{"id":256,"date":"2011-04-11T13:26:35","date_gmt":"2011-04-11T13:26:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/heavytopspin.com\/?p=256"},"modified":"2011-04-11T13:26:35","modified_gmt":"2011-04-11T13:26:35","slug":"monday-topspin-first-timers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/2011\/04\/11\/monday-topspin-first-timers\/","title":{"rendered":"Monday Topspin: First-timers"},"content":{"rendered":"

New titlists: <\/em>We have two first-time champions on the ATP tour: Pablo Andujar<\/strong> and Ryan Sweeting<\/strong>. \u00a0Andujar got better as the week went on in Casablanca, going three sets in the first round against Florent Serra<\/strong>, to a tiebreak against Jeremy Chardy<\/strong> in the second, and finally disposing of Potito Starace<\/strong> 6-1 6-2 in yesterday’s final. \u00a0He is definitely a man to watch over the next two months; he’ll next play in Barcelona.<\/p>\n

Sweeting was the upset winner over Kei Nishikori<\/strong> in Houston, surprising just about everybody by playing so well on clay. \u00a0It was a very close match: the American won 51% of total points, and a lower percentage of service points than his opponent did. \u00a0Nishikori may be the more heralded prospect, but Sweeting is working his way up the scale.<\/p>\n

New rankings: <\/em>Champions\u00a0Andujar and Sweeting are two of the biggest gainers in this week’s rankings, as both ascend to new career highs. \u00a0Andujar rises to #52, Sweeting to #67. \u00a0Also notable is Nishikori’s jump to #48, also a personal best for him.<\/p>\n

The biggest losers are last year’s titlists in Casabalanca and Houston: Stanislas Wawrinka<\/strong> and Juan Ignacio Chela<\/strong>, neither of whom played this week. \u00a0Wawrinka drops two spots to #15, while Chela crashes 14 places to #42.<\/p>\n

Challenger winners last week were Julian Reister<\/strong>, who breaks into the top 100 for the first time, Tatsuma Ito<\/strong>, who defeated the weak field in Recife, and Paolo Lorenzi<\/strong>, winner in Pereira. \u00a0Also of note is Tiago Fernandes<\/strong>, a wild card who reached the final in Recife before he withdrew. \u00a0His three-set battle with Julio Silva<\/strong> in the semifinals helped him jump 129 ranking points to #380.<\/p>\n

Monte Carlo: <\/em>If you missed them yesterday, be sure to check out the results of my Monte Carlo simulation<\/a>. \u00a0My clay rankings are in many ways more interesting than the hard court rankings, since they differ so much more from the standard ATP list.<\/p>\n

A couple interesting examples of the difference have already been on display. \u00a0Yesterday, oddsmakers heavily favored Alexandr Dolgopolov<\/strong> over Ernests Gulbis<\/strong>, only to see the higher-ranked Dolgo lose in straight sets. \u00a0By contrast, my system recognizes his three straight quarterfinal appearances in last year’s clay season, including a win over Roger Federer<\/strong>. \u00a0Accordingly, it saw the Gulbis win coming, giving the Latvian a 67% chance of advancing.<\/p>\n

Here’s another one: Olivier Rochus<\/strong> just snuck by Chela in three sets. \u00a0Sportsbooks gave Chela a roughly 65% chance of winning, while my predictions set him at a more modest 54%. \u00a0Rochus has had plenty of success on clay, especially at the challenger level, while my system sees Chela as somewhat overrated on the surface.<\/p>\n

Of course, we could cherry-pick all day, and we’d be sure to find plenty of examples where my system went wrong. \u00a0All I want to highlight is that predicting clay court results is tricky, and it’s easy to give too much weight to recent results (Dolgopolov) or clay reputation (Chela).<\/p>\n

In addition to the two matches I’ve already mentioned, today has already seen a notable upset: Florian Mayer<\/strong> over Mikhail Youzhny<\/strong>. \u00a0It’s another strong step forward for Mayer, and a couple more wins on clay will get him in position for a seed at Roland Garros. \u00a0It’s an equally strong sign for Youzhny, who has seen his results yo-yo over the last few years. \u00a0His only strong showing so far in 2011 was a victory over Jo-Wilfried Tsonga<\/strong> back in February.<\/p>\n

See you tomorrow!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New titlists: We have two first-time champions on the ATP tour: Pablo Andujar and Ryan Sweeting. \u00a0Andujar got better as the week went on in Casablanca, going three sets in the first round against Florent Serra, to a tiebreak against Jeremy Chardy in the second, and finally disposing of Potito Starace 6-1 6-2 in yesterday’s … Continue reading Monday Topspin: First-timers<\/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":[24,74],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-recaps","category-monte-carlo"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256","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=256"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}