Expected Points, my new short, daily podcast, highlights three numbers to illustrate stats, trends, and interesting trivia around the sport.
Up today: Dominic Thiem is back on tour, Barty-Swiatek is one of several first time meetings in the Madrid round of 16, and Jan Lennard Struff reaches his first final.
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 17.6%, the likelihood that Dominic Thiem will win the title at the Madrid Masters this week, according to the Tennis Abstract forecast. The prediction is based on Elo ratings, which rank Thiem fourth among men, more than fifty points behind Rafael Nadal and in a close battle with Stefanos Tsitsipas and Novak Djokovic for second. Djokovic is taking the week off, leaving the Austrian as the #3 seed. It’s less than eight months since Thiem finally broke through to win the US Open, but his 2021 season so far has been one to forget. He hasn’t played since a first-round loss in Dubai to Lloyd Harris, and will need to work his way back into form quickly, with an opening match against a qualifier and a possible third-rounder against Harris or Grigor Dimitrov, the man who knocked him out of the Australian Open. Thiem is the clay-court heavyweight we’ve been missing for the last month as younger players have emerged as threats on the surface. If the Austrian progresses as scheduled, we’ll get a mouth-watering quarter-final between him and Monte Carlo finalist Andrey Rublev. Beyond that, Thiem is lined up for a semifinal against Nadal, a man he has beaten four times on clay, including in 2018 at this very event.
Our second number is 5. Of the eight third-round women’s matches in Madrid, that’s how many involve a pair of players who have never faced each other before on tour. The WTA field is so deep that while a majority of the seeds are still standing, and the underdogs are hardly unknowns, there simply aren’t enough weeks in the season for all the great players to face each other—especially after Covid wreaked havoc with a year of the schedule. One of the five debuts is the highlight of today’s slate: a showdown between Ashleigh Barty and Iga Swiatek, the last two winners at Roland Garros. While the Aussie needed three sets and Iga went through 11 match points in their matches so far, the seeds came through to deliver the marquee matchup. Whoever advances will face the winner of another first-time clash, between 2018 Madrid titlist Petra Kvitova and Veronika Kudermetova, who is 9-1 on the clay this year. Whatever quarter-final pairing ensues will be a clash of styles, and if it’s Swiatek-Kvitova or Barty-Kudermetova, it too will be a first meeting between players in the upper echelons of the tour.
Today’s third and final number is 164, the number of events Jan Lennard Struff has entered in his nine-year career at tour-level. The 164th was this past week in Munich, the long-awaited first time that the 31-year-old German reached a final. He had a decent chance to win a title on his first try, facing Nikoloz Basilashvili in the Bavarian International title match. The Georgian, who faces domestic violence charges at home, is ranked only nine spots higher than the German, and they split their previous four meetings. Alas, Struff will need at least 165 tournaments before he lifts a winner’s trophy. Basilashvili beat him, 6-4 7-6, for his own second title of the year, leaving the German as the third highest-ranked player—behind Felix Auger Aliassime and Filip Krajinovic—without a tournament win of his own. He’s headed straight to Madrid, where he’ll open tomorrow against qualifier Alexei Popyrin, and where he’ll almost certainly remain title-less. His likely second-round opponent is Jannik Sinner, and should he pass that test, he’ll line up against Rafael Nadal.
