The Shout: Ostapenko is the best player in the world

Last night I spent thirty minutes comparing Jelena Ostapenko’s 2017 season to Monica Seles’ at the same age.

Were there any similarities? No. Was I getting ahead of myself? Yes.

But just the fact Ostapenko made me think of a young Monica Seles is a testament to how good the Latvian is playing right now.

A 19-year-old Ostapenko started the year as the 44th ranked player in women’s tennis. Since then she has won 43 tour matches from a possible 59. That gives her a win percentage of 73 per cent, the same as current world No.1 Garbine Muguruza – who is 46-17 on the year-to-date.

She has also won two titles, one of which is the French Open.

To put this into context, let’s look at the performances of the current top ten women at age 20;

Ostapenko has had a comfortably better year than all of these women bar Venus Williams and Caroline Wozniacki – although the Dane didn’t win a major, so you can argue that one both ways.

If you assume that Ostapenko’s breakout year will be at age 24, which is a number I’ve entirely picked from thin air, the French Open champ is set for some historic numbers. The average record differential of the above women from age 20 to 24 is a 15 percent increase. If you apply that same increase to Ostapenko, she would be looking at a win percentage of 88%, a record that Maria Sharapova has achieved once and Venus and Serena Williams twice and seven times respectively.

This may be wishful thinking, but Ostapenko truly has the one God-gifted trait that most athletes say they have, but don’t actually have: she despises losing.

HANDSHAKE ALERT.

Kasatkina’s smile/shrug after is ICONIC. pic.twitter.com/OgMe0NNpN4

— Jeff Donaldson (@jddtennis) September 2, 2017

Despite her size and light-ish frame, Ostapenko is a ball basher. At this year’s French Open, the dynamo hit 299 total winners and a whopping 54 in the final to completely bulldoze world No.2 and arguably the best defensive player on tour, Simona Halep. She was also fourth in average forehand speed throughout the tournament with 76 mph. Fourth among women? No. Fourth overall. That’s right: she hit the ball harder than Andy Murray and just a few notches below ‘The Stanimal’ Stan Wawrinka.

As it stands today, Ostapenko’s aggressiveness is also her biggest weakness. She often tests her opponent by forcing balls as deep and wide as possible and attempts to pull off winning strikes at times where the percentage of success is low.

This is a good problem to have, and one that a lot of greats before her struggled with and managed to tame. When Ostapenko gains a little bit more control, and she will, she is going to wreak havoc on the rest of the WTA.