Also today: Bublik’s quartet of comebacks; top seed upset trivia
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Diana Shnaider lost her place in the WTA top 100 after her first-round exit at the Australian Open. But before we had time to reevaluate her place on the prospect list, she hurled her momentum back in the other direction, going through the top three seeds in Hua Hin, Thailand, to win her first career tour-level title. (More later on the trivia aspect.)
The Russian left-hander is only 19 years old, and her new ranking of #73 places her fourth among all women under 21. (She’s also up to 76th on the Elo list, ranked among the top 70 on hard courts.) The only younger players ahead of her are Coco Gauff, Linda Noskova, and Mirra Andreeva. Gauff is already a major winner, and Andreeva is three years younger, the impossibly young sensation of the moment. Noskova, though, is just seven months younger; coming off a quarter-final showing in Australia, she has already cracked the top 30. Shnaider trails the Czech by some distance on the points table, but she is every bit as promising of a prospect.
Zhu Lin, the Chinese veteran seeded third in Hua Hin, was no match for Shnaider yesterday. A second-set tactical shift–and a delayed response from the Russian–sent the match to a decider, but when Shnaider adjusted and Zhu failed to offer any new problems, it became a race to the finish. The 19-year-old completed her sixth top-50 victory, collecting the trophy by the score of 6-3, 2-6, 6-1.
Shnaider’s response to the final-round challenge was a fitting end to the week. Her three seeded victims–Zhu, Magda Linette, and Wang Xinyu–play different styles of tennis. Each one, at times, threatened to derail the Russian’s own game. She doesn’t yet have the weapons to impose herself on a top-tier opponent; her game may never be quite big enough for that. But her ability to handle the variety on offer in Hua Hin is an encouraging sign that she is maturing as a player. It could be a very long time before she gives up her place in the top 100.
Pushing around
The Russian has described herself an aggressive player. “I never wanted to be a pusher,” she told Christopher Clarey. “I was always like: ‘OK, here’s the shot. I’m killing it.'”
She isn’t a pusher, but by the standards of modern-day women’s tennis, she isn’t particularly aggressive, either. Her serve isn’t big enough to dictate play: 80% of them come back, setting her equal to Elina Svitolina or Emma Navarro. She uses her groundstrokes as weapons in every direction, but she plays within herself and leaves winners on the table. She ends points a bit more often than the typical WTAer from the baseline in exchange for a tour-average rate of unforced errors. Her Rally Aggression Score, across six charted matches from the last year, is +13, slightly above the norm and similar to that of Maria Sakkari.
It’s tempting to label her a counterpuncher, especially after watching a highlight reel or two. The broadcast commentator for her first-round victory over Linette was reduced to sputtering “No way!” after one unlikely recovery; my own reaction was less printable. She’s extremely fast, deceptively so. Woe betide the opponent who approaches the net. A singles court is 27 feet wide, and Shnaider needs only a few inches.
But “counterpuncher” isn’t right either. She’s not a pusher, she’s a pusher-around. Her relatively flat crosscourt groundstrokes off both wings are daunting, especially the left-handed forehand. The Russian rarely squanders an opportunity to do something with a groundstroke, whether that means widening the court or dislodging her opponent from the baseline. She doesn’t go for broke, but there’s not much passivity in her approach.
Shnaider’s brand of pushing-around works best against an opponent with an exploitable backhand. Linette’s backhand was too steady, which is what made the first rounder the Russian’s closest contest of the week. (Each woman won 75 of the first 150 points before the knot was finally untied.) Against Wang Xinyu and Zhu Lin, the crosscourt forehand consistently took control of points:
MATCH W/FE% PointsWon% SF vs Wang 27% 76% FI vs Zhu 30% 66% -- DS Avg 20% 59% -- Tour Avg 14% 53% R1 vs Linette 22% 47%
These numbers are for crosscourt forehands only. When she hits them, Shnaider ends points in her favor one-fifth of the time, and she came close to one in three yesterday against Zhu. More commonly, the pressure created by that stroke–not the individual shot itself–is what wins the point. The average WTA player picks up barely half of points in which they hit a crosscourt forehand. It’s just not an overwhelmingly offensive shot. Iga Swiatek wins 60% of those points; Aryna Sabalenka wins 58%. Shnaider, like Iga, wins nearly 60% of them, claiming two of three against Zhu and more than three out of four against Wang.
She’s not killing the ball, not most of the time anyway. But it doesn’t matter. Her crosscourt forehand is the tennis equivalent of death by a thousand cuts.
Adjustment periods
Shnaider’s game is a work in progress, no criticism for a 19-year-old who balanced college tennis with the tour for half of last year. She will almost certainly develop more power, especially on the serve, where there is a wide gap between her biggest strikes and her more pedestrian offerings. She will probably also learn to take more chances from the baseline, an adjustment that would give her more control over her own fate.
On a smaller scale, each one of her three seeded opponents last week threatened to take control of their encounters; each time, the left-hander recovered in time to advance.
Linette, as we’ve seen, had no problem with the barrage of crosscourt forehands. After Shnaider won the opening frame, the top seed roared back with a 6-1 second. From there, though, the Russian was a different player. She sent more first serves to the wide corners–reliable weapons for many a left-hander–which sealed the first game of the decider with the loss of just one point. She also moved away from the crosscourt forehand, letting Linette test her own backhand with crosscourt forehands of her own. At 30-40 in the Pole’s first service game of the decider, Linette hit her plus-one shot down the middle. Where Shnaider might prefer to attack crosscourt, she instead went inside-out, setting herself up for a backhand crosscourt winner on the following shot. Linette would break back in the following game, but her momentum was broken. Shnaider had opened up new tactical options and would take the third set, 6-1.
Wang’s threat was less serious, but it represents bigger dangers that the 19-year-old will face on tour. Shnaider won the first set easily, aided by Wang’s own mistakes. But the Chinese player brought her power under control at the beginning of the second, breaking for a 3-1 advantage. The fourth game demonstrated what a big hitter can do: Wang needed only five shots to reach 40-30. There wasn’t anything to push around.
While Wang wasn’t exactly dominant on serve, she was good enough. The only way to handle a (temporarily) unbreakable server is to take care of your own deal, and Shnaider did her best. She took more chances with first serves, seeing that number fall below 50%, compared to a usual rate above 60%. When she was able to extend rallies, she let Wang make mistakes. The second-set tiebreak ended with a combination of the two: At 4-5, Wang missed a swinging volley to end a 20-stroke rally. Two points later, Shnaider cracked a wide first serve that didn’t come back.
Zhu Lin proved to be the knottiest problem of the three top seeds, even if she didn’t play the best tennis. Though Zhu doesn’t have big weapons, she knows the dangers of passive tennis, especially against someone like Shnaider who will push her around. After the first set went to the Russian, 6-3, Zhu did everything she could to shorten points. For one set, it worked:
RALLY LEN Shots/Pt Set 1 4.6 Set 2 3.7 Set 3 4.6
Zhu picked up the second set, 6-2, in large part because Shnaider reacted so badly to the shift. After balancing winners and unforced errors in the first set, the 19-year-old hit just two winners against ten errors–including six on the forehand–in the second.
When the deciding set began, it was as if both players realized that Zhu couldn’t keep playing with borrowed tactics. Shnaider continued to put service returns close to the baseline–her Return Depth Index was 2.83, by far the best of the charted matches in her career so far–making it more difficult for Zhu to attack. Her forehand recovered, ensuring that she would keep points alive. A better player, or one with more experience, might have reacted to Zhu’s shift more quickly, but it is to Shnaider’s credit that she did so, so comprehensively, well before the clock ran out. The Russian concluded her title run with a 6-1 final set.
If the course of this week’s triumph is any indication, Shnaider’s march to the top of the rankings will be a steady one. She has too much to figure out before she consistently beats the best, and that will take time. But her run of upsets in Hua Hin showed us that she is making progress, and that her in-match problem-solving skills far surpass those of the typical 19-year-old. As the problems get tougher, we’ll find out just how far she can go.
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Alexander Bublik’s four comebacks
Alexander Bublik won the Montpellier title the hard way, coming back from one-set deficits against all four of his opponents. It’s the first time anyone has ever won an ATP title despite losing the first set of each of his matches. It’s never happened on the Challenger tour, either.
However, the key word here is four. Bublik was the second seed in Montpellier, so he didn’t have to play a first-round match. No titlist has ever lost the first set in all of their matches, but many players have won a tournament despite losing four first sets.
I found 20 previous occasions when a player came back so often at the same event, en route to a title. (Presumably there are even more, if we look for finalists, quarter- and semi-finalists at majors, and so on.) Bublik was the first since 2009, when Radek Stepanek recorded back-to-back wins against Andy Roddick and Mardy Fish to claim the San Jose title. He recovered from a one-set deficit four times, straight-setting only Chris Guccione.
The feat was more common at the beginning of the century, occuring twice each in 2001 and 2002. Tommy Haas recorded four comebacks on the way to a title at the 2001 Stuttgart Masters, the single Masters-level title run on this list. His only straight-set victory was the best-of-five final against Max Mirnyi. Nicolas Escude won Rotterdam in 2002 against an all-star cast including Roger Federer, Juan Carlos Ferrero, Tim Henman, Sebastien Grosjean, and Tommy Robredo, losing the first set to all but Robredo. Don’t be too hard on Tommy, though: He took the first set from Paul-Henri Mathieu in Moscow the same year, where Mathieu dropped four first sets yet still took home the trophy.
Two major winners appear on this list: John McEnroe for his 1981 US Open run, and Andre Agassi for his 1992 championship at Wimbledon (where, in another coincidence, he beat McEnroe in the semis). Those feats aren’t really in the same category as Bublik’s, as they had seven chances to come back. On the other hand, McEnroe recovered from a one-set deficit against Bjorn Borg, so I’m not about to disqualify him from anything.
Finally, there’s one oddball occasion that–if you squint hard enough–really is a precedent for Montpellier last week. Emilio Sanchez led Spain to the 1992 World Team Cup title, beating Stefan Edberg, Guy Forget, and Jakob Hlasek in the round robin, then defeating Petr Korda in the final round. In each one, he came back after losing the first set. It’s not quite the same thing, but Sanchez went home a hero, and he came back in all four of his matches. Whether it qualifies or not, it was one hell of a week.
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Shnaider’s top-three upsets
As I mentioned at the top of today’s post, Diana Shnaider went through the first, second, and third three seeds in Hua Hin en route to the title. (Unlike Bublik, she won all five of her first sets, too.) She beat top seed Magda Linette in the first round, third-seeded Wang Xinyu in the semi-finals, and second seed Zhu Lin in the final.
Shnaider’s feat is not so rare as Bublik’s. Excluding year-end tour championships, where seeds clash in every match, Hua Hin is the sixth time in a decade that player has gone through the top three seeds to win the title. Remarkably, Barbora Krejcikova has done it twice in two years, beating Anett Kontaveit, Belinda Bencic, and Beatriz Haddad Maia to win Tallinn in 2022, then upsetting Aryna Sabalenka, Jessica Pegula, and Iga Swiatek (not to mention seventh-seed Daria Kasatkina and twelvth-seed Petra Kvitova) to win Dubai last year.
The list of previous such winners is a glittering one, usually when a superstar returns from a prolonged absence. Serena Williams beat Martina Hingis, Jennifer Capriati, and sister Venus to win Miami in 2002. Steffi Graf won the 1999 French Open by knocking out Lindsay Davenport, Monica Seles, and Hingis in succession.
Graf wasn’t the first player to win a major title in such a fashion: Virginia Wade picked up the first US Open, in 1968, by eliminating Judy Tegart, Ann Jones, and Billie Jean King.
Conchita Martinez is probably the best player who won a title this way when she was still on the rise: She upset Sabrina Goles, Katerina Maleeva, and Barbara Paulus to pick up the 1988 Sofia crown. Hana Mandlikova, like Krejcikova, did it twice: At the 1984 Oakland tourney, she beat Andrea Jaeger, Pam Shriver, and Martina Navratilova. She returned the next year and did it again, knocking out Wendy Turnbull, Helena Sukova, and Chris Evert.
Finally, a twist: Margaret Court also appears on the list twice. Shortly after returning from her first pregnancy, she won the 1972 Newport title–where she was seeded sixth–with victories over Rosie Casals, Evert, and King. The odder instance is her other appearance, for the Locust Valley (New York) event in 1969. Court plowed through top seeds Denise Carter, Patti Hogan, and Betty Ann Grubb, losing just 12 games in the process.
Margaret had already won two majors that year–so why wasn’t she the top seed? Traditionally, foreign players were placed on a separate seeding list. Carter, Hogan, and Grubb were the top three Americans at the rather weak event. Court was designated 1F–the top foreign seed, ahead of 2F Kerry Harris, with whom she won the doubles, too. Foreign seeds were placed in the draw so they would avoid local seeds (and each other) until later rounds. So this example doesn’t really count: By modern standards, Court was herself the top seed, and Harris probably outranked one or more of the Americans.
Even if we toss out Locust Valley, Shnaider finds herself in good company. She joins Wade, Court, Mandlikova, Martinez, Graf, Amelie Mauresmo, Serena, and–thanks to a sparkling week in Luxembourg in 2016–the great Monica Niculescu.
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