Medvedev turn stats convention on its head as he battles past Hurkacz in five-set classic
Hurkacz dominated the 0-4 and 5-8 shot categories but the Russian won the vast majority of the many long points
Daniil Medvedev competes in the 2024 Australian Open Virginie Bouyer / Panoramic
Lies, damned lies and statistics. Sometimes, the numbers don’t tell the full story.
For many years now, we’ve been told that the 0-4 shot category is the most important in matches, and it is, usually. But on Wednesday at the Australian Open there was an exception that proves the rule as Daniil Medvedev outlasted Hubert Hurkacz in five sets to reach the semi-finals for the third time in four years.
His 7-6 (4), 2-6, 6-3, 5-7, 6-4 victory, which took three hours, 59 minutes, saw Hurkacz win eight more points in total. But that’s not the stat we’re most interested in.
That’s the 0-4 category, the one that so often responds to big serving or first-strike hitting, the serve plus one phrase we hear about so often. In that category, according to Opta Stas Perform, Hurkacz was totally dominant, winning 100 points to the 78 of Medvedev.
Part of that, of course, is down to his serving prowess. Of his 135 serves in the match, 54 were unreturned. He hit 16 aces – Medvedev had warned that he felt Hurkacz is in the top two or three servers in the world – and 33 winners between forehand and backhand.
Medvedev, by contrast, had only 38 of his 170 serves not come back. He hit 23 groundstroke winners and won 24 of 32 at the net, a superb return for him (Hurkacz, a more natural net player, won 38 of the 52).
But where Medvedev came good was when the rallies went long and crucially, they went long often. Medvedev edged the 5-8 shot category38-34 but it was in the 9+ category that he really came good, winning 44 to the 26 of Hurkacz.
0-4 shots: Hurkacz 100-78 Medvedev
5-8 shots: Hurkacz 38-34 Medvedev
9+ shots: Medvedev 44-26 Hurkacz
Source: Opta Stats Perform
WHEN POINTS ARE WON more important than rally length
The only logical analysis of this is that while 0-4 is important, it’s not the be all and end all. In fact, it’s when the points are won that counts most of all, not just how they were won. If Medvedev won the bulk of those epic points on 30-30 points, or break point down, then that’s massive.
And in the final set, Medvedev won 30 points to the 27 of the valiant Hurkacz, which again tells its own story.
In the end, the only thing that really matters is the result but this match shows that there is more than one way to win a match, something that sort of sums up Medvedev, too, the Russian even throwing in a couple of serve and volley points in the final set, under massive pressure, to good effect.
And after all the brutal baselines, he finished it with the most deft of drop shots. Now there’s a stat that should be more readily available as there were plenty of those too.
