{"id":1300,"date":"2013-09-08T11:16:31","date_gmt":"2013-09-08T15:16:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/heavytopspin.com\/?p=1300"},"modified":"2013-09-08T11:16:31","modified_gmt":"2013-09-08T15:16:31","slug":"does-azarenka-have-a-chance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/2013\/09\/08\/does-azarenka-have-a-chance\/","title":{"rendered":"Does Azarenka Have a Chance?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The last two times<\/a> Serena Williams<\/a> and Victoria Azarenka<\/a> have met on hard courts, Azarenka has come out on top. \u00a0As much confidence as that might give her going into today’s final, it might be the only evidence suggesting she’s likely to win.<\/p>\n

Today’s match will come down to Vika’s ability to hold serve, and while she has moved quickly through her last two rounds, she has yet to show that she can serve well enough to hold off the onslaught that is Serena’s return game.<\/p>\n

In the semifinal against Flavia Pennetta<\/a>, she lost more service points than she won<\/a>, and was broken in five of her nine service games. \u00a0Against Daniela Hantuchova<\/a>, she lost 47% of her service points<\/a>, suffering three service breaks. \u00a0Playing Ana Ivanovic<\/a>, she lost more than half of her service points<\/a>, and was broken seven times.<\/p>\n

While each of those players had a nice tournament, this is not exactly a Hall of Fame lineup that has reduced Azarenka’s service games to coin flips. \u00a0None brings anywhere near the weaponry to the return game that Serena does. \u00a0And Serena is considerably more difficult to break back.<\/p>\n

These numbers make it all the more surprising that the last meeting between these two players ended in Vika’s favor. \u00a0We have detailed data from that most recent matchup<\/a>:\u00a0 Azarenka managed to win 55% of her service points (the same figure she held Serena to) and landed 11 of 12 serves on game points, winning nine of them.<\/p>\n

Another promising data point is last year’s US Open final<\/a>, in which Serena managed to win only 44% of Azarenka’s service points. \u00a0In both of these recent contests, the differences between Vika’s first-serve and second-serve success rates is tiny–in New York last year, it was a mere two percentage points–suggesting that she needs only a slight edge at the beginning of a rally to win the point.<\/p>\n

Azarenka has the ability to step up her game for the big matches, so the question she’ll have to answer today is: Can she serve more effectively than she has all tournament? \u00a0If she does, even at the modest level she did in Cincinnati, we’re in for a very competitive afternoon of tennis.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

Check out this final preview<\/a> from Tom Perrotta, in which everyone agrees that Vika will raise her level today.<\/p>\n

If you missed it yesterday, I wrote recaps of both men’s semifinals. \u00a0Djokovic-Wawrinka here<\/a>, and Nadal-Gasquet here<\/a>. \u00a0In those posts you can find links to my point-by-point based stats for both matches.<\/p>\n

Finally, don’t miss this piece from Carl Bialik<\/a>, in which he looks at IBM’s not-very-predictive “predictive analytics,” otherwise known as their Keys to the Match. \u00a0Next week, I’ll offer a closer look at the details of the better-performing “Sackmann Keys,” which, it turns out, have much more value for tennis analysis than merely showing up the folks at IBM.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The last two times Serena Williams and Victoria Azarenka have met on hard courts, Azarenka has come out on top. \u00a0As much confidence as that might give her going into today’s final, it might be the only evidence suggesting she’s likely to win. Today’s match will come down to Vika’s ability to hold serve, and … Continue reading Does Azarenka Have a Chance?<\/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":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[118,127],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1300","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-u-s-open","category-wta"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1300","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=1300"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1300\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}