Expected Points, my new short, daily podcast, highlights three numbers to illustrate stats, trends, and interesting trivia around the sport.
Up today: Fernandez makes an early exit from Miami only one day after a triumph in Monterrey, Lorenzo Musetti joins a growing battalion of Italian men, and Juan Martin del Potro goes under the knife one more time.
Scroll down for a transcript.
You can subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and elsewhere in the podcast universe.
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 24 hours, the amount of recovery time for Leylah Fernandez between winning her first WTA title in Monterrey and getting back on court in the first round of Miami qualifying. Fatigue triumphed over momentum, as Fernandez lost in straight sets last night to fellow lefty Mihaela Buzarnescu. Still, it’s been a great month for the 18-year-old Canadian. With the Monterrey trophy, which she secured without dropping a set, she jumped to a new career high of #72 in the official rankings, while Elo gives her even more credit, ranking her 33rd in the world. Canadian tennis is on the upswing, with rising stars Bianca Andreescu, Felix Auger Aliassime, and Denis Shapovalov establishing themselves as elites. Fernandez isn’t quite there yet, but it’s worth remembering that when Andreescu was the same age at the beginning of 2019, she was still ranked outside the top 150. The lefty is the WTA’s top-ranked 18 year old, and among teens, she now trails only Iga Swiatek, Amanda Anisimova, and Coco Gauff.
Our second number is 9, the number of Italians now in the ATP top 100. Number nine was Lorenzo Musetti, another teenager whose exploits in Mexico last week sent him hurtling up the rankings list. Unlike Fernandez, he didn’t win a title, but at the ATP 500 in Acapulco, he knocked out Diego Schwartzman, Frances Tiafoe, and Grigor Dimitrov before finally running out of gas against Stefanos Tsitsipas in the semi-finals. Also unlike Fernandez, he snuck into the Miami main draw, so he’ll have a few days to recover. Nine top-100 men is the best-ever mark for Italy, and closely trails the strongest nations in the sport. France and Spain both have 11 men in the top 100, and the United States has 10. Where no one can touch the Italians is in the teenage department: Musetti and Jannik Sinner are the only two teens in the top 100. Now that Italy has captured the chairmanship of the ATP, the year-end tour finals, and a healthy chunk of the top 100, perhaps it will develop some female stars to match. At the moment, the best on offer is Camila Giorgi, ranked #86.
Today’s third and final number is 8, the number of surgeries that have interrupted the tennis career of Juan Martin Del Potro. The most recent is taking place today, as his right knee goes under the knife for the fourth time. It seems like ages ago that Del Potro’s wrists were the problem, and even longer since he won the 2009 US Open, defeating Roger Federer in a five-set final. The Argentinian giant who once appeared poised to break through the stranglehold of the big four has been reduced to a lovable member of the supporting cast, occasionally staying healthy long enough to remind us of how great he could’ve been, with a silver medal at the 2016 Rio Olympics and an Indian Wells title in 2018. Delpo has repeatedly said that he wants to go out on his own terms, and today’s surgery will, at least in theory, give him a chance to play at this summer’s Olympiad in Tokyo. With two medals, two upsets of Novak Djokovic and another of Rafael Nadal, there’s no more fitting place for Del Potro to return. With the pandemic restricting foreign travel, let’s hope the Japanese-only crowd brings an Argentine flag or two
