This column will include the best men’s and women’s match from this year’s Grand Slam tournaments, as determined by Excitement Index. Each match is presented with the associated Win Probability graph, which combines with the Excitement Index to tell the story of the match. Throughout this column, we will refer to Excitement Average by server. A higher number means that the average point on a player’s serve had more pressure on it, so the returner had more opportunities to break.
This year’s Australian Open was one for the ages. Even before the historic events of the final weekend – on both sides of the draw – days 5, 6, and 7 of the Australian Open were among the best 3-day stretches I have ever seen. Day 5 had two simultaneous matches with Excitement Indexes over 85. Day 6 had both of the matches featured here as the most exciting matches of the tournament plus one of the Honorable Mentions. And Day 7 featured yet another match with an Excitement Index above the 97th percentile and the upset of the #1 seed of the Women’s draw, Iga Swiatek. Through all the close matches and upsets at the end of the first week, only a few players emerged almost entirely unscathed. Two of those players, Jannik Sinner and Aryna Sabalenka, continued their dominance all the way through the second week to become champions.
Adrian Mannarino def Ben Shelton, 7-6(4) 1-6 6-7(2) 6-3 6-4, Men’s Third Round (Excitement Index: 104.79, Excitement Average: 0.28)
With an Excitement Index of 104.79 (almost exactly the same as last year’s most exciting Australian Open match) and a duration of 4 hours and 46 minutes, this match was about as tight as it can get. And it was the ultimate clash of styles. Adrian Mannarino is a wily 35-year-old French veteran who strings his racket as loosely as anyone, deflects power all over the court, and likes to wind down by drinking tequila. Ben Shelton, on the other hand, is a 21-year-old Florida Gator whose brilliant, powerful serve and forehand, along with his athleticism, allow him to take command of the point. On paper, the lefty-lefty matchup should have been very interesting, and it delivered in a way that did not help those of us watching from the Western hemisphere get a good night’s sleep.
The Mannarino Mayhem started early, with Shelton running the second game of the match to 0-30 on Mannarino’s serve. From there, Mannarino hit an ace and Shelton missed a backhand return of a second serve into the net. That’s two consecutive points with an average serve speed under 100 mph, with neither serve coming back. The Frenchman held from there, and the first threat was diffused. The second threat came in Mannarino’s second service game, the first one to go to deuce. The match’s first break points came in the next game, on Shelton’s serve. From 15-40, the American unleashed a beautiful Serve +1 combination to save the first one and calmly kept control of a longer offensive exchange to bring the game back to deuce. After three deuces, Shelton missed a dipping midcourt forehand long to surrender the first break of the match. After an easier hold from each player, Shelton found himself with his first break point of the match at 4-3 15-40, which he finished with an overhead to get the break back. The first set calmed down, without a single high-leverage point until the tiebreaker. At the beginning of the tiebreaker, the Excitement Average on each player’s serve was low, but it was notably higher on Shelton’s serve (0.26) than Mannarino’s (0.21). After dropping the first two points, Mannarino ripped off five in a row and rode that one mini-break lead to a 7-4 victory in a grueling, 63-minute set that was a sign of things to come.
In the second set, Ben Shelton’s level, and his confidence, rose. Over the entire set, he lost just two points on his own serve, while all four of Mannarino’s service games were either a break by Shelton or a single hold in which he saved two break points. The highlight of the set came at Ad-Out in the fifth game. Mannarino’s serve pulled Shelton what looked like 10 feet outside the singles lines. Shelton hit a huge forehand return up the line, and as it dropped in the court and Mannarino could not make a move to get it, Shelton let out a roar that seemed to put the set away, despite being two games from the finish line. Ten points later, Ben Shelton took the set 6-1 to even up the match. At this point, the Excitement Averages flipped, with Mannarino up at 0.29 and Shelton down to 0.22. This manifested itself in the Win Probability, with Ben Shelton just under 59% as the third set began.
With a new shirt on, Adrian Mannarino seemed like a whole new man. In the first game of the third set, Mannarino gained a 15-30 advantage on Shelton’s serve. Shelton quickly dispatched it, but the message was definitely sent that Adrain Mannarino was not going anywhere. In the next game, Shelton sent a similar message, taking Mannarino’s serve to deuce. After the opening holds, and another from Shelton, Shelton unleashed a near carbon-copy of his highlight-reel forehand return from the second set at Ad-Out to take the first break of the third set, bringing his Win Probability up to 70%. Mannarino would get it right back in the next game, however, finishing with a sweet sidespin backhand drop volley. He would hold serve in the next game for 3-all, saving two break points and going through 3 deuces in the process. After exchanging quick holds to bring the set to 4-all, it was Adrian Mannarino’s turn to go up a break as Shelton pushed a forehand wide on Ad-Out. But the Frenchman could not back up his break and serve out the set, with the game running to 0-40 and Shelton breaking to 15. Each of the next two games were holds to 30, and as the players were set to begin their second tiebreaker of the match, the Kia Arena crowd was whipping up into a frenzy. The third set tiebreaker started with another 5-point run, this time from the American. His lead held up from there, as he finished with an ace to take the tiebreaker 7-2 and go up 2 sets to 1 after 2 hours and 55 minutes. The Excitement Index of the third set alone was over 26, a huge number for a men’s match, bringing the Excitement Index of the first three sets up over 60. With two sets to go, our system had already classified this match as a WAR.
For Set #4, Adrian Mannarino came out with Shirt #3. The set started out similarly to the first and third sets. After two deuces, Mannarino held serve in the first game. After that, none of the next four games held much real pressure, bringing us to Ben Shelton serving at 2-3. The first two points of the game, Shelton hit two backhands that misfired badly. At 0-30, Shelton missed another backhand, this time not by as much. From 0-40, not even the ace that Shelton hit could bail him out. At 15-40, he sailed a forehand long to go down a break at 4-2. But Shelton was having a bigger problem, which would haunt him through the rest of the match: his feet were slowing down. He swings very hard, on both his serve and his forehand. To develop that much power, a player needs to get it through the ground and let it come up through the kinetic chain, which places a lot of the burden on the legs. This game showed that after 3 hours and 28 minutes in the brutal heat and humidity of the Australian summer, Ben Shelton was getting tired, and another effect of the players’ stylistic differences started to come through: Adrian Mannarino does not use nearly as much energy. While that would be the only break of the third set, the tide of the match had definitely turned. In Mannarino’s two remaining service games, Shelton could make absolutely no headway, winning just one point. In Shelton’s lone remaining service game, on the other hand, Mannarino pushed him to deuce. After Mannarino took the fourth set 6-3, we had a one-set shootout on our hands.
The first game of the fifth set was similar to Shelton’s last service game of the fourth. Mannarino pushed him, this time to three deuces, but he held serve through it. The point counts were incredibly high – through the first game of the fifth set, Shelton had served 134 points to Mannarino’s 158 – but Shelton’s Excitement Average was starting to rise, showing that his advantage as a big server was melting away. In After a relatively comfortable Mannarino hold, Shelton was once again pushed to the limit, holding serve again but this time after five deuces. Then, Mannarino held to love. This set was another display of a theory that I hold: typical wisdom is that serving first is an advantage because it puts scoreboard pressure on the opponent, since if the first server continues to hold, they are always ahead on the scoreboard. My theory is that the advantage of scoreboard pressure is minimized as time goes on, because as the players become more tired, the advantage for the second server of being able to sit for 90 seconds before serving increases. In this case, that left Shelton as the one having to battle through games on his serve after already having played a return game since the last changeover. And in the fifth game, the dam would finally break. After four deuces, Shelton would miss a running forehand long to surrender the first break of the final set. In trying to pull the break back, a tired Ben Shelton started playing extremely high-risk tennis. He went up 15-30, but he started misfiring and Mannarino held to 30. In the seventh game, Shelton went up 40-0, but Mannarino fought back and took the next five points to grab a two-break lead at 5-2. Mannarino’s first attempt to serve out the match was similar. Shelton opened up a 0-40 lead, but Mannarino brought it back to deuce and saved a fourth break point before he netted a backhand at Ad-Out to give back one of his breaks. At this point, however, Shelton’s advantage in Excitement Average had almost entirely evaporated, at 0.28 to Mannarino’s 0.29. he would bring it down slightly in the following game, holding to 15. This left Adrian Mannarino with one more opportunity to serve for a place in the fourth round. Shelton held the advantage in multiple points, but he was just a little bit too tired to properly finish. When Shelton missed a backhand at 40-30, Mannarino did not even have enough energy to properly celebrate.
This match was an epic. Three of the five sets went over an hour. The players had 38 combined break point opportunities. And as a reward for 4 hours and 46 minutes of grueling tennis, the cruel nature of the tournament format matched Mannarino up with Novak Djokovic.
Honorable Mentions
Frances Tiafoe def Borna Coric, 6-3 7-6(7) 2-6 6-3, Men’s Round 1 (Excitement Index: 81.42, Excitement Average: 0.29)
Pierre-Hugues Herbert def Roman Andres Burruchaga, 7-6(5) 6-7(5) 6-3, Men’s Qualifying Round 1 (Excitement Index: 76.98, Excitement Average: 0.29)
Marta Kostyuk def Elina Avanesyan, 2-6 6-4 6-4, Women’s Third Round (Excitement Index: 99.65, Excitement Average: 0.45)
Marta Kostyuk played some wild matches in the 2024 Australian Open, with 2 of the top 4 matches by Excitement Index, this one against Avanesyan and her quarterfinal defeat to Coco Gauff. Despite being second in this year’s event in Excitement Index by 4 points (plus the supertiebreaker played in the match between Alina Korneeva and YeXin Ma), this third round main draw match had the highest Excitement Average, the eighth highest Excitement Average of the 2495 Australian Open women’s matches in our entire dataset. The Excitement Index is no slouch itself, the 15th highest among Australian Open women’s matches in our dataset.
This match shows some of the beauty of Excitement Index. This match was just over half the duration of Shelton-Mannarino, in both total points and time. None of the three sets made it to 5-5, while Shelton-Mannarino had 3 tiebreakers. Despite that, Excitement Index captures the unbelievably close nature of just about every game of this match, leaving the two matches near each other.
The first set of this match was the shortest, in games, points, and points per game, with 8 games and 55 points, for a rate of just under 7 points per game. For some perspective, the longest a game can go without a deuce is 6 points. Kostyuk took the first two games, running each out to 40-15 or 15-40 and winning at 30. Kostyuk’s service game at 2-0 was more of an adventure. She went down 15-40 and saved 2 break points. Avanesyan’s third and final break point of the game came after the second deuce, which she finished by forcing an error with a forehand approach shot to bring the first set back on serve. That started a run of three consecutive deuce games, all of which were won by Avanesyan. This run of close games put Avanesyan up a break at 3-2. Next, she had to try to do what Kostyuk could not: back up a break. Kostyuk staked herself out to a 15-30 lead, but Avanesyan reeled her back in, winning three straight points to close out the game and stretch her lead to 4-2. In the seventh game, Kostyuk got a little bit sloppy. As Avanesyan played simple, high-percentage shots, the errors started flying off the Kostyuk racket. In the break to 15, Kostyuk committed three unforced errors. After the changeover, Kostyuk seemed to decide to surrender the set to Avanesyan and come back ready for the second set. The first six games of this set were so close that the eighth and final game was the first time any game in this set got to 30-0. The Excitement Average numbers on each player’s serve were huge, with Avanesyan at 0.36 but holding an advantage over Kostyuk’s 0.43.
Elina Avanesyan came out fast in the second set, with a beautiful backhand pass at 30-40 to break serve and bring her Win Probability up around 90%. But while trying to back up the break, she couldn’t repeat her timely performance in deuce games from the first set. Avanesyan did a very good job to come back from 0-30 to 40-30, but after a forced error to bring the game to deuce, Kostyuk defended brilliantly to win the point at deuce and Avanesyan missed a Serve +1 forehand long to quickly bring the second set back even and drop Avanesyan’s Win Probability to around 83%. Avanesyan earned an opportunity to strike back immediately, running the game out to 15-40, but Kostyuk picked up the aggression to bring the game back to deuce, and after two game points, Kostyuk held serve. In the next game, it was Avanesyan’s turn to hold from 15-40 and after four wild games, we were at 2-2. Kostyuk was moving well, relatively focused, and absolutely crushing the backhand. That enabled her to hold with a little bit more comfort in the fifth game and break to love in the sixth, which she finished by cranking two backhand return winners. This time, she finally managed to back up a break, taking her lead to 5-2 and finally bringing her Win Probability back up over 30%. She brought the next game to 15-40, bringing her win probability as high as 36%. But from there, Kostyuk’s focus seemed to drift a little bit, and she would drop the next four points to let Avanesyan hold and get back into the set. It got worse for her in the next game, where from 30-all, Kostyuk hit a costly double fault to go down break point and missed an attacking backhand on a Serve +1 to give her break back. Avanesyan jumped out to a quick start in the tenth game, going up 30-0 and bringing her Win Probability as high as 82%. But from there, a more aggressive Marta Kostyuk started to take back over, forcing the game to deuce and bringing herself to within two points of the set. From deuce, Avanesyan managed to fend off two set points and earn herself a game point on the third deuce. Kostyuk made the most of a 78 mile per hour first serve into the body to take control of the point and create a third deuce, of which she took full advantage to finish off the second set and bring her Win Probability from around 20% at Ad-Out to over 60% at the beginning of the third set. This is likely because Kostyuk made enough of Avanesyan’s service games in the second set to gain an advantage in Excitement Average, with a value of 0.41 on Kostyuk’s serve to 0.42 on Avanesyan’s serve.
The extremely high Excitement Average values set the stage for a chaotic third and final set. In the first game, Kostyuk held to deuce. The second game went eight deuces and over 11 minutes, with eight break points and an Excitement Index on its own of just under 14, until finally, Kostyuk drew an error off the Avanesyan forehand to go up a break and bring her own Win Probability over 80%. After another deuce game, Kostyuk ran the third set total to three deuce games, 12 deuces, and a 3-0 lead. In the fourth game, Avanesyan recovered from 0-30 to force another multi-deuce game, which Kostyuk would win once again, bringing the score to a 4-0, two-break lead. After the fifth and sixth games, both of which went to deuce but were won this time by Avanesyan, Kostyuk was set to serve with her lead cut to 4-2. While the Excitement Average on Kostyuk’s serve increased modestly to 0.43, it had shot through the roof on Avanesyan’s serve to 0.47. In the seventh game, Avanesyan forced an error at 30-40 to bring the set all the way back to being on serve. With the set back to even, Avanesyan would save a break point to hold in yet another deuce game, setting the score at 4-4. In the ninth game, Kostyuk managed a free point on an unreturned serve at 40-30 to hold without another deuce and force Avanesyan to serve to stay in the match. In the attempt, a combination of Avanesyan’s nerves, her lack of ability to generate significant pace on serve, and Kostyuk redlining for four points forced a break to love to finish off a historically wild affair.
While the previous match was a nearly 5-hour epic, this one was a 2 hour and 32 minute roller coaster. With ups, downs, and deuces galore, Marta Kostyuk managed to peak at just the right time to grab an impressive victory and her first Grand Slam Round of 16 appearance in almost 3 years.
Honorable Mentions
Alina Korneeva def YeXin Ma, 5-7 6-4 7-6(3), Women’s Qualifying Second Round (Excitement Index: 103.2, Excitement Average: 0.42)
Magdalena Frech def Anastasia Zakharova, 4-6 7-5 6-4, Women’s Third Round (Excitement Index: 95.05, Excitement Average: 0.41)
Comentários