Expected Points, my new short, daily podcast, highlights three numbers to illustrate stats, trends, and interesting trivia around the sport.
Up today: Iga sets her sights on an impressive record held by Justine Henin, Philipp Kohlschreiber might just make it to Tokyo, and a pair of extreme longshots set up lopsided battles in the men’s third round.
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 40, the consecutive sets won by Justine Henin at Roland Garros between 2005 and 2010. After dropping the second set to Svetlana Kuznetsova in the fourth round of the ’05 French Open, Henin wouldn’t lose another set until she played Maria Sharapova in the third round in 2010. She won that match, too, though Sam Stosur finally stopped her in the following round. Between those two blips, the Belgian won 19 consecutive straight-setters, claiming three titles. Now, Iga Swiatek is on a streak of her own, with 18 straight sets won at Roland Garros after dispatching Rebecca Peterson last night. Her streak is seventh longest at the tournament among Open Era women, and she can move up two more places with a win against Anett Kontaveit this weekend. Should Swiatek manage another blemish-free title and extend her streak to 28, she’ll overtake Steffi Graf and Arantxa Sanchez Vicario, each of whom ran off 26 straight sets and are currently tied for the second-longest French Open streak. It’s a bit early to start placing odds on whether Iga will ultimately tie Henin at 40, but even if she stumbles against Kontaveit, she’s already played her way into elite company.
Our second number is 2, Philipp Kohlschreiber’s win total against top-100 players since the restart last summer. Both of those wins have come in the last three days, as Kohlschreiber knocked out Fernando Verdasco and 24th seed Aslan Karatsev to reach the Roland Garros third round. The German hadn’t won back-to-back matches at a tour level event since Rome two years ago, and it’s his first grand slam third round since the US Open in 2018. At age 37, Kohlschreiber’s recent descent out of the top 100 and into Challenger draws appeared permanent, as he has missed time to a hip injury and struggled to string wins together even against second-tier competition. But he has one near-term motivation: to qualify for the Tokyo Olympics. At the moment, he’s ranked fifth among Germans, which isn’t good enough. In an interview at the Heilbronn Challenger last month, he said that a French Open quarter-final would get him into position. Outlandish as it sounded at the time, his math was right. He’s two wins away from overtaking Yannick Hanfmann as the German #4 and possibly earning that trip to Japan.
Today’s third and final number is 251st, Kwon Soonwoo’s ranking in my clay-only Elo ratings. Kwon, a 23-year-old from Korea, has played only 21 professional clay-court matches, losing more than half of them. All of this makes him the biggest surprise in this year’s French Open third round after overcoming veterans Kevin Anderson and Andreas Seppi. Kwon’s unexpected run will surely end soon, as he faces 9th seed Matteo Berrettini in the third round. But according to my forecast, he isn’t the man with the most hopeless odds of reaching the round of 16. That honor belongs to Ricardas Berankis, a hard-court specialist who knocked out the even more clay-phobic Ugo Humbert in the opening round. Like Kwon, Berankis ranks outside the top 100 in my clay-specific ratings, but his biggest problem tomorrow will be the man on the other side of the net, Novak Djokovic. Berankis and Djokovic met in the Roland Garros second round last fall, and the contest—if you can call it that—lasted all of 83 minutes. For either Berankis or Kwon, reaching the 90-minute mark on Saturday will mean it’s been a good day on the clay.
