Expected Points, my new short, daily podcast, highlights three numbers to illustrate stats, trends, and interesting trivia around the sport.
Up today: Sorribes Tormo fights through another marathon to face a familiar foe today, Dusan Lajovic struggles on his best surface, and we take a look back at a Norwegian multi-sport athlete from the 1910s.
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 9, the number of three-set matches won by Sara Sorribes Tormo in the last six months. Back in October, she lost a bizarre decision to Aryna Sabalenka in which she won 10 straight games before dropping the last 12. Lesser women would suffer permanent mental scarring, but the 24-year-old Spaniard was unfazed, returning to the tour in January to play one protracted slugfest after another. She took her passive, dirtballing ways to a new level on Monday, overcoming Camila Giorgi 7-6, 6-7, 7-5 in three hours and 51 minutes. It’s a bit of a good-news, bad-news situation: She’s provisionally back in the top 50, where she debuted last month. On the other hand, her reward for beating Giorgi is a second-round date today with none other than Sabalenka. The Belarussian ascended to #4 in the official ranking and #3 on the Tennis Abstract Elo list with her Madrid title on Saturday, so the Spaniard is a clear underdog regardless of what happened last October. It’s an opportunity for Sorribes Tormo not only to reach her first Rome round of 16, but also to exorcise any lingering demons from her memorable collapse in Ostrava.
Our second number is 7, the number of consecutive clay court losses for Dusan Lajovic after he fell yesterday to John Millman in Rome. The 30-year-old from Serbia had a breakout season two years ago, reaching the Monte Carlo final without dropping a set, then winning his first tour-level title a few months later in Umag. He showed signs of life on clay last September, winning two matches apiece in Rome and Hamburg, but it’s been downhill since then. His spring campaign started with a nearly three-hour loss to Dan Evans, followed a three-setter against Federico Delbonis in which he won just over half of points played. In his last three outings, against Millman, Denis Shapovalov and Mackenzie McDonald, he hasn’t come close, winning just 28% of return points on a slow surface yesterday. Lajovic can thank the ATP’s pandemic-inspired ranking revisions for his continued place in the top 40, because his on-court performance doesn’t deserve it. Tennis Abstract Elo has dropped him to 97th overall, and 77th on clay, purportedly a favorite surface, but one that he probably isn’t too fond of right now.
Today’s third and final number is 129, the number of years since the birth of Torleif Torkildsen, a Norwegian Davis Cupper and gymnast who took home a bronze medal at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics. Torkildsen, who died in 1944, played five ties for Norway’s Davis Cup squad, losing 9 of his 10 career rubbers against nations including Poland, Hungary, and Monaco. His greater accomplishment in gymnastics is, shall we say, easy to overstate. The 1912 Olympiad was one of only two in which the so-called “Swedish System” team event was held. Squads of 16 to 40 competitors displayed their prowess for up to an hour, after which five judges picked the winner. Sweden won—unsurprisingly for a sport they invented—and Norway’s 22-strong unit came in third… out of three teams. The first winter Olympics wouldn’t take place for 12 more years, so the Norwegians had to get creative to pull off their top-ten spot on the medal table. Casper Ruud could have a great week in Tokyo this summer and win the first tennis medal in his country’s history, but Torkildsen will forever be the first tennis player to taste some form of Olympic glory.
