WTA 2020 Predictions

On the eve of the New Year, here is another tennis post. Here are my predictions for 2020. This could be, and probably will be, way wrong; but it will be fun to look back at the end of the year and see if I got anything right.

Australian Open

The 2019 winners: Naomi Osaka is one of the three top young stars that emerged in 2018/2019, the other two being Ashleigh Barty and Bianca Andreescu. However, she seemed to find it mentally difficult to defend her 2018 titles in Indian Wells and the US Open. For that reason, I won’t predict her to repeat here. Petra Kvitova came close to winning in 2019, but at this point I am not sure that she still is capable of producing the consistent top quality play needed to win a Slam title.

My prediction: This will be the time Karolina Pliskova finally gets that elusive Slam title. She has been a top player for many years and produced one of her best seasons in 2019, finishing at #2 in the world. Last year, she got to the semifinals, losing to Osaka. This will be the time she goes all the way.

French Open

The 2019 winners: Ashleigh Barty was a surprise winner on clay, but I don’t think it should be that surprising that she would do well on the surface. Still, she didn’t face a top-10 player on her way to the title. Marketa Vondrousova got demolished in the final, which caused some people to discount her future chances to win a Slam; but I think her first Finals appearance (as a teenager) can be excused. Not everyone can be as poised as Bianca Andreescu in their first final. For the previous three months, Vondrousova had beaten nearly everyone she should beat and then some (such as Simona Halep, at both Indian Wells and the Italian Open). So I think she could be a contender. But it remains to be seen how she’ll return from her wrist injury, so I won’t predict her to win it yet.

My prediction: This is a boring pick, but Simona Halep is still the best clay player. She’s my pick to win it in 2020.

Wimbledon

The 2019 winners: Simona Halep certainly proved she can win on more surfaces than just clay. Still, clay is her best surface, and grass probably her worst, so I don’t expect her to repeat. Grass is probably Serena Williams’s best surface, and either this or the US Open (due to the crowd support) probably will be her best chance at a GS title in 2020. But I wonder if she can get through two weeks of a Slam against the best competition anymore. She will be another year older. So I will not predict her to win it either.

My prediction: Grass could be Barty’s best surface. In 2018, she won the International-level tournament on the grass in Nottingham. This year, she won in Birmingham, a Premier title, in her first tournament after winning the French Open. I’ll predict that Barty will win here on the grass at Wimbledon, for her second slam title.

US Open

2019 winners: Perhaps it is wrong to predict no Slams for Bianca Andreescu in 2020. I don’t think she’ll have a bad season; I think she’ll be in the top 10 all year. But the tennis world will study her game and make adjustments, and it remains to be seen how that will affect her. She lost to Osaka and Halep toward the end of the year, proving that she is not, in fact, invincible. Probably some players whom she faced this year will figure out how to beat her in a re-match. Serena Williams will have the crowd’s support, but she hasn’t won at the US Open since 2014, and I am increasingly leaning toward the opinion that she won’t get that elusive 24th Slam.

My prediction: Naomi Osaka has won here in the past, and so far her best surface has been hard courts. In both of the last two seasons she has done well late in the year. In 2019, while she struggled in the middle of the schedule, she rebounded towards the end of the season – in fact, she hasn’t lost since the US Open, winning in both Japan and China, and withdrawing from the WTA Finals after beating Kvitova. She won’t be defending a title here, so perhaps her late-season run will begin at the US Open and she’ll get her third Slam title.

Top 10:

1. Osaka
2. Barty
3. Pliskova
4. Halep
5. Bencic
6. Kenin
7. Svitolina
8. Andreescu
9. Vondrousova
10. Anisimova

WTA First-Time Slam Winners (Predictions for the Next Five Years)

On September 12, 2015, Flavia Pennetta defeated Roberta Vinci to win the singles title at the US Open. It would be her first and only Grand Slam title, as she retired at the end of the year. That tournament ended Serena Williams’s remarkable run of four straight Slams beginning at the US Open in 2014. But probably no one realized or expected at the time that it would also begin a remarkable run: In the four years since Pennetta won the US Open, the WTA has seen nine other players win their first Slam titles. To put it another way, out of 16 total Grand Slams in the last four years, nine have had first-time winners. With Pennetta, that makes it ten new winners in the last five years. This is unusual; the previous high in any five-year period going back to 1990 had been seven.

Another streak also ended at the 2015 US Open: eight straight Slams had been won by a player who had already won a Slam previously. (This includes Williams’s four straight titles which I already mentioned, plus another of hers at Flushing Meadows in 2013). This is actually not that unusual, as it had occurred twice in the 2000’s, and it had also been exceeded by a streak of 14 straight repeat winners during the height of the Monica Seles/Steffi Graff rivalry in the early 1990s.

As we go into 2020, I am very interested in what will happen in the next five years. In my opinion, it is highly unlikely that the next half decade will have the same amount of delightfully unpredictable chaos that the last five have had. (You might disagree in your opinion of whether it was delightful or not, especially if you’re a fan of a single great player or if you prefer to watch a rivalry of just a few players at the top). This is for two reasons: first, history suggests the last five years were an exception and we should expect the amount of new winners to drop to a more “normal” rate; two, 2018 and 2019 saw the rise of young stars Ashleigh Barty, Naomi Osaka, and Bianca Andreescu to the top of the game, and we could see them dominate the list of Slam winners for years to come.

That’s certainly not to say there will be no first-time Grand Slam champions. In my opinion, it is pretty safe to predict there will be at least three. In 1991-1996, during that Seles-Graf rivalry, there were only two new winners for six years. Since then, only one five-year period has seen less than three, and that was from the French Open 2006 through the Australian Open 2011, when only Ana Ivanovic and Francesca Schiavone became new Slam winners. Many times there have been more than three – for example, from 2001 to 2005, there were six new winners, even though the Williams sisters had already won their first Slams prior to that and kept winning throughout that period.

I think the rise of Barty, Osaka, and Andreescu has significantly improved the top echelon of the game since 2017/early 2018. Still, I do think there is a lot of parity near the top, with many excellent players who will beat the “big three” sometimes, especially if the young stars eliminate each other before the final rounds.

So, without making an exact prediction, I think probably half a dozen or so will win their first slam in the next five years. But I would like to specifically predict three players.

First, I came up with a list of candidates to choose from, as follows.

Johanna Konta (age 28)

Kiki Bertens (28)

Karolina Pliskova (27)

Elina Svitolina (25)

Madison Keys (24)

Maria Sakkari (24)

Donna Vekic (23)

Karolina Muchova (23)

Belinda Bencic (22)

Aryna Sabalenka (21)

Sofia Kenin (21)

Marketa Vondrousouva (20)

Dayana Yastremska (19)

Iga Swiatek (18)

Amanda Anisimova (18)

Coco Gauff (15)

A couple comments:

I didn’t include a few teenagers ranked below 100, such as Caty McNally, Whitney Osuigwe, and Marta Kostyuk. While they all have potential, I don’t think they’ve shown enough yet to warrant being in the conversation.

I don’t think Konta will win one, but British fans probably would think of her.

Many might choose Gauff because of what she’s done at just 15 years of age. But while she’s impressive for her age, the caliber of the opponents she faced was not that high, and she got demolished when facing Osaka. She has a very bright future and could win multiple Slams, but I don’t think she’s done enough yet for an outright prediction, especially since this is just in the next five years; she will still be 20 and have plenty of time left to win Slams if she doesn’t win one in the next five. Besides, her young age itself is a reason for caution. We don’t know exactly how she will develop and what difficulties she will face in the next few years; many players (such as Taylor Townsend) have been greatly hyped as teens but did not meet the expectations that were unfairly set for them.

Kiki Bertens is excellent on clay. For a time in 2018 and early 2019, she looked like a great player on all surfaces, going to the quarterfinals at Wimbledon, and winning Cincinnati and St. Petersburg. In my opinion, her level dropped this year after the French Open, though she still did an admirable job of defending her points, partly by playing more than anyone else. I expect her to be a serious contender at the French Open but I’m not sure if she’ll win it.

I don’t think Madison Keys is consistent enough to win a Slam, though I could certainly be wrong. She did win a big title this year in Cincinnati, and another Premier tournament in Charleston, surprisingly enough on clay. People often think she would do well on the grass at Wimbledon, but that has been her worst Slam in the past several years; if she wins one, I think it’s more likely to be on a hard court.

Elina Svitolina might win one. She had never gotten to a Slam semifinal before this year, but has now been to the semifinals at both Wimbledon and the US Open. She is a superb defensive player. The question is whether that will be enough to defeat all the top players that she’ll face in the late rounds of the tournament.

Sofia Kenin was very impressive this year and could well win a Slam, or several, at some point. I’m not quite confident enough to outright predict it for her.

Aryna Sabalenka certainly has the power and the raw talent. Will she have the consistency and mental composure?

Here are my three predictions:

Karolina Pliskova is another excellent player, a perennial top 10. I think she is good enough to win one and will get it at some point in the next couple years.

Belinda Bencic is my second prediction. She is extremely good at taking the ball early and re-directing it. She’s been around a long time and is still only 22, but this past year she found her form. She is ranked no. 8 right now; I think she has the talent to be a perennial top-10 player and could win multiple Slams. I’ll predict at least one for her in the next five years.

Of all the teenagers not named Bianca Andreescu, Amanda Anisimova stands out the most. She rose to no. 24 in the rankings in 2019, turning 18 in August. She has easy power on her groundstrokes and talent to spare, and plays with good mental composure. I think she’ll win multiple Slams and probably be a future No. 1, and it could start very soon, though probably not in 2020.

So that’s it. Again, I’m not saying these three will be the only new Slam winners; I think there will be others, but these are the only ones I’ll predict.

Feel free to comment with your own thoughts and predictions.