{"id":1734,"date":"2015-01-02T10:44:10","date_gmt":"2015-01-02T15:44:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/heavytopspin.com\/?p=1734"},"modified":"2015-01-02T10:44:10","modified_gmt":"2015-01-02T15:44:10","slug":"you-cant-win-over-our-aussie-sam-stosur-or-can-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/2015\/01\/02\/you-cant-win-over-our-aussie-sam-stosur-or-can-you\/","title":{"rendered":"You Can&#8217;t Win Over Our Aussie Sam Stosur &#8230; Or Can You?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>With the possible exception of the first movement of Schubert&#8217;s Bb major piano sonata (D960), the greatest work of art to emerge from the western musical tradition is, of course, &#8220;Sam vs OVAs.&#8221;<\/p>\n<div class=\"jetpack-video-wrapper\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Sam vs OVAs\" width=\"660\" height=\"371\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/eVV8nivGECo?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p>After the six or seven hundredth time through this song, I untied my dancing shoes, put my tennis statistician hat back on, and wondered: Is the conventional wisdom valid? Is it true that players whose names end in &#8220;ova&#8221; can&#8217;t win over <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/cgi-bin\/wplayer.cgi?p=SamanthaStosur\">Sam Stosur<\/a>?<\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s delve into the database and find out.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Sam vs OVAs&#8221; lists 24 potential opponents: 23 Ovas and 1 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/cgi-bin\/wplayer.cgi?p=GalinaVoskoboeva\">Galina Voskoboeva<\/a>. Stosur has faced 21 of the 24 in her career, missing only <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/cgi-bin\/wplayer.cgi?p=NinaBratchikova\">Nina Bratchikova<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/cgi-bin\/wplayer.cgi?p=BarboraZahlavovaStrycova\">Barbora Zahlavova Strycova<\/a>, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/cgi-bin\/wplayer.cgi?p=KristynaPliskova\">Kristyna Pliskova<\/a>. (For the record, Sam has faced Kristyna&#8217;s sister Karolina, losing in their one meeting.)<\/p>\n<p>Sure enough, Ovas usually don&#8217;t win over Sam Stosur. The Aussie owns winning records against 13, has losing records against 7, and is even with 1, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/cgi-bin\/wplayer.cgi?p=YaroslavaShvedova\">Yaroslava Shvedova<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Despite all those positive head-to-heads, the numbers aren&#8217;t so rosy upon closer inspection. Only 5 of 21 truly &#8220;can&#8217;t win&#8221; over Sam Stosur&#8211;Sam has lost at least once to 16 others. (That group of 16 includes <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/cgi-bin\/wplayer.cgi?p=AnastasiaRodionova\">Anastasia Rodionova<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/cgi-bin\/wplayer.cgi?p=JarmilaGajdosova\">Jarmila Gajdosova<\/a>, so the song is correct in those cases.) And while she has a positive aggregate record against the players in the song&#8211;holding at 56-52 as we head into the 2015 season&#8211;it is heavily weighed down by poor performances against <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/cgi-bin\/wplayer.cgi?p=MariaSharapova\">Maria Sharapova<\/a> (2-14), <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/cgi-bin\/wplayer.cgi?p=PetraKvitova\">Petra Kvitova<\/a> (1-7), and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/cgi-bin\/wplayer.cgi?p=LucieSafarova\">Lucie Safarova<\/a> (2-9).<\/p>\n<p>However, in Sam&#8217;s defense, the song&#8217;s lyricist didn&#8217;t cherry-pick in her favor. Stosur has faced 36 Ovas (plus Voskoboeva) in her career, 16 of whom weren&#8217;t named in the song. Against those players, she is undefeated against 10, and her overall record is a slightly better 15-12. Take out her abysmal 0-6 mark against <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/cgi-bin\/wplayer.cgi?p=NicoleVaidisova\">Nicole Vaidisova<\/a>, and you could put together a compelling (if biased) case that, as we have been led to believe, Ovas can&#8217;t win over Sam Stosur.<\/p>\n<p>As my mother always taught me, a song can only reach its true potential once you thoroughly\u00a0fact-check it. With that in mind, let&#8217;s listen again!<\/p>\n<div class=\"jetpack-video-wrapper\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Sam vs OVAs\" width=\"660\" height=\"371\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/eVV8nivGECo?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>With the possible exception of the first movement of Schubert&#8217;s Bb major piano sonata (D960), the greatest work of art to emerge from the western musical tradition is, of course, &#8220;Sam vs OVAs.&#8221; After the six or seven hundredth time through this song, I untied my dancing shoes, put my tennis statistician hat back on, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/2015\/01\/02\/you-cant-win-over-our-aussie-sam-stosur-or-can-you\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">You Can&#8217;t Win Over Our Aussie Sam Stosur &#8230; Or Can You?<\/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":[76],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1734","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-criticism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1734","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=1734"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1734\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}