Last night in Toronto, 91st-ranked qualifier Marie Bouzkova won her quarter-final match against 4th-ranked Simona Halep. Halep retired with a leg injury after losing the first set, so there’s a caveat–even if we were prepared to read too much into a single match, we wouldn’t attribute a lot of meaning to this one. But it’s a big accomplishment for the 21-year-old Czech, who earned her second top-ten scalp of the week and will advance to her first Premier-level semi-final, against no less of an obstacle than Serena Williams.
Here’s the nutty thing: It was Bouzkova’s 62nd match of the 2019 season, her 61st against someone with a WTA ranking. She got the win against the highest-ranked foe–Halep–but just last week, she lost to 636th-ranked CoCo Vandeweghe, her lowest-ranked opponent of the year. Yeah, the caveats keep coming: Vandeweghe is coming back from injury and is surely better than a ranking outside the top 600, and the ITF Transition Tour hijinks mean that the ranking system didn’t work as usual in 2019. Some players who would normally have a very low ranking, like the Kazakh wild card who Bouzkova crushed a couple of weeks ago, don’t count.
Still. 61 matches, with a win against the highest-ranked player and a loss against the lowest.
That sent me to my database, which had plenty more surprises in store. Going back less than a decade, to 2010, I found 127 players who recorded the same oddball combination of feats in a single season, minimum 30 matches. (To be consistent with the Halep result, I included retirements if at least one set was completed.) While many of the players won’t be of wide interest–last year, one of the exemplars was Mira Antonitsch, who didn’t play anyone ranked in the top 400–63 of the 127 player-seasons involved beating a top-100 opponent, 44 included the defeat of someone in the top 50, and 25 were highlighted by a top-ten upset.
Three of them included Halep as the top-ten scalp! That makes Bouzkova the fourth player to beat Halep, not face anyone higher ranked, and also lose to her lowest-ranked opponent of the season. (Through eight months, anyway.) Halep shouldn’t feel too bad, though, as Angelique Kerber has been the extreme-ranked loser in five such cases, four of them in 2017. Ouch.
Here are the 25 player-seasons between 2010 and 2018 in which a WTAer beat her highest-ranked opponent and lost to her lowest:
Year Player High-Ranked Rk Low-Ranked Rk 2017 Kasatkina Kerber 1 Kanepi 418 2018 Hsieh Halep 1 Gasparyan 410 2010 Jankovic Serena 1 Diyas 268 2010 Clijsters Wozniacki 1 G-Vidagany 258 * 2014 Cornet Serena 1 Townsend 205 2010 Yakimova Jankovic 2 Dellacqua 980 2017 Bouchard Kerber 2 Duval 896 * 2017 Vesnina Kerber 2 Azarenka 683 2016 Bencic Kerber 2 Boserup 225 2014 Rybarikova Halep 2 Eguchi 183 2017 Mladenovic Kerber 2 Andreescu 167 * 2018 Goerges Wozniacki 3 Serena 451 2014 Tomljanovic Radwanska 3 A Bogdan 308 2015 Mladenovic Halep 3 Savchuk 262 2017 Kerber Pliskova 4 Stephens 934 2014 Pavlyu'ova Radwanska 4 Wozniak 241 2017 Dodin Cibulkova 5 Rybarikova 453 2017 Bellis Radwanska 6 Azarenka 683 2018 Buyukakcay Ostapenko 6 Di Sarra 555 2017 Sakkari Wozniacki 6 Potapova 454 2015 L Davis Bouchard 7 E Bogdan 527 2015 Ostapenko S-Navarro 9 Dushevina 1100 * 2016 KC Chang Vinci 10 S Murray 862 2018 Pera Konta 10 Hlavackova 825 2018 Danilovic Goerges 10 Pegula 620
* also faced one unranked player
A quick glance is all it takes to establish that Vandeweghe isn’t the first lowest-ranked player to inspire a “yeah, but” reaction. The list of purportedly weak opponents is very strong for one made up of players with an average ranking outside of the top 500. We have stars such as Victoria Azarenka (twice) and Serena as well as a helping of prospects such as Bianca Andreescu and Victoria Duval.
Consider this as today’s reminder of the limitations of the WTA computer rankings. They tell us who has won a lot of matches in the last 52 weeks, not necessarily who is playing well right now. These cases include many of the most extreme mismatches between official ranking and on-the-day ability. I don’t think it says anything meaningful about a player to show up on this list–though Kerber’s many appearances (as both player and scalp!) are a good summary of her disappointing 2017 campaign.
Bouzkova will remain on the list for at least a couple more days: Serena is currently ranked 10th and both of the other semi-finalists are ranked lower, so Halep will remain her “toughest” opponent. Despite the Czech’s breakout week, it would be understandable if she found herself overawed to face a 23-time slam champion across the net. But one thing is certain: Bouzkova couldn’t care less about the number next to the name.