Expected Points, my new short, daily podcast, highlights three numbers to illustrate stats, trends, and interesting trivia around the sport.
Up today: Daniil Medvedev has overtaken Novak Djokovic on one important list, Sorana Cirstea adds to a long list of upsets, and Brooksby dominates two weeks of Challengers in Florida.
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 4.3 points, the miniscule gap in the Tennis Abstract men’s Elo ratings between #1 Daniil Medvedev and #2 Novak Djokovic. The Serbian still holds the prime position on the official list, as he has for 318 weeks now. But with losses in back-to-back weeks against Dan Evans and Aslan Karatsev, Djokovic’s Elo rating has tumbled, erasing the distance that Medvedev shrunk with his winning streak against top-ten players in late 2020 and early this year—as recently as January 1st, the Serbian held a 130-point advantage. The 4.3-point difference is hilariously misleading in its precision—if anything, it should be viewed as a tie between two players who have chosen very different schedules in recent months. Medvedev has played very little on clay, his weakest surface, while before last week’s event in Belgrade, Djokovic had generally taken more time off and skipped tournaments below the Masters level. The point isn’t that a 20-something has leapfrogged one of the greatest of all time, it’s that Novak’s dominance has ebbed to the point that he is no longer an automatic favorite. It’s one large step for Medvedev, and a small step toward the inevitable post-Big Three future.
Our second number is 37, Sorana Cirstea’s career win total against top-20 players. Her overall record of 37-78 may not inspire awe, but while the 31-year-old Romanian has never cracked the top 20 herself, she’s won nearly one of three matches against these women who outrank her. The first was way back in 2007, when she knocked out then-#13 Patty Schynder in Bali, and the latest was on Sunday, when she straight-setted top seed Elise Mertens, who was #17 on the WTA computer and has since gained one spot to #16. Cirstea’s career has been a bit of a roller coaster, with injuries knocking her out of the top 100 in 2010, 2015, and 2019, but she’s back on the rise. Not only did the win against Mertens secure her second career title and first since 2008, it meant she improved to 4-0 against the four top-ranked players she’s faced this year, a list that includes Petra Kvitova and Belinda Bencic. Her Elo rating is back in the top 50, her position on the WTA list isn’t far behind, and if she can slip through the first couple of rounds in Madrid, she’ll be an underdog to watch.
Today’s third and final number is 1.24, Jenson Brooksby’s dominance ratio over 21 matches at Challenger level this season. The stat, invented by Carl Bialik, is derived by dividing return points won by serve points lost, so numbers above 1 are good. Above 1.2 is very good—one man with a 1.24 DR at tour-level this year is Andrey Rublev. The 20-year-old American started the year ranked 314th, and after winning his third title of the season in Tallahassee on Sunday, he’s up to 166th, despite pandemic-related ranking rules that make it harder for up-and-comers to progress. The Tallahassee title made it ten matches in a row for Brooksby, including a Orlando crown that he earned without dropping a set, and he capped the run with a three-set victory over Bjorn Fratangelo, the only man to beat him in 14 previous Challenger matches on American soil this year. His limited appearances at tour level suggest that his ceiling is even higher–he qualified for the 2019 US Open, where he knocked out Tomas Berdych and took a set from 17th seed Nikoloz Basilashvili. In a crowded field of ATP prospects, Brooksby is easily forgotten, but once he gets more opportunities in the big leagues, he’ll be a lot tougher to ignore.
