Welcome to Monday’s tennis briefing, where Atletico will explain the story behind the stories of the last week on the pitch.
This week, the European clay swing kicked off in earnest on the ATP and WTA tours, with tournaments in France, Germany, Portugal, Spain and Romania. The four best players faced each other in Stuttgart, Barcelona saw the return of Rafael Nadal and we witnessed zero gravity serving.
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Do the WTA and ATP tours swap goals?
Over the past year there has been talk of the formation of the “Big Four” in women’s tennis. It was a “Big Three”, consisting of Iga Swiatek, Elena Rybakina and Aryna Sabalenka, but then Coco Gauff won the US Open and became a truly constant presence on the business side of tournaments, including the semifinals of the Australian Open. She also rose to third place in the rankings. At the same time, the rapid emergence of Carlos Alcaraz, succeeded by the slower burn of Jannik Sinner, Daniil Medvedev being Daniil Medvedev, and the elastic continuity of Novak Djokovic have forged new rivalries on the ATP Tour.
The last few months have thrown a wrench into this way of thinking. Despite him not having won a Grand Slam title since last year’s French Open, Swiatek continues to show all the signs of being a dominant world No. 1 for quite some time. The other three haven’t provided the kind of consistency that would truly justify the use of a name that has its roots in the Roger Federer/Djokovic/Nadal/Andy Murray dominance of the 2010s.
Ten years later, it’s easy to forget how often these names pop up on the final weekends of the biggest events. Consider 2012: Of the 16 semifinal berths in the four Grand Slam tournaments that year, Murray, Federer, Nadal and Djokovic accounted for 12. Murray, Djokovic and Federer also earned three semifinal berths at the London Olympics that year .
In Stuttgart last week, a rare mid-level tournament that attracted the top four women, it looked like they might get a semifinal. But then Marketa Vondrousova beat Sabalenka, and Gauff lost to Marta Kostyuk, with Elena Rybakina winning the tournament.
Then, Madrid. Maybe this time the quartet will be the last ones standing.
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What’s behind Andrey Rublev’s collapse in the eighth set?
Good tennis players can see their form collapse. Now it’s Rublev’s turn.
Rublev was world number 5 at the start of the year. He played his way to first place at the Australian Open, but has been in poor shape since being eliminated in the final matches of a semifinal in Dubai against Alexander Bublik in February.
Rublev angrily protested the call to the touch judge. Another line judge said the Russian had used foul language in his native language.
He did not.
Tournament officials refused to review the records before declaring Rublev a default and he was stripped of his ranking points and prize money earned.
The video went viral and the ATP eventually restored his ranking points and the money he had earned, but the damage had been done. Rublev has won just one match since then, and has lost to players much lower-ranked than him, including world No. 44 Alexei Popyrin and last week, world No. 87 Brandon Nakashima, which saw Rublev destroy the his racket after losing a match point.
The meetings weren’t very close either. Rublev is seemingly healthy, but simply isn’t playing very well, having lost eight of 10 sets by default in a four-game losing streak.
These stats aren’t great, but they’re not exactly declining as steeply as match results. Anyway check out something else…
The “dominance ratio” is calculated by dividing the percentage of return points won by the percentage of service points lost. The last time Rublev’s dominance ratio was this low was in 2015, when his highest ranking for the year was No. 185 in the world and his lowest ranking was No. 438.
Coco Gauff does what Coco Gauff does… for how long?
Gauff receives tons of recognition for his grit, his competitiveness, his ability to overcome tight matches, especially in three sets.
The American may have all these qualities, but she also knows how to do the math.
Gauff played 25 games, winning 19 and losing six. Of those 25 games, eight went the distance and of those eight he lost four.
That’s two defeats in 17 two-set matches and four defeats in eight three-set matches.
What does all this mean?
Sure, his coach Brad Gilbert is the best spouse of the ugly win, but he has to include the “winning” part. Gauff pretty much always shows up, and it’s worth remembering that of those two consecutive losses, one was to Sabalenka in the Australian Open semifinal.
It could still be a little more clinical. As exciting as it is to watch Gauff fight, as wild as it is to watch her win matches when she’s far from her best, the thin margins eventually catch up with the players. This is what happened in Stuttgart against Kostyuk, a player who Gauff beat in three sets in Australia but who returned her favor in Germany.
It’s a microcosm of the coin flip that his three sets have become.
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Stefanos Tsitsipas and Casper Ruud peak, but at the right time?
Tsitsipas and Ruud are two of the best clay court players in the world. Ruud has reached the final of the last two French Opens. Tsitsipas accomplished that before. Unfortunately, their opponents in those finals, Nadal and Djokovic, won a total of 46 Grand Slam titles, 17 of them at Roland Garros.
However, Tsitispas and Ruud have earned the right to build their clay seasons to peak at the French Open, because both are expected to be alive in the tournament and, depending on how the draw breaks down, could have even a chance to win it.
The way things are going, they may not have any fuel left in their tanks.
For the second week in a row, Ruud and Tsitispas met in the final of a tournament, this time in Barcelona, where Ruud avenged the defeat against the Greek in Monte Carlo. It was Ruud’s third clay-court event of the season and Tsitispas’s second, with Madrid and Rome – both competitions just below Grand Slam level – taking up the next four weeks of the calendar before the start of Roland Garros. That’s a lot of tennis, even for players in their mid-twenties, like Ruud and Tsitispas.
Yes, this is the time of year when the best on clay try to rack up ranking points and prize money, but is it too much? Djokovic certainly thinks so, at least for him. A master of conserving energy and peaking in bigger events, Djokovic played in Monte Carlo, losing to Ruud in the semi-final, but took a break last week and also withdrew from Madrid. He will probably play with Roma, then go to Paris: fuel reserves are sky high.
He kicks, really well
It is a truth universally acknowledged – at least by readers of beloved British children’s author Michael Rosen – that if you can’t go up or down, you have to go through it.
Brazil’s rising star, Joao Fonseca, does not recognize this truth.
How high does it go?! 😳
Joao Fonseca’s serve bounces OFF Sonego 🚀#TiriacOpen pic.twitter.com/t7X7OOI3CC
—TennisTV (@TennisTV) April 16, 2024
Recommended reading:
🏆The winners of the week
🎾 ATP:
🏆 Casper Ruud def. Stefanos Tsitsipas 7-5, 6-3 to win the Banc Sabadell Open (500) in Barcelona. It is Ruud’s first ATP title above the 250 level.
🏆 Jan-Lennard Struff def. Taylor Fritz 7-5, 6-3 to win the BMW Open (250) in Munich. It is Struff’s first ATP title.
🏆 Marton Fucsovics def. Mariano Navone 6-4, 7-5 to win the Tiriac Open (250) in Bucharest. It is Fucsovics’ second ATP title.
🎾 WTA:
🏆 Elena Rybakina def. Marta Kostyuk 6-3, 6-3 to win the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix (500) in Stuttgart, Germany. It is Rybakina’s third title of 2024.
🏆 Sloane Stephens def. Magda Linette 6-1, 2-6, 6-2 to win the Capfinances Rouen Metropole Open (250) in Rouen, France. It’s Stephens’ first title since 2022.
🏆 Susan Lamens def. Clara Tauson 6-4, 5-7, 6-4 to win the Oeiras Ladies Open (125) in Oeiras, Portugal. In a wild final, Tauson trailed 0-5 in the second set before winning seven games in a row, but Lamens then rallied from 4-1 down in the third to win five straight title games.
📈📉 Ascending / Descending
📈 Marta Kostyuk rises six positions from number 27 to number 21.
📈 Marton Fucsovics goes up 29 positions from n. 82 at no. 53.
📈 Magda Linette rises 12 positions from n. 60 at no. 48.
📉 Carlos Alcaraz remains at number 3, but is losing 1,000 points, erasing his gap to Daniil Medvedev at number 4.
📉 Karolina Pliskova loses six positions in the top 50, from number 47 to number 53.
📉 Dan Evans drops 20 positions from n. 49 at no. 69.
📅 Coming soon
🎾 ATP:
📍Madrid, Mutua Madrid Open (1000) 24 April – 5 May ft. Jannik Sinner, Carlos Alcaraz (..?) Rafael Nadal (..?).
📺 UK: Sky Sports; USA: Tennis Channel 💻 Tennis TV
📍Savannah, Savannah Challenger (75) ft. JJ Wolf, Bernard Tomic
🎾 WTA:
📍Madrid, Mutua Madrid Open (1000) 24 April – 5 May ft. Iga Swiatek, Aryna Sabalenka, Elena Rybakina, Coco Gauff.
📺 UK: Sky Sports; USA: Tennis Channel 💻 Tennis TV
Tell us what you’ve noticed this week in the comments as the tours continue.
(Top photo: Alex Grimm/Eric Alonso/Robert Prange/Getty Images)