Expected Points, my new short, daily podcast, highlights three numbers to illustrate stats, trends, and interesting trivia around the sport.
Up today: Berrettini was crushed by Novak Djokovic last time they played, today’s women’s quarterfinals feature a quartet of players who cruised through their last matches, and the WTA ranking system is barely rewarding this week’s stars.
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 288 minutes, the amount of time it took to play four fourth-round women’s matches on Monday. By contrast, Tuesday’s slate featured only the two bottom-half quarter-finals, a pair of marathons that combined to last 16 minutes longer, a total of 5 hours and 4 minutes. With the exception of defending champion Iga Swiatek, Monday’s top-half winners were hardly obvious favorites. Doubles star Barbora Krejcikova brushed aside former slam champ Sloane Stephens in 70 minutes, Maria Sakkari beat another major titlist, Sofia Kenin, in 69, and Coco Gauff needed less than an hour to get past dropshot master Ons Jabeur. The four speedy winners are back on court today. They’re unlikely to deliver anything quite like yesterday’s quarter-final slate, in which both matches went past 6-all in the decider. But the pairings of Swiatek-Sakkari and Gauff-Krejcikova feature in-form players who won’t let each other off easily. Maria Sakkari is particularly reliable when it comes to putting up a fight: Her last four losses went three sets, and she hasn’t dropped a straight-setter since early March, when Krejcikova beat her in Dubai. The way Iga is playing, keeping that three-set streak going would be just as impressive as an easy win against anyone else.
Our second number is 65.9%, the fraction of total points won by Novak Djokovic in his one previous meeting with Matteo Berrettini. The pair will have a rematch in the night session today. The first Djokovic-Berrettini encounter came at the 2019 Tour Finals, where the Italian was a newcomer and found himself overmatched by Novak, losing 6-2 6-1 in 63 minutes. Djokovic won 57 matches that year, but the lopsided contest in London was one of only three in which he won at least 65% of total points. Berrettini has become known for an effective brand of two-strike tennis: If his serve doesn’t beat you, the next shot will. According to Match Charting Project data, he wins 40% of his serve points on his first or second shot, and is nearly as decisive on clay. Against Djokovic in 2019, he won fewer than one-fifth of serve points on his first or second shot. The world #1 has a way of doing that to opponents, though the effect is not often so extreme. Of the two men’s quarter-finals today, the Rafael Nadal–Diego Schwartzman tilt looks more lopsided, but Berrettini has a lot of ground to make up to challenge Djokovic.
Today’s third and final number is 0, the number of women currently set to crack the WTA top 20 based on breakout performances at Roland Garros. Six of the eight quarter-finalists reached the final eight in Paris for the first time, and five of them started the fortnight ranked outside the top 20. Yet due to the hybrid post-pandemic ranking system, a French Open quarter-final isn’t worth as much as usual. The stat could change by the end of day: if Coco Gauff wins, she’ll move up to a provisional #17 from her previous career best of 25. Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova could return to the top 20 with one more win, and Barbora Krejcikova could join the club if she reaches the final. Remarkably, Tamara Zidansek, a semifinalist after yesterday’s marathon victory, can’t climb any higher than 23rd even if she wins the whole tournament. The rankings desperately need a post-pandemic reboot, but of equal import is the unpredictability of the field. Call it “depth” if you approve, “chaos” if you don’t—with all these streaking players ranked so low, we can expect an upset-filled summer in which seeds are little more than reminders of long-ago triumphs.
