Expected Points, March 1: A Weekend of Teenage Exploits

Expected Points, my new short, daily podcast, highlights three numbers to illustrate stats, trends, and interesting trivia around the sport.

Up today: Juan Manuel Cerundolo makes Argentinian tennis history, Iga Swiatek proves she’s more than a one-hit wonder, and Rotterdam kicks off with a slightly depleted field.

Scroll down for a transcript.

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Music: Love is the Chase by Admiral Bob (c) copyright 2021. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial (3.0) license. Ft: Apoxode

The Expected Points podcast is still a work in progress, so please let me know what you think.

Rough transcript of today’s episode:

The first number is 154, the number of ranking positions gained by Juan Manuel Cerundolo this week. The 19-year-old lefty from Argentina won the Cordoba title in his debut tour-level event, the first Argentine to do so in the Open Era. While he didn’t have to face top seed Diego Schwartzman, he still needed to prove his mettle against quality opponents, including 3-seed Miomir Kecmanovic, 7-seed Thiago Monteiro, and fifth seed Albert Ramos in the final. All of those players pushed him to three sets, but Cerundolo bounced back each time, winning each of the deciders by scores of 6-2 or 6-3. He entered the Cordoba qualifying draw ranked 335 and eight matches later, he heads to Buenos Aires up 154 spots, at 181st on the official list. The Tennis Abstract Elo ratings are even more bullish, ranking him 88th, just ahead of Monteiro and fellow teenage prospect Lorenzo Musetti. The next order of business for Juan Manuel is to chase down his older brother, Francisco, currently ranked 137th. While Juan Manuel’s performance in Cordoba earned him a main draw place in this week’s Buenos Aires event, Francisco will play a final round qualifying match this evening.

Our second number is 7. 7 is the number of active players on the WTA tour who won titles on both hard courts and clay courts before their 20th birthday. Iga Swiatek joined the club on Saturday with a routine win over Belinda Bencic in the Adelaide final, giving her the hard court trophy to pair with last fall’s breakthrough at Roland Garros. This is a rare list that even Serena Williams doesn’t qualify for. Venus Williams and Svetlana Kuznetsova are among the familiar names who achieved the same feat as teenagers, and Swiatek is only the second, after Dayana Yastremska, to do so in the last decade. While Yastremska needed third-set tiebreaks to win two of her teenage title matches, Swiatek barely breaks a sweat. Just like her Roland Garros title run, it was straight sets all the way in Adelaide. Iga’s title moves her up to 15th in the WTA rankings, which almost certainly underestimates her current level. Tennis Abstract Elo has her at number six, only four points behind Petra Kvitova for a place in the top five.

Today’s third and final number is 10, the number of players who withdrew from this week’s ATP event in Rotterdam before the draw was made. The initial entry list was so star studded that one wag dubbed the tournament Rotter-slam, but the loss of Rafael Nadal sent the field back to typical ATP 500 territory. Nadal is resting his back, and will also skip Acapulco, and may not be back in action before the tour returns to European clay. In addition to Nadal, five more top-20 players opened up places for alternates, including Matteo Berrettini, Denis Shapovalov, and Gael Monfils. There’s still plenty to see at the Dutch indoor event this year: Daniil Medvedev enters as the favorite, with his eye on the number two ranking position, and at 25 years of age, he is the oldest among the top four seeds. Fans who prefer veterans won’t be disappointed either: Andy Murray is here as a wild card, and the withdrawals bumped Stan Wawrinka into position as the 8th seed.

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