{"id":3407,"date":"2019-02-27T15:20:30","date_gmt":"2019-02-27T15:20:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/?p=3407"},"modified":"2019-02-27T15:20:30","modified_gmt":"2019-02-27T15:20:30","slug":"belinda-bencic-won-a-historically-difficult-title-just-not-last-week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/2019\/02\/27\/belinda-bencic-won-a-historically-difficult-title-just-not-last-week\/","title":{"rendered":"Belinda Bencic Won a Historically Difficult Title, Just Not Last Week"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/settesei\/2019\/03\/02\/belinda-bencic-ha-vinto-un-torneo-storicamente-difficile-ma-non-era-quello-di-dubai\/\">Italian translation at settesei.it<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" href=\"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/cgi-bin\/player.cgi?p=BelindaBencic\" target=\"_blank\">Belinda Bencic<\/a> is back among the WTA elites. Last week in Dubai, she won her first Premier-level title since 2015, knocking out four top-ten players in the process. They were hardly dominant victories, with all four going to deciding sets and two of the four culminating in final-set tiebreaks, but there is no question that the 21-year-old Swiss is once again a threat at the tour&#8217;s biggest events.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Her string of top-ten victories leaves us to wonder how her title stacks up against similar feats in the past. Most relevant is the path Bencic took to her last Premier title, the 2015 Canadian Open. Four years ago in Toronto, she defeated four members of the top <em>six<\/em>, including then-top-ranked <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/cgi-bin\/player.cgi?p=SerenaWilliams\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Serena Williams<\/a> in the semi-final and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/cgi-bin\/player.cgi?p=SimonaHalep\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Simona Halep<\/a> in the championship match. Even the two lower-ranked opponents she faced that week were dangerous players then ranked in the top 25, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/cgi-bin\/player.cgi?p=EugenieBouchard\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Eugenie Bouchard<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/cgi-bin\/player.cgi?p=SabineLisicki\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Sabine Lisicki<\/a>. Those two presented more serious challenges than Bencic&#8217;s first two matches last week against <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/cgi-bin\/player.cgi?p=LucieHradecka\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Lucie Hradecka<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/cgi-bin\/player.cgi?p=StefanieVoegele\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Stefanie Voegele<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Spoiler alert: Toronto was the tougher path. It wasn&#8217;t the most difficult of all time, but it&#8217;s in the conversation. Bencic&#8217;s Dubai title surely wasn&#8217;t easy, but it wasn&#8217;t quite as unusual as last weekend&#8217;s press made it out to be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Quantifying path difficulty<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This is something we&#8217;ve done <a href=\"https:\/\/www.economist.com\/game-theory\/2017\/09\/13\/sorry-roger-rafael-nadal-is-not-just-the-king-of-clay\">before<\/a>. I&#8217;ve written <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/2017\/09\/08\/quantifying-cakewalks-or-the-time-rafa-finally-got-lucky\/\">several<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/2019\/01\/30\/novak-djokovic-and-the-narrowing-slam-race\/\">articles<\/a> comparing the quality of opposition faced in slams, particularly as it applies to the ATP&#8217;s big three. It&#8217;s more complicated to compare all WTA events, in part because there are so many different levels of tournament, and the categorizations have changed over the years. But we can wave some of that aside for today&#8217;s purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Here&#8217;s the simple algorithm to measure the difficulty of a player&#8217;s path to a title:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Pick a standard Elo rating for the type of tournament won. (In this case, we&#8217;re using 1900 for hard-court wins. We&#8217;d use lower numbers for clay and grass, but it gets complicated, and it&#8217;s more practical for today&#8217;s purposes to focus solely on hard-court events.)<\/li><li>Find the surface-weighted <a href=\"http:\/\/tennisabstract.com\/reports\/wta_elo_ratings.html\">Elos<\/a> of each opponent she played in the tournament<\/li><li>For each opponent, calculate the odds using the standard Elo rating and the opponent&#8217;s Elo rating.<\/li><li>Calculate the difficulty for each match as one minus the odds in the previous step.<\/li><li>Sum the single-match difficulties.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In the grand slam exercises I&#8217;ve done in the past, I&#8217;ve taken a final step of normalizing the results so that an average major title is exactly 1.0. Here, the idea of &#8216;average&#8217; is more nebulous, so we&#8217;ll leave our results un-normalized.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The average difficulty of a hard-court title (excluding majors and year-end championships) is about 1.8. Bencic&#8217;s 2015 Toronto run was 3.64, and her path last week was 3.01.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>It&#8217;s hotter in Miami (and Indian Wells)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">One of the variables that influences path difficulty is number of matches. Bencic played six last week (as she did at the 2015 Canadian Open), but the top eight seeds played only five. At Indian Wells and Miami, the top 32 seeds play up to six matches, but those might be expected to present more challenges than Bencic&#8217;s six in Dubai, since the round-of-64 opponent has already won a match.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Certainly it has turned out that way. Here are the top ten most difficult hard-court WTA title paths since 2000:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<pre>Year  Event          Winner             Matches  Difficulty  \n2010  Miami          Kim Clijsters            6        3.80  \n2011  Miami          Victoria Azarenka        6        3.78  \n2007  Miami          Serena Williams          6        3.65  \n2015  Canadian Open  Belinda Bencic           6        3.64  \n2012  Indian Wells   Victoria Azarenka        6        3.59  \n2018  Cincinnati     Kiki Bertens             6        3.54  \n2000  Miami          Martina Hingis           6        3.46  \n2002  Miami          Serena Williams          6        3.45  \n2008  Miami          Serena Williams          6        3.37  \n2013  Miami          Serena Williams          6        3.35<\/pre>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Seven of the ten are from Miami, an event with a grand-slam-like field. Indian Wells is similar, but featured a weaker draw for most of the 21st century because Serena and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/cgi-bin\/player.cgi?p=VenusWilliams\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Venus Williams<\/a> chose not to play there. Bencic&#8217;s Toronto run is one of only two in the top ten outside of the March sunshine swing. The other is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/cgi-bin\/player.cgi?p=KikiBertens\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Kiki Bertens<\/a>\u2019s path to last year&#8217;s Cincinnati title, in which she also defeated Halep, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/cgi-bin\/player.cgi?p=PetraKvitova\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Petra Kvitova<\/a>, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/cgi-bin\/player.cgi?p=ElinaSvitolina\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Elina Svitolina<\/a>, albeit not quite in the same order than Bencic did last week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Also hot in Dubai<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I calculated title difficulty for about 600 hard-court champions going back to 2000. Bencic&#8217;s Dubai path doesn&#8217;t register among the very most challenging, but it still stands above most of the pack. Here are the next 25 toughest routes, including every path rated a 3.0 or above:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<pre>Year  Event         Winner              Matches  Difficulty  \n2016  Wuhan         Petra Kvitova             6        3.32  \n2000  Indian Wells  Lindsay Davenport         6        3.32  \n2014  Beijing       Maria Sharapova           6        3.30  \n2008  Olympics      Elena Dementieva          6        3.27  \n2009  Indian Wells  Vera Zvonareva            6        3.27  \n2007  Indian Wells  Daniela Hantuchova        6        3.23  \n2002  Filderstadt   Kim Clijsters             5        3.23  \n2013  Beijing       Serena Williams           6        3.21  \n2018  Doha          Petra Kvitova             6        3.18  \n2002  Los Angeles   Chanda Rubin              5        3.18  \n2000  Los Angeles   Serena Williams           5        3.16  \n2009  Miami         Victoria Azarenka         6        3.15  \n2003  Miami         Serena Williams           6        3.13  \n2002  Indian Wells  Daniela Hantuchova        6        3.10  \n2018  Wuhan         Aryna Sabalenka           6        3.08  \n2008  Indian Wells  Ana Ivanovic              6        3.08  \n2012  Tokyo         Nadia Petrova             6        3.08  \n2010  Sydney        Elena Dementieva          5        3.06  \n2010  Indian Wells  Jelena Jankovic           6        3.03  \n2000  Sydney        Venus Williams            6        3.02  \n2000  Sydney        Amelie Mauresmo           4        3.02  \n2019  Dubai         Belinda Bencic            6        3.01  \n2009  Tokyo         Maria Sharapova           6        3.00  \n2002  San Diego     Venus Williams            5        3.00  \n2001  Sydney        Martina Hingis            4        2.99<\/pre>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There&#8217;s Belinda again, at 32nd overall. Historically, the February tournaments in the Gulf haven&#8217;t been the toughest on the calendar, at least compared with Indian Wells, Miami, and Sydney. Yet Kvitova took an even more difficult path to the title last year in Doha. (Dubai and Doha trade tournament levels each year. As a Premier 5, Doha was worth more points in 2018; Dubai took over the status and was worth more points in 2019.) She also plowed through four top-ten opponents, and she needed to beat 33rd-ranked <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/cgi-bin\/player.cgi?p=AgnieszkaRadwanska\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Agnieszka Radwanska<\/a> just to earn a place in the round of 16.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Strong but weaker<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Again, Bencic&#8217;s Dubai title was an impressive feat. But as we&#8217;ve seen, it pales in comparison with her previous Premier title. I suppose she might have won anyway if faced with more difficult competition, but that pair of third-set tiebreaks suggests she was pushed to the limit as it was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">While the current WTA field is extremely deep, packed with very good players, the lack of one historically great superstar (or more!) shows up in the Elo ratings. Of the 35 champions shown in the two tables above, 12 had to beat a player with a surface-weighted rating of 2240 or higher, and 12 more needed to get past an opponent rated 2100 or above. Bencic&#8217;s toughest task last week was Halep, at 2054. While it isn&#8217;t easy to knock off several consecutive foes in the 2000 range, it&#8217;s not the same as including one victory over a superstar like Serena, Venus, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/cgi-bin\/player.cgi?p=MariaSharapova\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Maria Sharapova<\/a>, or <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/cgi-bin\/player.cgi?p=VictoriaAzarenka\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Victoria Azarenka<\/a> at her peak.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">At the 2015 Canadian Open, Bencic counted Serena among the vanquished. Maybe in another four years, when the Swiss is due for her next odds-defying Premier title, she&#8217;ll face down a couple of new young superstars and earn a place at the top of this list.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Italian translation at settesei.it Belinda Bencic is back among the WTA elites. Last week in Dubai, she won her first Premier-level title since 2015, knocking out four top-ten players in the process. They were hardly dominant victories, with all four going to deciding sets and two of the four culminating in final-set tiebreaks, but there &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/2019\/02\/27\/belinda-bencic-won-a-historically-difficult-title-just-not-last-week\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Belinda Bencic Won a Historically Difficult Title, Just Not Last Week<\/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":[32,93,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-elo-ratings","category-records","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3407","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=3407"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3407\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}