Round-by-Round Performance of the 2023 Wimbledon Women’s Finalists
After six rounds and 126 competitors ousted, Ons Jabeur and Marketa Vondrousova have survived to make their bid for the 2023 Wimbledon title. In a matter of hours, Jabeur will have a chance to solidify her ‘revenge’ after missing the chance for the grass court Major title in 2022. And whatever the outcome, it will be a new Grand Slam holder for the WTA. Let’s see how Jabeur and Vondrousova reached this milestone in their careers by reviewing their progress through each round.
Competitors often regard each new round of an event as a clean state with even odds for each player. But we know that every player has a different path through a draw, some with more commanding results than others. And this context can matter when we consider a player’s chances going forward.
So what does the progress of Jabeur and Vondrousova tell us? Obviously, looking at actual stats isn’t especially helpful because it doesn’t adjust for the opponent’s skill. Figure 1 instead considers the difference in each finalist’s serve and return results by round compared to what was expected given their skill and the skill of their opponent going into the match. The ‘residual’ is just the difference between actual and expected percentage of points won.
In the first week, given Vondrousova’s serve skill and the return skill of her opponents, she was expected to be serving at a level of 70% or higher in most of her matches. But we can see from the residuals in Figure 1 that she generally was below those expectations. This was especially true in R16 when she had a three-setter against Marie Bouzkova and an overall serve percentage of just 58%. That could make the R16 Vondrousova’s luckiest result on her way to the finals.
Figure 1. Difference in actual and expected serve and return win percentage for Jabeur and Vondrousova for each round up to the finals of the 2023 Wimbledon Championships.
Jabeur had the more dominant serve performance in the first week including a 79% serve win percentage against Zhuoxuan Bai in the second round, earning an impressive +20% residual. Jabeur also had a positive residual over former Grand Slam champion in Bianca Andreescu and was just below expectation against Petra Kvitova in R16.
The QF was the real test for Jabeur when she had her 2022 finals rematch against Rybakina. Jabeur rose to the occasion by stepping up massively on her serve, winning 65% of service points. This was several percentage points higher than expected and 5 percentage points higher than what she managed in the 2022 finals. That victory had to embolden Jabeur to sharpening her performance even further against the remaining favorite for the title, Aryna Sabalenka. Jabeur won 75% of service points against Sabalenka, which was just over a +10% residual on serve.
Even with the impressive stats Jabeur earned on serve in her two latest matches, Vondrousova outdid both of those stats earning +10% on serve against both Jessica Pegula and Elina Svitolina. However, those residuals don’t tell the whole story. When we look at the absolute serve win level we see that Vondrousova was still just under 60%, well below Jabeur in either match. Here the difference has to do with the return ability of Vondrousova’s opponents. In this case she was expected to have a far easier draw on serve than Jabeur. This is a completely fair assessment given that Jabeur had to defeat two of the top trio of the WTA.
The return performance has been more mixed for both players, neither having a consistent positive or negative trend. Vondrousova had the strongest single performance in the group where the 44% return percentage against Pegula was much higher than expected. Jabeur was just under expectation on return against Rybakina and Sabalenka, with the worse performance of 37% of return points won against Sabalenka. That is a downward trend that may be some concern for Jabeur fans.
Despite some uncertainties on the return side, Jabeur’s achievement of winning four successive matches against former Grand Slam champions, including the opponent that took her Wimbledon title chances away last year, is the kind of patten that storied title wins are made of. In some ways, it is like Jabeur has already had to play out the “finals” multiple times in this event alone. It is the kind of match record that should make it Jabeur’s title to lose. The oddsmakers appear to agree as they are giving Jabeur a 70% win chance for the final. It would be a remarkable story for either competitor whatever the result, but a win today would be the fitting way to crown what has already been an amazing event for Jabeur.