{"id":2187,"date":"2017-03-30T07:37:38","date_gmt":"2017-03-30T07:37:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/?p=2187"},"modified":"2017-03-30T07:37:38","modified_gmt":"2017-03-30T07:37:38","slug":"playing-even-better-than-number-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/2017\/03\/30\/playing-even-better-than-number-one\/","title":{"rendered":"Playing Even Better Than Number One"},"content":{"rendered":"

Italian translation at settesei.it<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Last night in Miami, Venus Williams<\/a> beat newly re-minted WTA No. 1 Angelique Kerber<\/a>. Venus, of course, has plenty of experience clashing with the very best in women’s tennis, with\u00a015 Grand Slam finals and three spells at the\u00a0No. 1 ranking herself.<\/p>\n

Last night’s quarterfinal was Venus’s 37th match against a WTA No. 1 \u00a0and her 15th win. Kerber became the sixth different top-ranked player to lose at the hands of the elder Williams sister.<\/p>\n

All of these numbers are very impressive, especially when you consider that, taken as a whole, WTA No. 1s have won just over 88% of their nearly 2,300 matches since the modern ranking system was instituted. However, Venus doesn’t hold the record in any of these categories.<\/p>\n

Records\u00a0against<\/em> No. 1s are a somewhat odd classification, since the best players tend to reach the top spot themselves. For example, Martina Hingis<\/a> played only 11 matches against top-ranked opponents, barely one-fifth as many as the leader in that category. On the other hand, injuries and other layoffs have meant that many all-time greats have found themselves lower in the rankings for long stretches. That is particularly true of Venus and Serena Williams<\/a>.<\/p>\n

With her 37 matches played against No. 1s, Venus is approaching the top of the list, but it will take a superhuman effort to catch Arantxa Sanchez<\/a> Vicario<\/a>, at 51:<\/p>\n

Rank  Player                   Matches vs No. 1\n1     Arantxa Sanchez Vicario                51\n2     Gabriela Sabatini                      38\n3     Venus Williams                         37\n4     Lindsay Davenport                      34\n5     Conchita Martinez                      33\n6     Helena Sukova                          31\n7     Serena Williams                        28\n8     Svetlana Kuznetsova                    27\n-     Jana Novotna                           27\n10    Amelie Mauresmo                        25\n11    Maria Sharapova                        23<\/pre>\n
Wins<\/em> against No. 1s is a more achievable goal. Martina Navratilova holds the current record at 18*, followed by Serena at 16, and then Lindsay Davenport<\/a>\u00a0and Venus at 15:<\/p>\n
Rank  Player               Wins  Losses\n1     Martina Navratilova    18*      \n2     Serena Williams        16      12\n3     Lindsay Davenport      15      19\n-     Venus Williams         15      22\n5     Steffi Graf            11       8\n6     Gabriela Sabatini      10      28\n7     Amelie Mauresmo         8      17\n8     Svetlana Kuznetsova     7      20\n-     Maria Sharapova         7      16\n-     Mary Pierce             7      15\n-     Justine Henin           7       9<\/pre>\n
*My database does not have rankings throughout Navratilova’s entire career, but other sources credit her with 18 wins.<\/i><\/p>\n
Win\u00a0percentage<\/em> against top-ranked opponents is a bit trickier, as it depends where you set the minimum number of matches. I’ve drawn the line at five. That’s rather low, but I wanted to include Alize Cornet<\/a> and Elina Svitolina<\/a>, active players who have each won three of their six matches against No. 1s. By this standard, Venus ranks eighth, though equally reasonable thresholds of 8\u00a0or 10 matches would move her up two or three places:<\/p>\n
Rank  Player             Wins  Losses   Win%\n1     Steffi Graf          11       8  57.9%\n2     Serena Williams      16      12  57.1%\n3     Petra Kvitova         5       4  55.6%\n4     Elina Svitolina       3       3  50.0%\n-     Alize Cornet          3       3  50.0%\n6     Lindsay Davenport    15      19  44.1%\n7     Justine Henin         7       9  43.8%\n8     Venus Williams       15      22  40.5%\n9     Vera Zvonareva        4       7  36.4%\n-     Dinara Safina         4       7  36.4%<\/pre>\n
Remember that the average player wins fewer than 12% of matches against No. 1s!<\/p>\n
Finally, Venus’s defeat of Kerber gave her a win against her sixth different No. 1, moving her into second place in that department. As is so often the case, she trails only her sister, who has beaten seven. Oddly enough, there is very little overlap between Serena’s and Venus’s\u00a0lists: Their only common victims are\u00a0Hingis and Davenport. The full list:<\/p>\n
Rank  Player               No. 1s defeated\n1     Serena Williams                    7\n2     Venus Williams                     6\n3     Steffi Graf                        5\n-     Kim Clijsters                      5\n-     Amelie Mauresmo                    5\n-     Maria Sharapova                    5\n7     Petra Kvitova                      4\n-     Lindsay Davenport                  4\n-     Justine Henin                      4\n-     Svetlana Kuznetsova                4<\/pre>\n
If Karolina Pliskova<\/a>–who now stands\u00a0within 1500 points of No. 1 and could further close the gap in Miami–reaches the top spot, Venus may get a chance to beat a 7th top player. Of course, Serena\u00a0could get that chance, as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Italian translation at settesei.it Last night in Miami, Venus Williams beat newly re-minted WTA No. 1 Angelique Kerber. Venus, of course, has plenty of experience clashing with the very best in women’s tennis, with\u00a015 Grand Slam finals and three spells at the\u00a0No. 1 ranking herself. Last night’s quarterfinal was Venus’s 37th match against a WTA … Continue reading Playing Even Better Than Number One<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","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":[91,93,127],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rankings","category-records","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\/2187","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=2187"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2187\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}