Scratching the Surface - Part 2

Wimbledon 2024 Women's Preview

Welcome back. Long time no see. Etc. As promised, here is the women’s preview for Wimbledon. This article will take the same format as the men’s preview, with a look at historical grass performance followed by predictions based on said grass performance and a player’s performance so far in 2024. Let’s get to it.

Below is a graph of the top 32* players’ total points won on each surface from 2022 onwards:

*Rankings as of week beginning 24th June.

First things first, what Swiatek is doing on clay is unprecedented. To put into perspective just how good her run has been over the last 3 years, her total points won % is the same as Nadal’s best ever 3-year stretch in his career. Nadal himself took some time to adjust to the grass courts. He won Wimbledon the 5th time he entered it, the same year as he won his 4th French Open. Last month Iga Swiatek won her 4th French Open and tomorrow starts her 5th Wimbledon campaign.

Gauff has struggled on the grass. With the speed of the surface it is easier to expose the frailties in the forehand. Compared to clay, for example, which gives her more time. It is interesting just how similar the group from 3 to 6 is. The only real difference is Vondrousova with a little more success on clay than hard. Grass certainly suits the eye of Sabalenka, Rybakina and Pegula with their powerful flat groundstrokes.

The numbers don’t make good reading for Paolini and Zheng; however, Paolini has a very small sample size on grass so I’m not willing to read too much into her’s. Like Sinner, her 2024 form isn’t reflected in the clay and hard numbers. It’s fair to say that Zheng hasn’t been a fan of the grass over the last few years.

Jabeur and Keys both fit the mould of a grass court specialist. So too do Ostapenko and Kasatkina to a lesser extent. With Kasatkina’s title run in Eastbourne (not accounted for in the grass numbers here) she’ll be one to watch at Wimbledon. 

A few others that have historically performed on grass are Haddad Maia, Alexandrova and Fernandez. Haddad Maia and Alexandrova both have multiple titles on the surface. Fernandez just reached the Eastbourne final and looks set to continue that form into Wimbledon.

One last interesting note is Krejcikova’s surprising form on clay. Since she won the French Open she has been very poor on the surface. That won’t be of much concern to her heading into Wimbledon, however. What will concern her is her form in 2024.

Using the same criteria as the men’s article here’s a look at the surface specialists:

No surprises to see Swiatek top of the clay column. Jabeur, Kasatkina, Potapova and Cocciaretto find themselves in the Jan-Lennard Struff mould of being a clay and grass specialist. There are quite a number of players in the grass specialist column. In theory, any of these players would be expected to perform better than their ranking suggests on the surface, with the exception of Vondrousova who’s Wimbledon ranking points account for nearly half of her total ranking points. Anything but a run to the final will probably see her drop out of the top 10.

Predictions

Just like the men’s article, to predict grass court performance for Wimbledon I’m going to use a player’s total points won this year (excluding grass courts) and apply a grass correction factor based on their historical grass court performance*. Here is a graph showing this for the top 32:

*Players that don’t have enough matches on grass have been given a tour-average correction factor based on their preference for hard or clay courts. Full explainer in the appendix.

Grass brings Swiatek back towards the rest of the field but not all the way back. Gauff’s form on grass offsets her impressive 2024 form. Pegula is having a poor season by her recent standards but her title run in Berlin stands her in good stead for Wimbledon. Zheng and Jabeur are pretty much opposites of each other. The former has good form this year and poor form historically on grass, while the latter has poor form this year and good form historically on grass. What a sentence that is. We’ll see which form matters more in the next couple of weeks. Keys, Ostapenko and Fernandez find themselves right in the mix thanks to their grass court prowess.

Paolini and Collins don’t have enough matches on grass in the last few years (and also don’t have a strong enough preference for hard or clay courts based on their matches played) so their grass number is just their 2024 form. Andreeva and Pavlyuchenkova are in a similar boat, albeit with a small correction factor applied based on the volume of clay-court matches they have played.

And finally, let’s once again rearrange the 32 seeds in order of their predicted grass court performance (change from their actual seeding in brackets):

Keys as a top 4 favourite for Wimbledon? It’s not the most ridiculous idea in the world. Collins is there based on 2024 form and 2024 form only. If Ostapenko can navigate some potentially tricky early rounds she’ll be one to look out for. Fernandez is the biggest winner and Zheng has the biggest drop-off. 

Again, like with the men’s I’ll monitor this throughout the two weeks. With more extreme swings I’m not as confident in the new seedings, but you never know. Some make a lot of sense, others make less sense. The early rounds might spring a few surprises. Just don’t be surprised if any of the players on the lower half of the right hand side of that table find themselves heading home early this week.

Appendix

Cover photo by Peter Menzel, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Determining Player Types

While we can categorise players based on their performance on each surface, not every player has enough matches on each surface to categorise them. We can determine a player’s preference for hard or clay courts by looking at the balance of matches played on these surfaces in the last two and a half years. Since the start of 2022, WTA top 50 players on average have played 2.8 times as many matches on hard courts as they have clay courts. The further a player’s ratio of hard to clay court matches strays from this number, the higher their preference for a certain court type is. The criteria I’ve determined for hard and clay-courters are as follows:

• Hard-courter: Has played more than 3.5 times as many hard court matches as clay court matches

• Clay-courter: Has played less than 2 times as many hard court matches as clay court matches

Here’s the list of hard and clay-courters based on this criteria:

Correction Factors

Players that haven’t played at least 5 matches on grass have been given a correction factor based on what category of player they fall into. Players in the Hard-Heavy Schedule category historically win 0.7% fewer points on grass than they do on hard courts. Players in the Clay-Heavy Schedule category historically win 0.1% fewer points on grass than they do on clay courts.