I’ve added a pair of new pages to Tennis Abstract, both of which will be updated weekly:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I know many of you are avid followers of the ATP and WTA forecasts accessible each week from the Tennis Abstract front page. We’re still several weeks from the US Open, but it’s interesting to see how the men’s and women’s fields are shaping up for that tournament, as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Each week, I’ll generate an updated report by constructing a hypothetical 128-player field, consisting of the top 128 players in the official rankings. Of course, that isn’t exactly what the field will look like, but it would be a fool’s errand to predict qualifiers at this point. And for the purposes of simulating the top of the draw, where most of the interest in, the specific players making up the last 20 or 30 names in the bracket don’t have too much of an effect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then we run 100,000 simulations<\/a> of the 128-player field, using the most current surface-weighted Elo ratings<\/a>. It’s the same way that I run my live forecasts. The only difference is that some of the player ratings will change between now and then. The US Open forecast a month from now will probably be better than anything we come up with today, but especially for the top names in each field, we have a pretty good sense of their relative strength at this point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The early men’s US Open forecast<\/a> shows a field that is just about as lopsided as you’d expect. Novak Djokovic<\/a> is the favorite, at about 35%, which is often the degree to which my forecasts favor the best man in a hard-court major field. Roger Federer<\/a> is a close second, at 29%, with Rafael Nadal<\/a> coming third, at 18%. Dominic Thiem<\/a> and Kei Nishikori<\/a> are the only other men above 2%, and only five more–including Juan Martin del Potro<\/a>, who is injured and will not play–with better than a 1-in-100 chance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The women’s forecast<\/a> looks very different. Ashleigh Barty<\/a> is a strong favorite, with a 25% chance of claiming the title, despite her early exit at Wimbledon. Simona Halep<\/a> is next at 14%, and after Karolina Pliskova<\/a>, Petra Kvitova<\/a>, and Elina Svitolina<\/a>, defending champ Naomi Osaka<\/a> comes in 6th with a 1-in-20 shot. 12 women have a 2% or better chance of winning, and seven more are at 1% or above, including the probably-unseeded Victoria Azarenka<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The early forecasts also give us another way of keeping tabs on probable seedings, as players make their final attempts to break into the top 32 before the bracket is set. On the women’s side, Maria Sakkari<\/a> looks to be the least deserving of protected draw placement, with only a 58% chance of advancing to the second round and a mere 32% shot of living up to her seed and reaching the final 32. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Still, those numbers are better than the ones facing Laslo Djere<\/a>, a player who may hang on to a seed on the strength of some solid clay-court performances. He has only a one-in-three chance of winning his first match, and less than a 10% shot of reaching the third round. For both Sakkari and Djere, the seeds are among the few advantages they have. If they fall out of the top 32 before the US Open draw ceremony, their chances will fall even further.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I hope you enjoy these new reports. I’ll update them every Monday, and when the US Open is behind us, we can use them to get a head start on the road to Melbourne.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’ve added a pair of new pages to Tennis Abstract, both of which will be updated weekly: Men’s Next Slam Report Women’s Next Slam Report I know many of you are avid followers of the ATP and WTA forecasts accessible each week from the Tennis Abstract front page. We’re still several weeks from the US … Continue reading New Feature: Forecasting the Next Major<\/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":[40,45,111],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forecasting","category-grand-slams","category-tennis-abstract"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3674","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=3674"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3674\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}