Italian translation at settesei.it
Today in the Australian Open quarter-finals, Naomi Osaka recorded a routine victory, beating 6th seed Elina Svitolina 6-4 6-1. She’ll face Karolina Pliskova in tomorrow’s semi-final, and she has a chance to finish the tournament as the top-ranked player in the world.
(See the bottom of this post for updates.)
Osaka’s sprint to the finish line against Svitolina was what we’ve come to expect from the 21-year-old. The Eurosport commentators shared a remarkable stat: The last 59 times Osaka has won the first set, she has gone on to win the match. (On Eurosport during the match, they said 57, making today’s win 58, but I believe they left out a 2017 win by retirement against Heather Watson in which the first set was completed.) The last time she failed to convert a one-set advantage into a victory was the final match of her 2016 season, in Tianjin against Svetlana Kuznetsova.
Of course, winning the first set is a big advantage for anyone. If two players are evenly matched and there’s no momentum effect, the winner of the first set has a 75% chance of finishing the job. In the real world, the woman who takes the first set is usually the superior player, so her odds in the second and third sets are even better still. On the 2018 WTA tour, the player who claimed first set went on to win the match 81.5% of the time.
Even if Osaka’s theoretical odds of converting one-set advantages are even higher, 59 matches in a row is one heck of a feat. Only 15 women have an active streak of 10 or more consecutive first-set conversions, and a mere four hold a running streak of at least 20. In addition to Osaka, Aryna Sabalenka has converted 25 straight first-set victories, Qiang Wang has won 27 in a row, and Serena Williams is ready to pounce as soon as Osaka falters, with a current tally of 51. Serena’s string of consecutive conversions stretches over an even longer span, back to April 2016, in Miami. (Remember who came back to beat her? Svetlana Kuznetsova.)
It’s no surprise to see Serena showing up near the top of this list. After several years of looking up various tennis records and streaks, I’ve discovered a few general rules. First, if you think you’ve found a noteworthy recent achievement, Serena did it better. Second, if it involves brushing aside the tour’s rank and file, Steffi Graf was even better than Serena. And third, no matter how impressive Serena’s and Steffi’s feats, the all-time record will belong to either Chris Evert or Martina Navratilova.
The first-set-conversion streak no different. In addition to her current streak of 51 straight, Serena won 61 in a row in 2002-03. That’s two matches and three places above Osaka, but it’s only 37th on the all-time list. Graf converted first-set advantages for more than twice as long, tallying 126 in a row from 1989 to 1991. As impressive as that is, my third rule holds with a vengeance: Evert converted 220 in a row between 1978 and 1981 to earn top billing on this list. Navratilova comes in second, but with the consolation that she holds third place as well. Martina and Steffi are the only women with multiple triple-digit streaks.
Here are the longest first-set conversion streaks held by players in the top 40. Many of these women put together multiple streaks of 60 or more, and in those cases I’ve listed only their longest:
Rank Player Matches Span Notes 1 Chris Evert 220 1978-81 + 3 more 2 Martina Navratilova 172 1982-84 + 5 more 4 Steffi Graf 126 1989-91 + 3 more 6 Monica Seles 112 1991-93 + 1 more 7 Mary Joe Fernandez 105 1989-91 8 Pam Shriver 105 1986-88 9 Vera Zvonareva 103 2006-08 12 Martina Hingis 86 1996-97 14 Arantxa Sanchez Vicario 85 1992-93 16 Victoria Azarenka 79 2011-13 17 Maria Sharapova 77 2010-12 + 1 more 19 Margaret Court 74 1969-77 21 Venus Williams 73 1999-01 22 Sue Barker 70 1973-78 23 Evonne Cawley 69 1978-80 + 1 more 24 Lindsay Davenport 67 1999-00 + 1 more 25 Tracy Austin 67 1979-80 26 Virginia Wade 66 1975-78 28 Gabriela Sabatini 65 1990-91 30 Andrea Jaeger 64 1981-82 33 Claudia Kohde Kilsch 63 1986-87 34 Kerry Reid 62 1969-77 37 Serena Williams 61 2002-03 39 Anna Chakvetadze 60 2006-07 40 Naomi Osaka 59 2017-19 (active)
* Unfortunately all of these numbers come with a huge caveat. My historical WTA database isn’t perfect. I know that there are Evert and Navratilova matches missing, along with a handful of later results. For records like this, a single missing match could mean that Evert really had two streaks of 110 each, or any number of other permutations that would render my all-time list incorrect. So please, take these records as unofficial, and maybe the WTA will query their own–presumably more complete–database to produce a better list.
This is good company for the reigning US Open champion, and it looks even better if we narrow our view to 21st-century players. Only five of the women ahead of her on the list are active, and four of those are winners of multiple majors–another club that the 21-year-old could join this week. Her semi-final opponent, Karolina Pliskova, executed her own history-making comeback against Serena today. But if Pliskova finds herself down a set to Osaka, even she may not be enough of an escape artist to fight back against the best front-runner in women’s tennis.
Update: Osaka finished off the 2019 Australian Open with two more first-set conversions. In both the semi-final against Pliskova and the final against Kvitova, she won the the first set and went on to win in three. Thus, her streak is up to 61 and she has matched Serena’s best.