Expected Points, my new short, daily podcast, highlights three numbers to illustrate stats, trends, and interesting trivia around the sport.
On today’s episode: Iga Swiatek cruises into her first hard-court final, Schwartzman is in position to finally hoist a trophy in his home country, and Simona Halep reaches another career milestone.
Scroll down for a transcript.
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Rough transcript of today’s episode:
The first number is 4.5, the number of games that Iga Swiatek has lost per match en route to the Adelaide finals. The reigning Roland Garros champion lost in the fourth round of the Australian Open but has bounced right back, cruising into her first tour-level hard court final by beating two qualifiers, benefiting from a Danielle Collins retirement, and brushing aside Jil Teichmann today in 81 minutes. Her opponent in tomorrow’s title match, Belinda Bencic, has taken a more scenic route. After a first round bye, Bencic drew two qualifiers and a lucky loser. Today’s opponent, Coco Gauff, proved trickier than her entry status would imply. Bencic earned a match point at 5-4 in the second set, but failed to convert, lost the set in a tiebreak, and ended up needing nearly three hours to dispatch the American. While Bencic is higher ranked and holds a better resume on fast surfaces, Tennis Abstract Elo ratings see Swiatek as the narrow favorite to win the title tomorrow.
Our second number is 10. 10 is the number of times that Diego Schwartzman has entered ATP events in his home country of Argentina. He is still aiming for his first title there, and this week in Cordoba is his best chance yet. According to the Tennis Abstract forecast, he had a better than 40% of winning before play began, and going into the quarter-finals, he has a 55% chance of winning the tournament. The next-best contender, Benoit Paire, is forty percentage points behind. Schwartzman had his chances twice last February, losing to Cristian Garin in a three-set final in Cordoba, then winning a three hour, forty minute match against Pablo Cuevas in Buenos Aires that forced him to withdraw before the semi-finals. Perhaps his best chance came in 2019, when he upset Dominic Thiem in the Buenos Aires semi-final but came out flat against Marco Cecchinato in the title match. Diego got his revenge on the Italian yesterday, dropping only four games to set up a quarter-final today against Albert Ramos.
Today’s third and final number is 350, the number of consecutive weeks that Simona Halep has spent in the WTA top ten. 350 weeks is good for 8th on the all-time list, a far cry from Martina Navratilova’s 1,000 straight, but well ahead of any other active players. When Halep first joined the top ten in January of 2014, she joined the likes of Li Na, Agnieszka Radwanska, Jelena Jankovic, and then-number-one Serena Williams. Simona went on to win two titles, reach the Roland Garros final, and climb all the way to number two before the end of the year. Since then, she has been the only source of stability at the top of the WTA ranks. 41 other women have joined her in the top ten, none of them for more than 250 of her 350 weeks. It will be a long wait before the Romanian can move up another spot on the all-time list: 7th place is 420 weeks, held by Hana Mandlikova. But with Halep coming off an Australian Open quarter-final, sitting at number three, 2,500 points ahead of number eleven, another year and a half in the top ten seems eminently achievable.