Treesa Jolly and Gayatri Gopichand start their campaign at the World Tour Finals, debuting at the season ending event at Hangzhou starting Wednesday. They are the only Indians to qualify this year.
While the pair of 21 year olds have 5 Top 10 scalps in 2024, the three back-to-back matches against the world’s Top 10 will be their biggest challenge. Here’s how the stats stack up, according to data put forth by Statminton.
OPEN GROUP
Treesa-Gayatri would seem to be in the relatively lighter competition group of the two at the World Tour Finals, grouped alongside World No 1 Liu-Tan, World No 4 Matsuyama-Shida and World No 6 Tan-Thinaah. While Liu-Tan boast of 6 titles – the highest for any WD pair at Hangzhou, the entire Pool A had only 8 titles compared to Group B’s 12 this season, including Paris Olympics champions Chen-Jia. Group A with Liu-Tan has one Super 1000, and two Super 750s, while Group B has the Olympic win, two Super 1000s for Baek-Lee and three Super 750 wins for Iwanaga-Nakanishi and Chen-Jia together.
Treesa-Gayatri, ranked No 13, with just the one Super300 title, will fancy their chances of causing upsets, though beating Top 6 at the year’s richest event will be difficult.
TASTE OF THE MARATHONS
An interesting Statminton number is the Longest Wins, and the Indians have the shortest of the Longest Wins at 79 minutes among the bunch of 8. Malaysian Tan-Thinaah especially are masters of the long, drawn-out matches with their marathon reaching 102 minutes this year, while Liu-Tan despite their aggressive game won an 81 minute humdinger only recently.
All pairings in the other group (Iwanaga-Nakanishi, Baek-Lee, Kusuma-Pratiwi and Chen-Jia have battled upwards of 85 minutes. And women’s doubles remains a test of endurance, something the Indians will be tested on yet again. However a recurring theme to Gayatri-Treesa upset wins this year has been how they deployed strategy to snap shut the endurance battles. But it doesn’t always work out, and wringers are inevitable in WD.
THIRD SET DECIDERS, A CHALLENGE
Of the 8 qualified to the year-ender, Treesa-Gayatri rank in the bottom 3 of the percentage wins in rubber matches – winning the decider after sets are level just 54.55% times. While Chinese Olympic champs Chen-Jia absolutely boss the deciders a staggering 85.71% times, Liu-Tan are next best with 77.78%.
While it will be considered noteworthy for Treesa-Gayatri to drag Liu-Tan into deciders, ultimately what count are wins. The new Indonesians Kusuma-Pratiwi also have a healthy count of 70% wins in deciders, while Japanese Iwanaga-Nakanishi are at 64.29%.
However Treesa-Gayatri will take hope from the relative numbers of other pairings in their own group, to keep fighting. Tan-Thinaah don’t have a great record in deciders, at 52.94%, while Matsuyama-Shida are at 57.89%.
Still, the last set 19-21 loss to Matsumoto-Nagahari at Indonesia, and not being able to push a decider against Liu-Tan at Hong Kong will rankle. Their third set losses to Taiwanese Hsei-Hung point to running out of steam too, and is the biggest KRA for 2025 for the young Indians.
While Jwala Gutta – V Diju were India’s first finalists at World Tour Finals 15 years ago, Women’s Doubles is notoriously difficult at the year-ending event. Still, Treesa-Gayatri will aim to cause a few stirs at the event.
