Just how good was Caroline Garcia’s 2022 season? Here are 5 stats to remind you…

Caroline Garcia’s 2022 campaign was brilliant in myriad ways. After starting slowly in the first five months she became one of the most lethal players on tour – here are five stats that explain her rise.

Antoine Couvercelle/Panoramic

Chris Oddo

November 9, 2022

Caroline Garcia finished her extraordinary 2022 campaign on the highest note possible, delivering an imperious performance against Aryna Sabalenka to claim the biggest title of her career at the WTA Finals.

It was the perfect ending to a season that defied expectations and left many wondering if Garcia can make the next step in 2023 and become a Grand Slam champion. That’s a topic we’ll broach during the Aussie summer, but now is the time to take a look at some of the details of what Garcia has achieved over the last 10 months.

1. Caroline Garcia won more matches than any other player since June

Garcia racked up a total of 36 wins from June 1st to the end of the season (against 11 losses). Even better, she won four titles, on four different types of surface. She won Bad Homburg on the grass, Warsaw on the red clay, Cincinnati in outdoor hard, and the WTA Finals on indoor hard. She’s the only player on tour to have locked up titles on all three surfaces in 2022.

Making Garcia’s torrid tennis from June to November even more remarkable? She was 7-9 to start the season, and finished at 45-20.

2. Caroline Garcia won 8 matches against the top-10 in 2022

Garcia rediscovered her form in a big way in 2022, and she also rediscovered how to beat elite talent. She notched eight top-10 wins over the course of the season, a number that is double the four that she achieved in the years 2018-2021.

She went 8-4 overall against the top-10, and earned her first ever win over a reigning No 1 when she defeated Iga Swiatek during her title run at Warsaw.

To put it perspective we offer you this: Garcia was 17-44 vs the top-10 prior to 2022, and had never earned more than five top-10 wins in a singles season (2017, when she went 5-8).

Caroline Garcia, Fort Worth WTA Finals 2022 |© Ron Jenkins/AP/SIPA

3. Caroline Garcia is the first Frenchwoman to win the WTA Finals since 2005

Garcia joins a prestigious honour roll that also includes one of the greatest French champions in history – Amelie Mauresmo. Mauresmo was the last French champion to triumph at the WTA Finals, last winning the title in 2005. Garcia’s title in Fort Worth represents the biggest singles title won by any French player since Marion Bartoli won Wimbledon in 2013.

That’s not all.

In the last 45 years, Garcia is the 3rd French player to win 4 or more titles in a single season after Mary Pierce (1998) and Amelie Mauresmo (2001, 2004, 2005 and 2006).

In the last 45 years, Caroline Garcia is the 3rd French player to win 4 or more titles in a single season after Mary Pierce (1998), Amelie Mauresmo (2001, 2004, 2005 and 2006).#WTAFinals
— WTA Insider (@WTA_insider) November 8, 2022

4. Caroline Garcia was ranked outside of the top-75 in June

Garcia started the year at No 74 and didn’t make a lot of progress in the first five months. In fact, she went lower, bottoming out at No 79 just prior to Roland-Garros in May. But after winning the doubles title in Paris with Kristina Mladenovic, her singles game took flight on the grass in June. She was back in the top-50 after Wimbledon and the rest, as they say, is history – Garcia finishes the season at No 4 in the WTA’s year-end rankings, matching her career-high and marking her best ranking since September 24, 2018.

5. Caroline Garcia won 80.3 percent of her service games in 2022

Not only was Garcia the ATP’s ace leader in 2022 (with 394) she also won over 80 percent of her service games for the first time. Anybody who watched her final with Sabalenka in Fort Worth on Monday night doesn’t need to be told what an effective server she has become. If you didn’t see the match, just look at the stats.

Garcia had never won more than 75 percent of her service games in a single season prior to this year. Her serve – and her play behind the serve, including her tactics – made all the difference.

Only Ash Barty (who played just 11 matches) and Liudmila Samsonova (81 percent service games won in 45 matches) had a higher strike rate in their service games.