In Sunday’s Singapore final, Alexander Bublik won six return points. Not a typo. Out of Alexei Popyrin’s 52 serve points, that’s a win percentage of 11.6%. The technical term for this level of performance is… bad.
Yet somehow, Bublik concentrated four of those points in the fifth game and broke serve. (Popyrin helped–one of the four was a double fault.) Even more miraculously, it was the only break in the opening set, so the Russian won the set and got halfway to the title. Alas, he cranked the futility up another notch, winning only one return point the rest of the way, and it was Popyrin who came away with his maiden championship.
Freakish statistical feats tend to raise three questions: What are the odds? Has this ever happened before? And, can we learn anything from this nonsense?
What are the odds?
If Bublik had that exact 11.6% chance of winning each service point, his probability of breaking in any given game would be 0.26%, or about 1 in 384. In reality, it’s probably higher than that, because servers aren’t robots. Presumably Popyrin’s level dipped a bit. Still, if we take that 0.26% as the answer, Bublik’s likelihood of breaking serve at least once in the 22-game match were less than 3%.
You probably don’t need the precise numbers to recognize that, if you win six return points in the whole match, your odds of breaking serve aren’t that great.
Has this ever happened before?
The answer depends on what you mean by “this.” In our 30 years of ATP tour matches with stats on things like return points won and breaks of serve, the Singapore final was the first time that a player broke serve and won a set despite winning six or fewer return points.
It’s fairly common for a player to have a very bad return day, or face an extremely hot server. On average, there are about 30 completed tour-level matches per year in which the loser manages six or fewer return points. But of those 900-plus matches, the official stats only show seven times that the loser managed to break serve. (I emphasize “official” here because the ATP’s stats do have errors, and extreme situations like these tend to bring them out of hiding. A simple data-entry error can easily make a routine match look like a record-breaker.)
The most recent instance of six-return-points-and-a-break was in 2010, when Lukasz Kubot concentrated his efforts in a single return game of a Bucharest first-round match against Filippo Volandri. Every match on the list was a first-rounder except for a 1995 quarter-final at the Tokyo Indoors, when Alexander Volkov managed to break Michael Chang despite winning only those few return points.
Every six-pointer was a straight set loss, at least until Bublik came along.
Except… it’s possible to win six or fewer return points and win a set without breaking serve. In fact, it’s theoretically possible to win an entire match with only two return points going your way, if you deploy them in tiebreaks and remain flawless on your own deal. Reilly Opelka did exactly that (well, he won six points, not two) in Basel two years ago against Cristian Garin. Garin won all but 6 of his 69 service points but lost, 7-6(5) 7-6(10).
Bublik’s feat in the Singapore final wasn’t quite that level of oddity, but as an accomplishment amid return futility, his break-and-a-set is a close second.
Can we learn anything from this nonsense?
Bublik is a talented player, but he’s not a very good returner. This was his third career ATP final (excluding a two-game retirement in January), and his rates of return points won in those matches are 26.7%, 18.9%, and now 11.6%. It’s no surprise that he’s still looking for his first title. It turns out that underarm serving doesn’t have any secret advantages for his return game.
He has won 35.6% of his return points over the last 52 weeks–an improvement over his 34.1% mark at tour level in 2019, but still only good for 42nd out of the current ATP top 50. If he continues to serve big, that’s good enough for an Isner-like career, possibly spending considerable time in the top 20, maybe even with a brief stop in the top ten.
But to reach the next level, the Russian will need to return a lot better. Several years ago, I looked at the “minimum viable return game” necessary for an elite player. At the time, I was interested in Nick Kyrgios’s chances at a spot near the top of the rankings despite his own brand of return futility. In the 25 years between 1991 and 2015, when I wrote that piece, only four players finished a season in the top five while winning less than 37% of their return points, and two of those were within a percentage point of the threshold.
Kyrgios wasn’t close to that level then, and he still isn’t. Bublik is closer, but he’s still on the wrong side of the line. Optimists can point to the Russian’s relative youth–he turns 24 in June–and trust he’ll improve. Of course he might, but history isn’t on his side there, either. Kyrgios’s lack of progress is typical of the breed. Mediocre returners may improve their skills and tactics, but as they do so, they face more difficult opponents, keeping their numbers down.
If there is a positive take-away from the Singapore final, it’s that Bublik did manage to bunch his return points. Kyrgios outplays his numbers by saving his heroics for bigger moments. (Another way of looking at “outplaying his numbers” is “underperforming given his skills.”) Bublik shows signs of doing the same, so when he does manage to win more than six return points, he may be able to eke disproportionate gains out of them.
That’s the theory, anyway.