanos Tsitsipas has since charged into the top five, but Daniilidou’s WTA mark is firmly in the sights of Maria Sakkari. Sakkari delivered the upset of the tournament in Miami yesterday, beating Naomi Osaka 6-4 6-0 and ending the Japanese player’s win streak at 23. Sakkari cracked the top 20 early last year and will return on Monday, no matter what happens in tonight’s semi-final with Bianca Andreescu. Surpassing #14 will be no easy task, with players like Victoria Azarenka, Iga Swiatek, and Elise Mertens standing between her and the record. More encouraging is Sakkari’s position of #17 on the Elo list, which is also sure to rise on Monday. Elo rankings don’t count in the record books, but where Elo goes, the official rankings tend to eventually follow.
Our second number is 120, the combined number of Masters 1000 main draws entered by the six men remaining in Miami. Of those 120 entries, only 3 have resulted in finals, and none have turned into titles. The last Masters champion standing was Daniil Medvedev, who was eliminated last night by Roberto Bautista Agut. The Russian #2 was a heavy favorite to the win the title, but even so, the likelihood of a first-time Masters titlist was substantially improved even before the tournament began, with the withdrawals of Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal. Of the players still standing, RBA and Stefanos Tsitsipas are the only two who have reached Masters finals, while Sebastian Korda and Jannik Sinner are in their 2nd and 3rd Masters main draws, respectively. With Medvedev’s loss, the paper favorite is another Russian, fourth seed Andrey Rublev. Rublev has displayed his dominance at the 500 level, but tonight he plays only his second Masters quarter-final in 22 tries. One gets the distinct sense that the last upset of the 2021 Miami Open has yet to be recorded.
Today’s third and final number is 62, the number of minutes it took for the doubles team of Iga Swiatek and Bethanie Mattek Sands to knock out Lyudmyla Kichenok and Jelena Ostepenko in the quarter-finals yesterday. Quite a coincidence, since 62 minutes was also the length of their previous victory, over fifth seeds Xu Yi Fan and Zhang Shuai. Before that was a 53-minute lightning-round defeat of Monica Niculescu and Anna Blinkova. All told, the Polish-American duo has lost only 10 games in three matches. Mattek Sands is a doubles wizard of long standing, with five doubles grand slam titles and another four in mixed, not to mention an Olympic gold medal. Swiatek, the reigning Roland Garros champion in singles, is an unknown quantity as half of a team, but is quickly building an impressive resume. She reached the semi-finals in doubles at Roland Garros last year, as well as the final four in Cincinnati. The rigors of the tour will probably restrict Iga to a mostly-singles schedule, but at the Tokyo Olympics this summer, her potential presence in singles, doubles, and mixed makes her a legitimate triple medal threat.
