Breakouts, Walls, and Carriers: WTA Hardcourt Season Overview

This image is a derivative of US OPEN 2013 by Edwin Martinez  (CC BY 2.0)

The WTA Tour since Serena Williams' maternity leave in 2017 has undergone some noticeable changes. First and foremost, Serena before her maternity leave and after her maternity leave are two different players. They aren't worlds apart, but they just as surely aren't the same. This difference has shown up the most in major finals. Serena possessed a finishing kick before her maternity leave, and has struggled to find it on the other side.

Serena has also ceased to be a player - mostly due to health, I should note, not so much because of any erosion in her tennis - who can be counted on to make three major semifinals per year, which used to be normal for her. Not anymore.

As a result of the changes in Serena over the past few years, the WTA currently doesn't have one player who can take the baton from one major to another, and who can forge season-to-season consistency, from hardcourts to clay to grass.

Ash Barty is the closest thing to that standard in 2019, but her loss to Alison Riske at Wimbledon - while hardly a crisis, having come against a legitimately good player who is most at home on grass - reinforced the point that WTA players aren't yet proven in terms of carrying great form at one major tournament and transferring it to the next one.

When Johanna Konta lost to Barbora Strycova in the quarterfinals at Wimbledon last week, the last of the 2019 French Open semi-finalists was knocked out of Wimbledon. This meant that through the first three majors of 2019, 12 different women occupied 12 different semi-final spots at the majors: Naomi Osaka, Karolina Pliskova, Danielle Collins, and Petra Kvitova in Australia; Konta, Barty, Marketa Vondrousova, and Amanda Anisimova in France; Serena, Strycova, Simona Halep, and Elina Svitolina at Wimbledon. 

The WTA enters the US Open wondering if any of those 12 semi-finalists will be able to make a second major semifinal this year, or if we are going to have 16 separate semi-finalists at the majors this year.

The uncertainty hanging over the US Open is also considerable in relation to the larger summer and autumn (northern hemisphere) hard court seasons.

In each of the last two years, at least one player who had been relatively quiet in the first half of a WTA season had a breakout moment at some point in the summer hard court season.

In 2017, that player was Sloane Stephens, who was solid throughout the summer and peaked at the US Open, winning the title.

In 2018, both Kiki Bertens - who won in Cincinnati - and Aryna Sabalenka broke out and made significant career climbs in the rankings.

When one player makes a second-half surge in a tennis season, it is almost always the case that another player hits the wall at the same time. Second-half surges are often built on the strength of being fresh in August, September and October when other players who did a lot of work in the first half of the year run low on fuel.

Last year, Simona Halep did well in Canada and Cincinnati but was taxed entering the US Open. She also got a rough draw - Kaia Kanepi - in round one. She didn't do much of anything the rest of the year, dogged by injuries. Angelique Kerber also ran out of steam after winning Wimbledon following a French Open quarterfinal run. She didn't have a lot to offer at the US Open.

As we prepare for summer hard court tennis, the US Open Series, and then the autumn swing heading into the WTA Finals, we need to see which word becomes the theme of the second half of the women's tennis season:

- breakout
- wall
- carrier

1) Will there be a breakout such as Stephens, 2017, or Bertens/Sabalenka, 2018?

2) Will players who did well at Wimbledon and/or in the first half of the season hit a wall, akin to Halep or Kerber last year?  

Barty and Pliskova are the players who don't want to fall victim to this dynamic. One could also include Konta. Petra Kvitova doesn't quite fit; she suffered an injury which hadn't fully healed before Wimbledon, partly leading to her fourth-round exit against Konta.

3) Will there be a carrier, someone who successfully takes strong work in the first half of the season and/or at Wimbledon and continues to excel, especially at the US Open?

Naomi Osaka won Indian Wells in 2018 and resumed her hard court ways at the US Open. This year, she won the Australian Open and will be expected to regain form on the hard courts once again.

Will Halep build on her Wimbledon win, riding a wave of confidence?

Will Elina Svitolina, after a very surprising semifinal run in England, regain her hard court form?

So many interesting questions are waiting to be answered.

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