{"id":1242,"date":"2013-08-28T11:30:28","date_gmt":"2013-08-28T15:30:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/heavytopspin.com\/?p=1242"},"modified":"2013-08-28T11:30:28","modified_gmt":"2013-08-28T15:30:28","slug":"duvals-triumph-isners-breaks-flushings-favorites","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/2013\/08\/28\/duvals-triumph-isners-breaks-flushings-favorites\/","title":{"rendered":"Duval’s Triumph, Isner’s Breaks, Flushing’s Favorites"},"content":{"rendered":"

17-year-old Victoria Duval<\/a>, she of six career tour-level matches, upset 2011 champion and 11th seed Samantha Stosur<\/a> last night. \u00a0Leave it at that, and it sounds pretty impressive.<\/p>\n

But it doesn’t quite convey how impressive the youngster’s path to the second round has been. \u00a0Duval is ranked just inside the top 300–not high enough to get into the qualifying tournament on that basis. \u00a0Armed with a wild card, she beat three players, each with considerably more experience than she has.<\/p>\n

Reaching a Grand Slam main draw as a qualifying wild card is notable in and of itself. \u00a0The only one of this year’s nine qualie WCs to reach the main draw, she’s only the 16th woman to do so at the US Open since 1998 and only the 31st woman to do so at any Slam in that time frame.<\/p>\n

As we now know, she didn’t stop there, and that sets her further apart. \u00a0Of the 30 women who previous accomplished the feat, only 11 went on to win a match in the main draw. \u00a0(Only one of those, Great Britain’s Karen Cross<\/a>,\u00a0at Wimbledon in 1997, won two main draw matches.) \u00a0And only one of those ladies–Yulia Fedossova<\/a>, who qualified for the US Open in 2006–beat a seed. \u00a0Her victim was the much less imposing 25th seed, Anabel Medina Garrigues<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Every slam has its share of upsets, but this one goes far beyond that. \u00a0By beating a former champion and highly-seeded player, Duval did something no woman had done before.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

Yesterday was a good day for American men, who went 5-2. \u00a0The only victims were Steve Johnson<\/a>, who struggled with injuries, and junior champion Collin Altamirano, who no one could’ve expected would give Philipp Kohlschreiber<\/a> much of a fight.<\/p>\n

More notable than the simple fact of winning was the manner in which two US men did so. \u00a0In the battle of opposites<\/a>,\u00a0John Isner<\/a> defeated Filippo Volandri<\/a>, 6-0 6-2 6-3, and Donald Young<\/a> knocked out Martin Klizan<\/a>, 6-1 6-0 6-1.<\/p>\n

Isner set all kinds of personal records in the process. \u00a0Not known for his return game–to put it mildly–Isner had never won a bagel set on hard courts. \u00a0In fact, until beating Adrian Mannarino<\/a> in Newport last month, he had never won a set of professional tennis 6-0.<\/p>\n

Next, also because of that not-so-pesky return game, Isner tends to lose quite a few games, even when he’s winning. \u00a0In best-of-five matches, he had never before won a match without dropping at least nine games. \u00a0(That was at the French in 2010, when he beat Andrey Golubev<\/a>.) \u00a0Today he won while giving up only five.<\/p>\n

Finally, to reach such a scoreline, Isner broke serve a total of six times. \u00a0That’s something else he’s never done before. \u00a0He’s broken five times on a handful of occasions, but never six, unless he did so in Davis Cup, for which stats are more difficult to come by.<\/p>\n

Still, it seems likely that Klizan played worse than Volandri did. \u00a0As you might imagine, Klizan has never lost quite so comprehensively, though he did turn in a similarly abysmal performance in New York three years ago, when he lost to Juan Carlos Ferrero<\/a>, 6-1 6-3 6-0.<\/p>\n

For Young, it was only his third straight-set victory at a slam, regardless of lopsidedness. \u00a0And it was only the third time he won a Grand Slam match having earned his way into the main draw. \u00a0His other five wins–all at the US Open–came as a wild card.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

Since we’re talking about all these Americans winning in New York, it seems like a great time to point you toward Colin Davy’s recent effort to quantify home-court advantage in tennis<\/a>. \u00a0He finds that home-country players–both men and women–have a slight advantage that cannot be explained by other factors, to the tune of about 2%.<\/p>\n

In building jrank<\/a>, I’ve done some work along the same lines, and arrived at a similar number. \u00a0(On my old blog, I posted some very crude attempts, not controlling for things like surface, and claimed a much bigger effect. \u00a0I don’t think I’ve published the details of my more recent efforts.)<\/p>\n

As Colin notes, it’s a small effect compared to other sports. (Isner’s love of the USA<\/a> notwithstanding.) \u00a0To the extent home-court advantage in tennis stems from officiating bias–a common cause in other sports–the increasing use of Hawkeye would seem to lessen the effect. \u00a0And oddly, the practice of putting local players on main courts would turn out to be counterproductive. \u00a0By putting locals on Hawkeye courts, you’re taking away at least one slight advantage.<\/p>\n

Colin also suggests comparing different stages of the tournament, which may reveal that umpires have a greater or lesser bias as the stakes get higher. \u00a0That test occurred to me for a different reason. \u00a0Travel-related fatigue is a major factor (again, something Colin acknowledges), but it is one that would likely lessen as the tournament goes on. \u00a0A player might still be jetlagged for his first-round match, but if he wins a couple of rounds, that effect is likely gone.<\/p>\n

It’s an interesting field of study, one that is particularly tricky to separate from others–such as travel effects, surface preferences, venue familiarity, and so on. \u00a0As is so often the case in tennis, it is a topic that has been extensively hashed out for other sports, yet barely researched in ours.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

In case you missed it yesterday afternoon, I tracked every point of the Federer-Zemlja match, and came up with some very detailed serve breakdowns for each player. \u00a0Check it out.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

17-year-old Victoria Duval, she of six career tour-level matches, upset 2011 champion and 11th seed Samantha Stosur last night. \u00a0Leave it at that, and it sounds pretty impressive. But it doesn’t quite convey how impressive the youngster’s path to the second round has been. \u00a0Duval is ranked just inside the top 300–not high enough to … Continue reading Duval’s Triumph, Isner’s Breaks, Flushing’s Favorites<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1242"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1242\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}