🎾 Carlos Alcaraz has edged ahead of Jannik Sinner after outserving his rival at the US Open
My Week in Sport(s) 🎾 🏏 🏈 ⛳️ ⚽️
Welcome to My Week in Sport(s) — a regular newsletter from Plot the Ball.
Covered in this edition: 🎾 Carlos Alcaraz, 🏏 Smriti Mandhana, 🏈 Patrick Mahomes, ⛳️ Jackson Koivun and ⚽️ Clàudia Pina.
🎾 Carlos Alcaraz has edged ahead of Jannik Sinner after outserving his rival at the US Open
Make it nine out of the last 10. One storyline still dominates men’s tennis — and, after another Grand Slam final contested between Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz, that situation looks unlikely to change any time soon.
Tennis fans have differing opinions on whether the focus on the men’s game’s two megastars is a good thing. I have to admit, I’m enthralled by it — and, in particular, by how each player keeps raising their level to match the other. Both players have hit a career peak this calendar year according to Tennis Abstract’s Elo ratings, but it’s Alcaraz who currently has the edge. Sinner reached his all-time high after January’s Australian Open, while Alcaraz’s US Open victory took him to his own last month.
His current edge is not trivial: per the website’s ratings, the implied probability of Alcaraz beating Sinner in a three-set match tomorrow would be 57%. How has he turned the tables on his rival? Narratively, a lot of focus this year has been placed on the Spaniard trying to get better on his own serve — a part of the game typically seen as a strength of Sinner. (“I have to improve my serve if I want to win and be in good positions,” he said himself recently.) Can we see any change in the numbers?
A first step is to look at the two metrics above: how often each player has landed their first serve in over their last 300 singles matches, and the share of points they’ve won during those subsequent sequences of play. The basic facts match the common perception: the more aggressive Sinner lands his first serve in less often than Alcaraz, but compensates for that by winning more of his own first-serve points. Less clear is any real change in Alcaraz’s performance level — at least over the medium term.
In the short term, though, there are ominous signs for Sinner. On average, his rival landed 63% of his first serves in at the US Open, and won 84% of the resulting points; the Italian landed 56% of his own in play, and won 81% of them. Alcaraz outperforming Sinner on both key measures of serving performance for any sustained period would certainly lead to a change in the narrative. If you find the ‘Big Two’ era of men’s tennis unsatisfying, you better hope it doesn’t become a ‘Big One’.
🏏 Ahead of a home World Cup, Indian opener Smriti Mandhana is ticking along in top gear
India’s preparation for this year’s Cricket World Cup has been thorough. Since the last edition, their women’s team have played more ODIs against top sides than any other nation — including favourites Australia, who they beat convincingly on Wednesday.
The volume of white-ball cricket they’ve played in recent years has helped India build depth. When this tournament begins at the end of the month, however, all eyes will be on their biggest names. This week’s warm-up win was all about star opener Smriti Mandhana: she scored 117 runs from just 91 balls, and the team’s second-highest individual score was just 40. Compared to the 50-over format’s other elite top-order batters, the 29-year-old’s ability to pair skill with aggressive intent stands out.
Along with Laura Wolvaardt of South Africa and Tammy Beaumont of England, Mandhana is one of three active players to have averaged at least 10 runs per dismissal more than the other top-order batters in their games over their ODI careers. (This analysis only includes batters who have completed at least 60 innings to date in the top three.) But Smriti scores her runs much faster than either of them: her strike rate is 18 runs per 100 balls higher than other players in the same role in her matches.
What else I learned last week
🏈 Patrick Mahomes is relying on his legs an unusual amount this season
For the first time in his career, Patrick Mahomes has started the NFL season with two straight losses. There’s cause for concern in the Chiefs’ underlying numbers, too — at least for those expecting to see their QB’s passing rebound after a down year in 2024.
Mahomes has always been able to get himself out of trouble by scrambling into space, but running the ball for yardage has never been a major part of his game. Across the 133 games he’d played before this year, rushing accounted for only 7.2% of the total yardage he gained for the Chiefs. So far this season, though, it’s been unusually prominent: Mahomes’ 123 rushing yards so far account for 22.6% of his total yardage — the highest share over any two-game stretch of his career to date.
⛳️ Standout amateur Jackson Koivun might be America’s next top golfer
Not every elite professional golfer was exceptional as an amateur. According to Data Golf’s all-time Amateur Ranking, for instance, 72 golfers in recent years have had a higher peak before turning pro — in strokes-gained terms — than Scottie Scheffler did.
Hit a certain level as an amateur, though, and your pro prospects look pretty good. Since 2011, per Data Golf, only three amateur golfers have bettered Jackson Koivun’s current skill level. (He’s rated as 3.04 shots per round better than the average NCAA golfer.) Between them, Jon Rahm, Jordan Spieth and Patrick Cantlay have 27 career wins on the PGA Tour. It might not be long before the 20-year-old Koivun notches his first, either; he has finished inside the top 10 in each of his last three PGA Tour starts.
⚽️ Accurate shooting underpins Clàudia Pina’s xG outperformance
Before Euro 2025 started, I highlighted just how good a finishing run Barcelona’s Clàudia Pina had been on during the 2024-25 season. She kept that streak going in Switzerland: the Spanish forward scored twice from shots worth 1.1 expected goals.
How sustainable is this sort of performance? Opta recently revamped their ‘expected goals on target’ model for women’s football — and buried in the data provider’s explainer was a suggestion that Pina hasn’t just been getting lucky with her shooting. Per Opta’s ‘Shooting Goals Added’ metric, only one player in Europe’s top five leagues added more value in aggregate to their open-play shots — by hitting them in good locations and striking the ball cleanly — than Pina did last season.
The next edition of My Week in Sport(s) will be published on Friday September 26th.
Hey Ben, awesome post as always. On the serving data, I think it's slightly misleading to say Alcaraz's serving is more 'accurate' just because of the 1st serve %. One thing he has been criticised for in the past is 'missing his spots', which means his serves have landed away from the corners or from the body serve zone and into the hitting arc of the returner. This is something Sinner was definitely better at avoiding, up to the US Open at least! Missing by landing the serve in a hitting zone is arguably more inaccurate than missing a corner by an inch. That being said, Carlos was definitely hitting his spots better in New York - and if he keeps that up he'll be tough to beat!
Love the work - thanks, Andrew