{"id":4458,"date":"2021-05-21T08:43:34","date_gmt":"2021-05-21T08:43:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/?p=4458"},"modified":"2021-05-21T08:43:34","modified_gmt":"2021-05-21T08:43:34","slug":"expected-points-may-21-a-rough-patch-for-diego-schwartzman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/2021\/05\/21\/expected-points-may-21-a-rough-patch-for-diego-schwartzman\/","title":{"rendered":"Expected Points, May 21: A Rough Patch for Diego Schwartzman"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Expected Points<\/strong>, my new short, daily podcast, highlights three numbers to illustrate stats, trends, and interesting trivia around the sport.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Up today: Schwartzman struggles on his favorite surface, Qiang Wang joins an exclusive club, and Pablo Andujar doesn\u2019t discriminate based on age.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Scroll down for a transcript.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"castos-iframe-player\" src=\"https:\/\/601b036c283f30-50244448.castos.com\/player\/454120\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" width=\"100%\" height=\"150\"><\/iframe>\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">You can subscribe on <a href=\"https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/expected-points\/id1552064903\">iTunes<\/a>, Spotify, Stitcher, and elsewhere in the podcast universe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Music: <a href=\"http:\/\/dig.ccmixter.org\/files\/admiralbob77\/63197\">Love is the Chase<\/a> by Admiral Bob (c) copyright 2021. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial (3.0) license. Ft: Apoxode<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Expected Points podcast is still a work in progress, so please let me know what you think.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"> <iframe allow=\"autoplay *; encrypted-media *; fullscreen *\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"450\" style=\"width:100%;max-width:660px;overflow:hidden;background:transparent;\" sandbox=\"allow-forms allow-popups allow-same-origin allow-scripts allow-storage-access-by-user-activation allow-top-navigation-by-user-activation\" src=\"https:\/\/embed.podcasts.apple.com\/gb\/podcast\/expected-points\/id1552064903\"> <\/p><\/iframe><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Rough transcript of today\u2019s episode:<\/p>\n\n\n<p>The first number is 4 matches, the length of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/cgi-bin\/player.cgi?p=DiegoSebastianSchwartzman\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Diego Schwartzman<\/a>\u2019s current losing streak on clay. It\u2019s his worst skid on his favorite surface since 2015, when he had yet to crack the top 60 in the ATP rankings, and it\u2019s happening as he tries to hang on to a place in the top ten. The first three of the losses, against <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/cgi-bin\/player.cgi?p=PabloCarrenoBusta\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Pablo Carreno Busta<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/cgi-bin\/player.cgi?p=AslanKaratsev\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Aslan Karatsev<\/a>, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/cgi-bin\/player.cgi?p=FelixAugerAliassime\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Felix Auger Aliassime<\/a>, are individually understandable: The Argentine himself noted that he was losing to good players. Yesterday\u2019s defeat was less defensible, coming against <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/cgi-bin\/player.cgi?p=RichardGasquet\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Richard Gasquet<\/a>, a 34-year-old struggling to find form after injury. Schwartzman\u2019s top ten status is due to an impressive run last September, reaching the final in Rome and the semis at Roland Garros. Auger Aliassime stopped him from repeating the first, and an encore of the second is looking increasingly unlikely. Diego\u2019s sole clay-court highlight this year was a title in front of the home crowd in Buenos Aires, which required only four wins, none of them against top-40 players. Even with the cushion of a top-10 seed, it\u2019ll take a lot more than that to go deep in Paris.<\/p>\n<p>Our second number is 25, the number of WTA clay-court semi-finals reached by Chinese players. 29-year-old <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/cgi-bin\/player.cgi?p=QiangWang\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Qiang Wang<\/a> reached her first final four on the surface in Parma by upsetting <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/cgi-bin\/player.cgi?p=PetraMartic\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Petra Martic<\/a> yesterday, becoming only the 7th Chinese woman to accomplish the feat. 17 of the previous 24 are thanks to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/cgi-bin\/wplayer.cgi?p=NaLi\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Li Na<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/cgi-bin\/wplayer.cgi?p=ShuaiPeng\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Peng Shuai<\/a>, while Li Fang was the first to break the barrier, winning quarter-finals in Makarska and Budapest in back-to-back weeks in 1998. The trivia might give Wang a bit to brag about, but the more important story is her inexplicable dominance of Martic, a player who reached the Rome semi-final last week and has a vastly superior clay-court record. Wang has lost more career clay matches than she\u2019s won, hoping for her 20th career victory on the surface against <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/cgi-bin\/player.cgi?p=SloaneStephens\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Sloane Stephens<\/a> today. Yet the three-hour battle against Martic yesterday was Wang\u2019s second career clay win over the Croatian, having beaten her one-and-one at Roland Garros three years ago. The Chinese woman has scuffled since returning to the tour in January, watching her ranking drop from 34th to 48th, far off her career high of #12. While fans had little reason to expect much on the European clay, Wang\u2019s momentum has already changed direction.<\/p>\n<p>Today\u2019s third and final number is 21 years, the age difference between <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/cgi-bin\/player.cgi?p=RogerFederer\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Roger Federer<\/a> and Dominic Stricker. You might think of them as the present and future of Swiss tennis, but for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/cgi-bin\/player.cgi?p=PabloAndujar\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Pablo Andujar<\/a> this week, they were mere stepping stones to his first tour-level semi-final since 2019. By beating both of them, the Spaniard became the first player since 1992 to record defeats against players so far apart in age. In Tel Aviv that year, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/cgi-bin\/player.cgi?p=GiladBloom\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Gilad Bloom<\/a> knocked out 40-year-old <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/cgi-bin\/player.cgi?p=JimmyConnors\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Jimmy Connors<\/a> and 18-year-old <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/cgi-bin\/player.cgi?p=AlexCorretja\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Alex Corretja<\/a>, an impressive run regardless of their ages. In the last decade, the biggest age gap between victims of the same player at the same tournament was 20 years and 3 months, when <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/cgi-bin\/player.cgi?p=IvoKarlovic\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Ivo Karlovic<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/cgi-bin\/player.cgi?p=AlejandroDavidovichFokina\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Alejandro Davidovich Fokina<\/a> lost to the same player at the 2019 French Open. The man who beat them was <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/cgi-bin\/player.cgi?p=JordanThompson\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Jordan Thompson<\/a>\u2014fittingly enough, Andujar\u2019s first-round opponent this week in Geneva.<\/p>\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-thumbnail\"><a href=\"https:\/\/159.203.141.169\/tennisabstract\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/epts_logo.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" src=\"https:\/\/159.203.141.169\/tennisabstract\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/epts_logo-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-4258\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/epts_logo-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/epts_logo-300x300.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/epts_logo-1024x1024.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/epts_logo-768x768.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/epts_logo-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/epts_logo.jpg 1662w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 150px) 100vw, 150px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Expected Points, my new short, daily podcast, highlights three numbers to illustrate stats, trends, and interesting trivia around the sport. Up today: Schwartzman struggles on his favorite surface, Qiang Wang joins an exclusive club, and Pablo Andujar doesn\u2019t discriminate based on age. Scroll down for a transcript. You can subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/2021\/05\/21\/expected-points-may-21-a-rough-patch-for-diego-schwartzman\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Expected Points, May 21: A Rough Patch for Diego Schwartzman<\/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":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-expected-points-podcast"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4458","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=4458"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4458\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}