Defense, as they say, wins championships. Coco Gauff has a big serve, a strong backhand, and a high tennis IQ, not to mention a new guru in Brad Gilbert. All of that got her to the US Open final and gave her a shot against new No. 1 Aryna Sablenka. But defense was what won her the match.
If you watched the final, you already know this. Over and over again, Gauff rescued a sure winner, hanging in the point long enough for Sabalenka to miss. In a close contest, as this one was, a handful of points can determine the result.
It’s tough to say exactly how many points Gauff saved with her exemplary defense. Sometimes she made multiple digs in the same point; other times she averted disaster just to lose the point a couple of strokes later. Still, we should try to quantify the effect she had on the normally imperious Sabalenka game.
My stat of choice is something I’m going to call, simply, Defense. For any match with charting-based stats, it’s a simple calculation: The percentage of the opponent’s groundstrokes that resulted in winners or forced errors. (I introduced it in my Andy Murray essay as part of the Tennis 128 project last year.) In other words: How often does the player get herself in a position to put a groundstroke back in play?
Among tour regulars on hard and grass courts, the range of the Defense stat runs from about 7%–the backboards that are Lesia Tsurenko and Sloane Stephens–to 15%, where you’ll find the less nimble Evgeniya Rodina and Linda Noskova. Lower is better! Tour average is around 11%. Gauff, over the course of her young career, has averaged 10.8%.
Average doesn’t carry much weight, though, when it comes to Sabalenka. Aryna’s groundstrokes end the point in her favor–with a winner or forced error–17.3% of the time. Only Jelena Ostapenko, at 18.0%, scores higher, and just a few other women are as high as 15%. Turning in an “average” performance against Sabalenka–that is, keeping her to 11%–is a massive step toward victory.
On Saturday, Gauff held her to 9.8%.
Sabalenka hit 285 groundstrokes in the final. 15 went for winners; another 13 turned into forced errors. Had she converted at her usual rate, those numbers would’ve been nearly twice as high: 49 points won off the ground instead of 28.
Gauff’s actual margin of victory was a mere seven points. By the Defense measure, she saved 21 solely with her superlative handling of Aryna’s groundstrokes. Again, it doesn’t quite work that way; she dug out multiple would-be winners on some points, for instance. On the other hand, it isn’t the only way Coco salvaged desperate situations. This measure doesn’t take into account quick-footed service returns or defense against the smash.
It’s almost impossible to overemphasize the magnitude of Gauff’s achievement. In 48 hard and grass court matches since last year’s US Open, just two of Sabalenka’s opponents managed a Defense stat better than 11.6%. The only other exception was Veronika Kudermetova, against Aryna’s limp performance in Berlin. Sabalenka’s average over the last 52 weeks is 19.7%, probably one of the highest marks posted by any baseliner, ever.
Gauff simply cut it in half. She effectively turned one of the most imposing players in women’s tennis history into a frustrated journeywoman–or at least the statistical equivalent of one. Gilbert might call it Winning Ugly, but it looked awfully good to me.
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