Expected Points, my new short, daily podcast, highlights three numbers to illustrate stats, trends, and interesting trivia around the sport.
Up today: Local heroes nearly run the table at tour events, Veronika Kudermetova wins her first title, and the draw gods in Monte Carlo deliver a tasty first-rounder.
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 3, the number of men’s and women’s tour-level titles won yesterday by players in their home countries. Lorenzo Sonego, one of seven Italians in the main draw at the Sardinia Open, won a three-hour battle with Laslo Djere in the first of Sunday’s finals. Next, 15th-ranked Pablo Carreno Busta flew the Spanish flag in Marbella—beating countrymen Mario Vilella Martinez, Albert Ramos, and Jaume Munar in three of his four matches. The final clay-court patriot was Maria Camila Osorio Serrano, a 19-year-old Colombian who outlasted Tamara Zidansek in her first career WTA championship match. The odd tournament out was Charleston, where according to my forecast, the 19 American women in the main draw combined for a 14% pre-tournament chance at the title. But only Sloane Stephens and Coco Gauff reached the quarters, and neither won a set once they got there. At least the US women will have another crack at it—Charleston hosts another tour event this week, with the home country accounting for 12 of the 32 main-draw slots. Perhaps most important for the odds of a local hero, yesterday’s victor Veronika Kudermetova is sitting this one out.
Our second number is 7. Kudermetova became the 7th Russian woman with a tour-level title to her credit yesterday, after steamrolling the Charleston draw by winning six matches without losing more than four games in any single set. The 23-year-old, whose birthday is later this month, remains far from the career totals of countrywomen such as Svetlana Kuznetsova and Vera Zvonareva, or even her peer Daria Kasatkina, who has already won a pair of titles this year. But it is Kudermetova who stands as the top-ranked Russian according to the WTA computer, at a new career high of #29. According to Tennis Abstract Elo, there’s plenty of room to go higher: She entered the week ranked 27th, and with another half-dozen wins tacked on, the updated ratings released later today will be even more optimistic. The next item on Kudermetova’s to-do list is toppling Aryna Sabalenka, who has won all three of their career meetings, and is the only woman to beat her twice in 2021. If the Russian’s performance in Charleston is any indication, the upcoming clay season may well be her chance to exact revenge.
Today’s third and final number is 36, the combined total of 2021 match wins for Aslan Karatsev and Lorenzo Musetti, who face off in the Monte Carlo first round today. Many of Musetti’s 20 wins came at Challenger level, but the draw delivered a first-time head-to-head between two of the season’s breakout stars. The Russian, who reached the Australian Open semifinals and won in Dubai, is attempted to bounce back from his one hiccup of the campaign, a 67-minute loss in Miami to Sebastian Korda. Musetti, who reached another career-high ranking of 84 today, has already gotten warmed up on clay, with a quarter-final showing in Sardinia. While Karatsev’s career highlights have come on hard courts, he is no slouch on dirt—he began his rankings climb after last summer’s restart with three consecutive Challenger finals in Prague and Ostrava, winning two of them. It’s a rare case where the match of the day also promises to provide a highlight of the following round—whoever emerges from the Russian-Italian clash will provide a tough second-round test for fourth seed Stefanos Tsitsipas.
