Expected Points, my new short, daily podcast, highlights three numbers to illustrate stats, trends, and interesting trivia around the sport.
Up today: The Rafa-Novak final in Rome is tighter than usual, Iga Swiatek delivers an extremely unlikely result, and Baby Fed turns 30.
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, the number of times Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic have both won at least 49% of points, out of their 57 meetings. The Nadal-Djokovic rivalry is among the best in the sport, and because the two men have remained near the top for so long, their matches are almost always important ones, such as yesterday’s title match in Rome. But they are not always so close. They’ve contested only 12 deciding sets, and in two of those, including the 2019 Rome final, one man ran away with it, tallying more than 55% of total points. Yesterday’s final was a seesaw battle that, measured by points won, was closer than 54 of their previous encounters. Even in their 2013 Roland Garros semi-final, which ended at 9-7 in the fifth set, Djokovic managed barely 47% of the total. Perhaps worn down by two marathon matches on Saturday, Novak faded in the third set. Rafa will always be the favorite in their clay-court clashes, but Djokovic’s ability to keep things close yesterday give us reason to hope for yet another titanic clash at Roland Garros.
Our second number is .017%, roughly one in six thousand, the probability that Iga Swiatek would defeat Karolina Pliskova in yesterday’s Rome final by a score of 6-0, 6-0. That’s what the Polish teenager did, winning 51 of 64 points, including 26 of 36 on Pliskova’s usually commanding serve. At hiddengameoftennis.com, Jeff McFarland produces forecasts partly based on match stats such as serve and return points won. His model predicted that Swiatek would win 58.4% of points on serve and 43.2% on return, making her a 58% favorite in the match. A double-bagel requires that 12 consecutive games go the way of a single player, so even the most lopsided tour-level matchups are unlikely to end that way. Even with Pliskova’s struggles this year, the contest—at least on paper—looked far from lopsided. But this year, when the Czech has been bad, she has been particularly punchless, losing twice to Jessica Pegula in an hour or less. And when Iga is on, she’s untouchable, evidenced by the 14 straight sets she won to claim last year’s Roland Garros title. While those extremes make the result of yesterday’s final seem less surprising, the numbers tell us it truly came out of the blue.
Today’s third and final number is 30, the birthday celebrated by Grigor Dimitrov yesterday. For the Bulgarian dubbed “Baby Fed” to put his 20s behind him is an emblem of unfulfilled promise. With a smooth, flashy game consciously patterned after the Swiss maestro, Dimitrov was once the top prospect in the men’s game, one of a long line of youngsters seemingly poised to displace the Big Four. Instead, he and peers Kei Nishikori and Milos Raonic spent the last decade battling both injuries and the barely-believable aging trends of their elders. Dimitrov closed the 2017 season with a hint of what might have been, winning a Masters title in Cincinnati and beating David Goffin to finish the season a champion at the Tour Finals. But those triumphs, and the peak ranking of #3 that came with it, are as good as it got. Having failed to make a dent against older players, Dimitrov might have hoped for a late-career burst, but the generations after him proved stronger. Five of his six losses this year—including first-rounders in his last two events—have come against younger opponents. Baby Fed has at least one thing to look forward to: A new decade with much lower expectations.
