{"id":3702,"date":"2019-08-10T14:46:53","date_gmt":"2019-08-10T14:46:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/?p=3702"},"modified":"2019-08-10T14:46:53","modified_gmt":"2019-08-10T14:46:53","slug":"theres-always-a-chance-marie-bouzkova-edition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/2019\/08\/10\/theres-always-a-chance-marie-bouzkova-edition\/","title":{"rendered":"There’s Always a Chance: Marie Bouzkova Edition"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Last night in Toronto, 91st-ranked qualifier Marie Bouzkova<\/a> won her quarter-final match against 4th-ranked Simona Halep<\/a>. Halep retired with a leg injury after losing the first set, so there’s a caveat–even if we were prepared to read too much into a single match, we wouldn’t attribute a lot of meaning to this one. But it’s a big accomplishment for the 21-year-old Czech, who earned her second top-ten scalp of the week and will advance to her first Premier-level semi-final, against no less of an obstacle than Serena Williams<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here’s the nutty thing: It was Bouzkova’s 62nd match of the 2019 season, her 61st against someone with a WTA ranking. She got the win against the highest-ranked foe–Halep–but just last week, she lost to 636th-ranked CoCo Vandeweghe<\/a>, her lowest<\/em>-ranked opponent of the year. Yeah, the caveats keep coming: Vandeweghe is coming back from injury and is surely better than a ranking outside the top 600, and the ITF Transition Tour hijinks mean that the ranking system didn’t work as usual in 2019. Some players who would normally have a very low ranking, like the Kazakh wild card who Bouzkova crushed a couple of weeks ago, don’t count.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still. 61 matches, with a win against the highest-ranked player and a loss against the lowest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That sent me to my database, which had plenty more surprises in store. Going back less than a decade, to 2010, I found 127<\/em> players who recorded the same oddball combination of feats in a single season, minimum 30 matches. (To be consistent with the Halep result, I included retirements if at least one set was completed.) While many of the players won’t be of wide interest–last year, one of the exemplars was Mira Antonitsch<\/a>, who didn’t play anyone ranked in the top 400–63 of the 127 player-seasons involved beating a top-100 opponent, 44 included the defeat of someone in the top 50, and 25 were highlighted by a top-ten upset.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three of them included Halep as the top-ten scalp! That makes Bouzkova the fourth player to beat Halep, not face anyone higher ranked, and also lose to her lowest-ranked opponent of the season. (Through eight months, anyway.) Halep shouldn’t feel too bad, though, as Angelique Kerber<\/a> has been the extreme-ranked loser in five<\/em> such cases, four of them in 2017. Ouch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here are the 25 player-seasons between 2010 and 2018 in which a WTAer beat her highest-ranked opponent and lost to her lowest:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Year  Player       High-Ranked  Rk  Low-Ranked  Rk       \n2017  Kasatkina    Kerber       1   Kanepi      418      \n2018  Hsieh        Halep        1   Gasparyan   410      \n2010  Jankovic     Serena       1   Diyas       268      \n2010  Clijsters    Wozniacki    1   G-Vidagany  258   *  \n2014  Cornet       Serena       1   Townsend    205      \n2010  Yakimova     Jankovic     2   Dellacqua   980      \n2017  Bouchard     Kerber       2   Duval       896   *  \n2017  Vesnina      Kerber       2   Azarenka    683      \n2016  Bencic       Kerber       2   Boserup     225      \n2014  Rybarikova   Halep        2   Eguchi      183      \n2017  Mladenovic   Kerber       2   Andreescu   167   *  \n2018  Goerges      Wozniacki    3   Serena      451      \n2014  Tomljanovic  Radwanska    3   A Bogdan    308      \n2015  Mladenovic   Halep        3   Savchuk     262      \n2017  Kerber       Pliskova     4   Stephens    934      \n2014  Pavlyu'ova   Radwanska    4   Wozniak     241      \n2017  Dodin        Cibulkova    5   Rybarikova  453      \n2017  Bellis       Radwanska    6   Azarenka    683      \n2018  Buyukakcay   Ostapenko    6   Di Sarra    555      \n2017  Sakkari      Wozniacki    6   Potapova    454      \n2015  L Davis      Bouchard     7   E Bogdan    527      \n2015  Ostapenko    S-Navarro    9   Dushevina   1100  *  \n2016  KC Chang     Vinci        10  S Murray    862      \n2018  Pera         Konta        10  Hlavackova  825      \n2018  Danilovic    Goerges      10  Pegula      620<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
* also faced one unranked player<\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n
A quick glance is all it takes to establish that Vandeweghe isn’t the first lowest-ranked player to inspire a “yeah, but” reaction. The list of purportedly weak opponents is very strong for one made up of players with an average ranking outside of the top 500. We have stars such as Victoria Azarenka<\/a> (twice) and Serena as well as a helping of prospects such as Bianca Andreescu<\/a> and Victoria Duval<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Consider this as today’s reminder of the limitations of the WTA computer rankings. They tell us who has won a lot of matches in the last 52 weeks, not necessarily who is playing well right now. These cases include many of the most extreme mismatches between official ranking and on-the-day ability. I don’t think it says anything meaningful about a player to show up on this list–though Kerber’s many appearances (as both player and scalp!) are a good summary of her disappointing 2017 campaign.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bouzkova will remain on the list for at least a couple more days: Serena is currently ranked 10th and both of the other semi-finalists are ranked lower, so Halep will remain her “toughest” opponent. Despite the Czech’s breakout week, it would be understandable if she found herself overawed to face a 23-time slam champion across the net. But one thing is certain: Bouzkova couldn’t care less about the number next to the name.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Last night in Toronto, 91st-ranked qualifier Marie Bouzkova won her quarter-final match against 4th-ranked Simona Halep. Halep retired with a leg injury after losing the first set, so there’s a caveat–even if we were prepared to read too much into a single match, we wouldn’t attribute a lot of meaning to this one. But it’s … Continue reading There’s Always a Chance: Marie Bouzkova Edition<\/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":[91,93,117,127],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3702","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rankings","category-records","category-trivia","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\/3702","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=3702"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3702\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}