Expected Points, my new short, daily podcast, highlights three numbers to illustrate stats, trends, and interesting trivia around the sport.
Up today: Gauff is even better than her ranking suggests, Benjamin Bonzi is the only true wild card at a French tournament that uses their freebies wisely, and at another men’s tournament this week, a 39-year-old is the top seed.
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 115, the ATP ranking of 24-year-old Frenchman Benjamin Bonzi. The mark is a new career high, on the strength of a Challenger title in Ostrava two weeks ago. Bonzi is also the only wild card in the main draw at the ATP 250 in Lyon this week. The organizers used two of their bullets on late-entering top-tenners Dominic Thiem and Stefanos Tsitsipas, leaving only one wild card spot for a local aspirant. It’s part of what makes Lyon one of the strongest 250 fields in memory, with Thiem and Tsitsipas supplemented by Diego Schwartzman, David Goffin, and a mind-boggling first-rounder today between Jannik Sinner and Aslan Karatsev. Bonzi also received a wild card for the main draw at Roland Garros, a tournament that doesn’t seem to care about strengthening its field with free entries. As usual, the French Open wild card list is as Gallic as possible, consisting of local players who will draw fans and probably crash out in the first two days. Along with 2020 hero Hugo Gaston, Bonzi is the most promising among them, playing the best tennis of his life and just barely missing the entry cut.
Our second number is 20, the number of rating points separating 17-year-old Coco Gauff from a place in the Tennis Abstract Elo top 10. In Elo rating terms, 20 points is little more than one or two good wins, meaning that the American could force her way into the club the next time she plays. The gap between the WTA computer rankings and the Elo list tends to be greatest for young players on the rise, and Gauff is no exception. Her official position is 30th, by far best among 17-year-olds and second only to Iga Swiatek among teens, but she’s playing even better than that, as evidenced by her Elo rank of 11th. Wins against Maria Sakkari and Aryna Sabalenka in Rome last week pushed her career tour-level clay-court record above .500 and hinted that she’s already a threat on all surfaces. With very rare exceptions, players who reach the top 10 in Elo eventually do so on the WTA computer. It’s hardly a blistering hot take to suggest that Gauff is a future top-tenner, but the numbers say she’s almost there right now.
Today’s third and final number is 123, the number of Challenger matches Paolo Lorenzi has played as the top seed. The 39-year-old Italian is nearing the 700-match mark overall in Challengers, and with a ranking that has remained inside the top 200 for almost 12 years, he has often been the best player on site. Lorenzi is the number one seed again this week in Biella, and his 124th match in that position comes today, against 225th-ranked qualifier Tomas Martin Etchevarry. The Italian has won nine Challenger titles with a (1) next to his name, but time is finally catching up with the late bloomer. He hasn’t won back-to-back main draw matches since the restart, and with a 4-9 record at all levels in 2021, his Elo rating has tumbled further than his official ranking of 167th, so much so that he’s an underdog against Etchevarry and has a mere 1% chance of winning the tournament. Lorenzi has done everything later than usual, cracking the top 100 at age 27, winning his first ATP title at 34, and reaching his career-best rank at 35. If anyone has a shot a breathing a second wind into his career at age 39, it’s him.
