{"id":6706,"date":"2023-09-11T18:56:28","date_gmt":"2023-09-11T18:56:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/?p=6706"},"modified":"2023-09-11T18:56:28","modified_gmt":"2023-09-11T18:56:28","slug":"how-coco-gauffs-defense-won-the-us-open-final","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/2023\/09\/11\/how-coco-gauffs-defense-won-the-us-open-final\/","title":{"rendered":"How Coco Gauff’s Defense Won the US Open Final"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Defense, as they say, wins championships. Coco Gauff<\/a> has a big serve, a strong backhand, and a high tennis IQ, not to mention a new guru in Brad Gilbert. All of that got her to the US Open final and gave her a shot against new No. 1 Aryna Sablenka<\/a>. But defense was what won her the match.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you watched the final, you already know this. Over and over again, Gauff rescued a sure winner, hanging in the point long enough for Sabalenka to miss. In a close contest, as this one was, a handful of points can determine the result.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s tough to say exactly how many points Gauff saved with her exemplary defense. Sometimes she made multiple digs in the same point; other times she averted disaster just to lose the point a couple of strokes later. Still, we should try to quantify the effect she had on the normally imperious Sabalenka game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My stat of choice is something I’m going to call, simply, Defense. For any match with charting-based stats<\/a>, it’s a simple calculation: The percentage of the opponent’s groundstrokes that resulted in winners or forced errors. (I introduced it in my Andy Murray essay<\/a> as part of the Tennis 128<\/a> project last year.) In other words: How often does the player get herself in a position to put a groundstroke back in play?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Among tour regulars on hard and grass courts, the range of the Defense stat runs from about 7%–the backboards that are Lesia Tsurenko and Sloane Stephens–to 15%, where you’ll find the less nimble Evgeniya Rodina and Linda Noskova. Lower is better! Tour average is around 11%. Gauff, over the course of her young career, has averaged 10.8%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Average doesn’t carry much weight, though, when it comes to Sabalenka. Aryna’s groundstrokes end the point in her favor–with a winner or forced error–17.3% of the time. Only Jelena Ostapenko, at 18.0%, scores higher, and just a few other women are as high as 15%. Turning in an “average” performance against Sabalenka–that is, keeping her to 11%–is a massive step toward victory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Saturday, Gauff held her to 9.8%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sabalenka hit 285 groundstrokes in the final. 15 went for winners; another 13 turned into forced errors. Had she converted at her usual rate, those numbers would’ve been nearly twice as high: 49 points won off the ground instead of 28. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gauff’s actual margin of victory was a mere seven points. By the Defense measure, she saved 21<\/em> solely with her superlative handling of Aryna’s groundstrokes. Again, it doesn’t quite work that way; she dug out multiple would-be winners on some points, for instance. On the other hand, it isn’t the only way Coco salvaged desperate situations. This measure doesn’t take into account quick-footed service returns or defense against the smash.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s almost impossible to overemphasize the magnitude of Gauff’s achievement. In 48 hard and grass court matches since last year’s US Open, just two of Sabalenka’s opponents managed a Defense stat better than 11.6%. The only other exception was Veronika Kudermetova, against Aryna’s limp performance in Berlin. Sabalenka’s average over the last 52 weeks is 19.7%, probably one of the highest marks posted by any baseliner, ever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gauff simply cut it in half. She effectively turned one of the most imposing players in women’s tennis history into a frustrated journeywoman–or at least the statistical equivalent of one. Gilbert might call it Winning Ugly, but it looked awfully good to me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Defense, as they say, wins championships. Coco Gauff has a big serve, a strong backhand, and a high tennis IQ, not to mention a new guru in Brad Gilbert. All of that got her to the US Open final and gave her a shot against new No. 1 Aryna Sablenka. But defense was what won … Continue reading How Coco Gauff’s Defense Won the US Open Final<\/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":[65,90],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-match-charting","category-rally-statistics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6706","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=6706"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6706\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}