{"id":2323,"date":"2017-06-10T09:19:46","date_gmt":"2017-06-10T09:19:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/?p=2323"},"modified":"2017-06-10T09:19:46","modified_gmt":"2017-06-10T09:19:46","slug":"first-meetings-in-grand-slam-finals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/2017\/06\/10\/first-meetings-in-grand-slam-finals\/","title":{"rendered":"First Meetings in Grand Slam Finals"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

The 2017 Roland Garros final is crammed with firsts for 20-year-old Latvian Jelena Ostapenko<\/a>. Playing in only her eighth major, she had never before reached the round of 16, let alone the final two. Her opponent, Simona Halep<\/a>, has been here before–she lost the 2014 French Open final to Maria Sharapova<\/a>–but the two women have one first in common: Halep and Ostapenko have never played each other.<\/p>\n

Slam finals are usually reserved for an elite group, and that select few tends to play each other quite a bit. Since 1980, women’s major finalists have had an average of 12 previous meetings. The veteran Australian Open finalists this year, Serena Williams<\/a> and Venus Williams<\/a>, had faced off 27 times before their clash in Melbourne.<\/p>\n

That makes the Halep-Ostapenko debut meeting an unusual one, but the situation is not unheard of. The 2012 Roland Garros final was the first match between Sharapova and Sara Errani<\/a> (they’ve since played five more). Overall, there have been five first meetings in women’s major finals in the last 35 years:<\/p>\n

Slam     Winner           Finalist               \n2012 RG  Maria Sharapova  Sara Errani         \n2009 US  Kim Clijsters    Caroline Wozniacki  \n2007 W   Venus Williams   Marion Bartoli      \n1988 RG  Steffi Graf      Natalia Zvereva<\/pre>\n
(There were probably a few more before that, but my database is missing a lot of matches from the mid-1970s, so I don’t know for sure.)<\/p>\n
In all of these cases, the established star defeated the upstart, which bodes well for Halep. On the other hand, the Romanian doesn’t quite measure up to the previous four winners, all of whom had won a Grand Slam title before their final on this list.<\/p>\n
First meetings in Grand Slam finals are a bit more common in the men’s game, though it’s been nearly a decade since the last one. We’ll probably wait quite a bit longer, too. Rafael Nadal<\/a> and Stanislas Wawrinka<\/a> will play for the 19th time on Sunday, and of the 45 possible pairings<\/a> in the current top ten, only Kei Nishikori<\/a> and Alexander Zverev<\/a> have yet to face off. The next highest-ranked pair without a head-to-head is Andy Murray<\/a> and Jack Sock<\/a> which, come to think of it, would make for an interesting Wimbledon final next month.<\/p>\n
The last debut clash on such a big stage was the 2008 Australian Open, between Novak Djokovic<\/a> and Jo Wilfried Tsonga<\/a>. It was the eighth in the last 35 years:<\/p>\n
Slam     Winner            Finalist                \n2008 AO  Novak Djokovic    Jo Wilfried Tsonga   \n2003 US  Andy Roddick      Juan Carlos Ferrero  \n1997 RG  Gustavo Kuerten   Sergi Bruguera       \n1997 AO  Pete Sampras      Carlos Moya          \n1996 W   Richard Krajicek  Malivai Washington   \n1986 RG  Ivan Lendl        Mikael Pernfors      \n1985 W   Boris Becker      Kevin Curren         \n1984 AO  Mats Wilander     Kevin Curren<\/pre>\n
Before 1982, most first-meeting finals took place at the Australian Open, which at that time usually featured a weaker draw than the other Slams. For instance, the 1979 final was played by Guillermo Vilas<\/a> and John Sadri<\/a>. While Vilas is among the all-time greats, Sadri never advanced beyond the fourth round of any other major–where he might have encountered Vilas more often.<\/p>\n
One thing seems certain: It won’t be the last meeting for Halep and Ostapenko. All of the pairs I’ve listed played at least once after their Slam final, and with the exception of Wilander-Curren, each one played at least twice more. Halep is only 25, so if she remains near the top of the game and Ostapenko continues climbing the ranks, the pair could aim to match Graf and Zvereva, who met 20 more times after the 1988 French Open final. The loser of today’s match will want to avoid Zvereva’s fate, though: In those 20 matches, the Belarussian won only once.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Italian translation at settesei.it The 2017 Roland Garros final is crammed with firsts for 20-year-old Latvian Jelena Ostapenko. Playing in only her eighth major, she had never before reached the round of 16, let alone the final two. Her opponent, Simona Halep, has been here before–she lost the 2014 French Open final to Maria Sharapova–but … Continue reading First Meetings in Grand Slam Finals<\/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":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,45,51,127],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2323","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-french-open","category-grand-slams","category-head-to-heads","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\/2323","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=2323"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2323\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}