{"id":7460,"date":"2025-03-14T11:44:02","date_gmt":"2025-03-14T11:44:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/?p=7460"},"modified":"2025-03-14T11:44:02","modified_gmt":"2025-03-14T11:44:02","slug":"trivia-notebook-3-indian-wells-upset-edition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/2025\/03\/14\/trivia-notebook-3-indian-wells-upset-edition\/","title":{"rendered":"Trivia Notebook #3: Indian Wells Upset Edition"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Belinda Bencic in 2023. Credit: LHC88<\/a><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Previous: Trivia Notebook #2<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thanks to all who have suggested trivia topics — you’ve sent me some good ones. Keep them coming. Today I’ve got tidbits on three winners from Indian Wells: Belinda Bencic, Tallon Griekspoor, and Camila Osorio.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Better Belinda Bencic<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Great dig<\/a> from Oleg:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Those numbers include Bencic’s upset of Coco Gauff, but not her loss yesterday to Madison Keys. So the current top-five tally is 19-16, still comfortably better than her record against the next five, or the next ten after that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The top five typically does not allow things like this. Since 1984, when my week-by-week ranking data begins, the WTA top five has won 79% of matches. That’s a healthy margin ahead of 69% for players ranked 6-10 and 64% for 11-20.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, is Bencic alone? We’re looking for players with plenty of meetings against each of the three groups. She has 35 or more against each; let’s set the bar lower, at 20. I found 151 such players. Of those, we want to find those who have a better winning percentage against the top five than against the next five, and<\/em> a better winning percentage against 6-10 than versus 11-20.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No dice. Belinda is the only one. 18 women managed a better record against the top five than the next five:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Player                    W% v1-5  W% v6-10  \nSerena Williams             76.5%     62.7%  \nBelinda Bencic              54.5%     48.6%  \nKarolina Pliskova           46.0%     39.5%  \nJelena Ostapenko            44.8%     37.0%  \nMaria Sakkari               41.2%     39.4%  \nKristina Mladenovic         40.9%     33.3%  \nDaria Kasatkina             40.5%     24.2%  \nDonna Vekic                 37.5%     20.0%  \nFlavia Pennetta             37.2%     28.6%  \nMarion Bartoli              30.2%     29.7%  \nSamantha Stosur             29.0%     26.4%  \nElise Mertens               25.0%     19.0%  \nIva Majoli                  23.9%     22.6%  \nKatarina Srebotnik          23.8%     20.0%  \nBarbora Strycova            17.9%      9.7%  \nMarianne Werdel Witmeyer    17.4%     13.0%  \nKarina Habsudova            17.2%     11.1%  \nRaffaella Reggi Concato     17.2%      5.9%<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
(All of these numbers, including Bencic’s, exclude Indian Wells.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Comparing records against “next five” and “ten after that” is a bit odd in isolation, so instead, let’s compare top-ten and next-ten records. That’s an even more limited group:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Player               W% v1-10  W% v11-21  \nBelinda Bencic          51.4%      35.0%  \nKiki Bertens            47.9%      38.2%  \nAnett Kontaveit         40.4%      40.0%  \nKristina Mladenovic     37.0%      34.0%  \nDonna Vekic             27.8%      26.8%  \nTsvetana Pironkova      25.0%      17.2%  \nKatarina Srebotnik      21.7%      20.8%<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
Lots of these margins are close; Belinda’s is not. Maybe this explains the recent downward ranking moves of Elena Rybakina and Jasmine Paolini. They fear their colleague from Switzerland, so they’ve fled the top five so as to give her less motivation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Tallon Griekspoor is no Bencic<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Heading to the desert, Tallon Griekspoor held a 0-18 career record against the top five:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
Some good fights in there, but a zero is a zero. That changed last Friday, when the Dutchman outlasted Alexander Zverev in a third-set tiebreak. Zverev has given several men a top-five victory in the last few weeks, but it still counts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We have a few questions, then:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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  1. Is Griekspoor’s top-five losing streak the longest ever to start a career?<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. Is it the longest to be broken?<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  3. How does it compare to top-five losing streaks, including those that don’t start a career?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n
    Losing your first 18 matches against top-fivers gets you into the conversation, but Griekspoor stopped five defeats short of the record. These numbers all go back to 1982, the first year for which I have week-by-week ATP rankings. Here’s the all-time list:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
    Player             Losses  Broken?  \nFabio Fognini          23      Yes  \nJeff Tarango           23       No  \nJarkko Nieminen        23      Yes  \nSimone Bolelli         22      Yes  \nDiego Schwartzman      22      Yes  \nFrancisco Clavet       21      Yes  \nPotito Starace         20       No  \nTomas Carbonell        20      Yes  \nVictor Hanescu         19       No  \nTallon Griekspoor      18      Yes  \nLeonardo Mayer         18       No  \nRyan Harrison          18       No  \nAlex De Minaur         18      Yes <\/pre>\n\n\n\n
    It’s easy to dunk on Fabio Fognini, but in fairness, he came up at a very difficult time to score a top-five win. Check out the list of opponents for those 23 losses:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
    \"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
    And yes, after all that, Fognini ended the string by beating Nadal. On clay. Twice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
    I also need to mention Tomas Carbonell. He ended his 20-match losing streak with an upset of 5th-ranked Jonas Bjorkman … and that was it! He finished his career on at least one winning streak.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
    What about top-five losing streaks, not limited to those at the beginning of a career? Here are the longest runs of top-five futility, again going back to 1982:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
    Player                 Streak     \nAndreas Seppi              32     \nViktor Troicki             28     \nPhilipp Kohlschreiber      27     \nJeff Tarango               23  *  \nFabio Fognini              23  *  \nJarkko Nieminen            23  *  \nJimmy Connors              23     \nEliot Teltscher            22     \nSimone Bolelli             22  *  \nDiego Schwartzman          22  *  \nAndres Gomez               22     \nMarin Cilic                22     \nGilles Muller              22     \nFrancisco Clavet           21  *<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
    (Starred players are those from the previous list.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
    Before we get to Seppi, Teltscher deserves an honorable mention here. His 22-loss streak started in early 1982, right after he upset John McEnroe at the season-ending Masters event. Had he lost that match, the string would have extended to 34, since the McEnroe upset broke a separate 11-loss streak.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
    Seppi’s long run of frustration would have been hard to predict: He had beaten Lleyton Hewitt and Nadal before he broke into the top 40 himself. But the 2008 victory over Rafa would be his last top-five win for nearly seven years:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
    \"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
    As with Fognini, not an easy time to knock out anybody in the top five.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
    Finally, did you notice Jimmy Connors on the list? He is by far the greatest player to suffer such a long losing streak, and it was all the more notable because it began when he was a top-two player himself. He was responsible for 15 of Teltscher’s losses, but by 1985, things turned south for Jimbo:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
    \"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
    Connors was 32 years old when the streak began, so it didn’t entirely come out of the blue. Still, that’s a tough run for a top-ten player.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
    Defeats of former number ones<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
    Camila Osorio opened her Indian Wells campaign with a straight-set win over Naomi Osaka. It wasn’t exactly a shock, as Osorio is ranked slightly above<\/em> Osaka. But here’s a different spin<\/a> on it:<\/p>\n\n\n
    \n
    \"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
    Is this something we’re doing now? I mean, great for Camila and Colombia–I’m always happy to see a tennis non-powerhouse getting attention. But “former number one” spans a fair few players, some of whom have stuck around long after they fell from the top of the list. Victoria Azarenka alone has lost over 100 matches since she first dropped out of the top ten in 2014.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
    Still, what the hell, let’s play.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
    Going back to 1984, there have been 27 WTA number ones. I’m going to count wins against the current number one as well–presumably those are at least as noteworthy as beating a former top player. Since the beginning of my week-by-week ranking data, current or former number ones have lost 2,587 matches. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
    Here are the stars who have handed out the largest number of noteworthy(?) victories. Unlike some loss leaderboards, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Azarenka is a good example: Inclusion here says more about longevity than anything else. So, losses after first reaching the number one ranking:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
    Player                   Losses  \nVenus Williams              219  \nJelena Jankovic             205  \nCaroline Wozniacki          192  \nArantxa Sanchez Vicario     168  \nAna Ivanovic                162  \nVictoria Azarenka           142  \nKarolina Pliskova           131  \nMaria Sharapova             130  \nSerena Williams             116  \nAngelique Kerber            114<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
    Osorio represented Osaka’s 49th such loss. Venus Williams has allowed 108 different women to put “beat a former number one” on their CV, and Osaka is already up to 33.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
    All told, 369 women have now beaten a current or former number one in the last four decades. They represent 52 different countries, now including Colombia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
    It really isn’t that elite of a group. Osorio has better achievements to brag about, including–to bring us full circle–a top-five win, one that took her far fewer than 18 tries to accomplish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
    * *<\/em> *<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
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    <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
    Previous: Trivia Notebook #2 Thanks to all who have suggested trivia topics — you’ve sent me some good ones. Keep them coming. Today I’ve got tidbits on three winners from Indian Wells: Belinda Bencic, Tallon Griekspoor, and Camila Osorio. Better Belinda Bencic Great dig from Oleg: Those numbers include Bencic’s upset of Coco Gauff, but … Continue reading Trivia Notebook #3: Indian Wells Upset Edition<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","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":[23,91,108,117],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-curiosities","category-rankings","category-streaks","category-trivia"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7460","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=7460"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7460\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7470,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7460\/revisions\/7470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}