2014 Australian Open women’s projections: When is Serena going to slow down?

Grand Slam previews are a good reminder to the casual viewer that tennis is played year-round and plenty of stuff happens between the four big televised events. A performance-based ranking system like Advanced Baseline should be able to track those changes and hopefully come up with a couple reasons why things might be different since you last tuned in at the U.S. Open. A new tournament might provide a couple of new, interesting story lines.

The 2014 Australian Open is not one of those tournaments.

Think Serena’s going to steamroll again based on when you last watched her in September? Yeah, that’s still probably true; actually, it might be even more true now than it was in September. And she’s maintaining form at 32 years old, in outright defiance of the new aging curve features Advanced Baseline has incorporated. What other athlete has peaked a decade after most others reach their prime? Despite all the accolades she received for her 2013 season, the context in which it occurred makes it all that more incredible.

In all honestly, there probably wasn’t much hope for anything besides a chalk-heavy draw. The WTA ranks are uniquely skewed right now in favor of the Big Four (more on that later), and the younger crowd has a bit more to go before they move into solid contender status. If you like picking up where you left off last year, the women’s side of the Australian Open is definitely your tournament.

Below is a 52-week tracking graph of the hard-adjusted Advanced Baseline ranks of the Big Four from last year’s Australian Open until now. It’s a quick way to see what’s changed at the top of the ladder and how it might cause things to be different this year.

I’m beginning to sound like a broken record, but the gulf between Serena and the field has somehow got even bigger since the last Slam. Maria Sharapova’s decline is a little artificial, owing to her not having played since a shoulder injury in August, but it’s roughly consistent with her level of play in Brisbane earlier this month. Victoria Azarenka, on the other hand, suffered first-round losses after the U.S. open in two tournaments and had a subpar WTA Tour Championship, so her decline is very real. It’s unclear if it will continue, but in the mean time there’s not anyone left to challenge Serena.

Below is a scatter plot comparing the seeded players’ WTA ranks to their Advanced Baseline hard-court rank. Players above the black line are overseeded relative to their actual performance level, and players below the black line are underseeded. Red circles indicate a preference for clay courts and blue circles indicate a preference for hard courts. Click on each circle for details.

The #5-8 seeds are supposed to be the last players that can give the major contenders a run for their money in the quarterfinals, but the graph below shows the WTA rankings picked the wrong players for that job this year. 3 of those seeds (Petra Kvitova, Sara Errani, and Jelena Jankovic) are overseeded, while the 3 players that “should” have those spots (Angelique Kerber, Simona Halep, and Ana Ivanovic) are further down the bracket and have a tougher road just to get to the quarterfinals. Normally there might be one or two out of this group that would be out of whack, but 3 is basically a perfect storm for letting the gate down for the Big Four.

Meanwhile, the most dangerous underseed in the field, Ekaterina Makarova, had her odds crippled when she drew the most dangerous unseeded player, Venus Williams, in the first round. It’s not fair that only one of them will have a chance to make a run, but luck of the draw is cruel like that.

Generated from simulating the tournament 100,000 times using Advanced Baseline win probabilities. Below is a color-coded map showing the probability of the finishing place of each player, along with their expected points and change in expected points from the draw. Full explanation of the methodology can be found here.

Madison Keys: Keys actually has a better chance than last year’s breakout American, Sloane Stephens, to make it to the quarterfinals. Most of this owes to her getting an absolute dream draw, where her potential seeded opponents include two clay specialists and a dramatically overseeded Kirsten Flipkens.

Andrea Petkovic: Beating Azarenka in Beijing was no fluke; she’s been her old self for a while but hasn’t had a draw to cooperate yet. Favored over her seeded first-round opponent, she stands to make a run if she can make it through a winnable third rounder against Jelena Jankovic.

Hometown hero to watch: Casey Dellacqua. If you treat Samantha Stosur’s home-court curse as a given at this point, Dellacqua is the next Australian in line to make a run this year. Normally it’d be a coin flip between Marina Erakovic or Ashleigh Barty, but Dellacqua landed in the same soft spot as Madison Keys, opening up her path a little more.

Predicting Serena’s decline is going to be a nightmare if she keeps up this pace. Fortunately, unlike the ATP, the women’s tour has plenty of stars in the making to replace her when it finally happens. In the meantime, it’s probably just best to sit back and watch the spectacle of one of the greatest age-adjusted periods of dominance a sport has ever seen. I can’t wait to point to the tournament where I think one of the newcomers will finally have their time, but all signs are pointing towards business as usual for Serena at the Australian Open this year.