Today’s women’s semifinals have at least one thing in common. \u00a0In both, one player has yet to drop a set at the US Open and has lost many fewer games than her opponent.<\/p>\n
Does it matter?<\/p>\n
The differences are particularly glaring in today’s second semifinal, between Serena Williams<\/a> and Na Li<\/a>. \u00a0Serena has not lost a set, and has dropped only 13 games. \u00a0Li has been pushed quite a bit further, losing 31 games in her first five matches.<\/p>\n Out of 714 Open-era Grand Slam semifinal matches, 30 have featured two players with such a wide gap. \u00a0To quantify it, we’ll note that Li has lost 2.38 times as many games as Serena has. \u00a0Of those 30 matches, the player who had displayed more dominance in the early rounds won 25.<\/p>\n Strangely, though, the connection has been much weaker in recent years. \u00a0Most of those 25 super-dominant semifinals were the usual suspects in WTA history: Margaret Court<\/a>, Chris Evert<\/a>, and Steffi Graf<\/a>. \u00a0Only five of these lopsided pairings have taken place since 1994, and of those five, the\u00a0less<\/em> dominant player has won three. \u00a0The most recent example was Li’s semifinal in Australia. \u00a0She went into her match having lost 31 games, while her opponent, Maria Sharapova<\/a>, had lost only 9. \u00a0Despite showing so much more weakness in the early rounds, Li won her semifinal 6-2 6-2.<\/p>\n In general, however, the more dominant the early rounds, the better chance a player has of reaching the final. \u00a0Of the 349 Slam semifinals in which one player had lost fewer games in her first five rounds, 228 (65.3%) advanced to the final. \u00a0The same percentage applies to the player who lost fewer sets en route to her semifinal.<\/p>\n Despite her low ranking and her buzzsaw of an opponent, this bodes well for Flavia Pennetta<\/a>, right?<\/p>\n Well, not exactly. \u00a0As hardly needs mention, there are other factors involved here. \u00a0A great player might have a sloppy early-round match or suffer an unlucky draw. \u00a0That doesn’t mean she’s any less great, or less likely to show her top form in the semis. \u00a0Victoria Azarenka<\/a> has certainly had a more challenging tournament so far than Pennetta has, but it would be a mistake to read too much into that.<\/p>\n For the most part, early-round dominance and superior WTA rankings go hand in hand. \u00a0Of 228 semifinal matches where I have ranking data, just over half (117) were won by the player who had dropped fewer games–who just happened to be the player with the better ranking. \u00a0No surprises here–if someone is going to play like Serena has so far, she’s probably #1.<\/p>\n The remaining 111 matches are where things get interesting. \u00a0In 75 of them, one player had the higher ranking (like Azarenka) and the other had been more dominant in the early rounds (like Pennetta). \u00a0The results favor the higher-ranked player, but not as much as you might expect: 30 of those 75 (40%) went in favor of the lower-ranked player.<\/p>\n Of course, most of those lower-ranked players aren’t quite the underdogs that Pennetta is. \u00a0As we saw yesterday<\/a>, Flavia is one of the lowest ranked semifinalists in women’s Slam history. \u00a0Only two players outside of the top 32 have ever advanced to a final–Venus Williams<\/a> at the 1997 US Open, and Serena at the 2007 Australian. \u00a0Whatever else you might say about the Italian, she’s not a Williams sister.<\/p>\n Using these two variables, though, it is Na Li who faces the tougher challenge today. \u00a0She’ll need to beat a higher-ranked player who has been untouchable through five rounds. \u00a0Keep the faith: That’s exactly what she did in Melbourne this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Today’s women’s semifinals have at least one thing in common. \u00a0In both, one player has yet to drop a set at the US Open and has lost many fewer games than her opponent. Does it matter? The differences are particularly glaring in today’s second semifinal, between Serena Williams and Na Li. \u00a0Serena has not lost … Continue reading Early Round Dominance and Women’s Semifinal Outcomes<\/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":[118],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-u-s-open"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1287","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=1287"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1287\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}