Economics explained
@dumaletter
Columnist at Dumaguete MetroPost. Ideas, differential equations, and tennis serves are free. Pancho owns the best service motion. Economists matter: Richard Cooper, Deirdre McCloskey, Ronald Coase, Thomas Schelling, Hyman Minsky, Francis Edgeworth.
An interesting final coming up in Athens. Will the home court have an effect?
In baseball, you win by hiring cheap players who can get on base. In tennis, you win by getting breaks. Return points won matter more than serve points won. The winner is the one with the better return. Paolini returned sharply in the third set. Previously, in Dubai, Paolini returned poorly.
A mini upset at Wimbledon. Eala lost to Paolini. The first two sets looked dead even. In the decider, Paolini outplayed Eala on serve and returns by relentless margins.
It can go either way. The moneyline odds are 2.33 on Paolini, 1.59 on Eala. The betting market expects P to win 40.6%, E to win 59.4%. If you believe that the outcome is dead even, you would have an expected profit of 16.5 on 100 bet on Paolini, or a loss of 20.5 on Eala. Just calculating.
The bettors see Sabalenka vs Noskova in the final. Alternative scenario: Pegula vs Eala.
The two paired up in 2025 in Paris and likely know each other’s games. Neither pushed too hard on serve (0 aces all around), but Eala dominated on return.
The backstory: Pegula served better (275 v 263), but Noskova returned even better (138 v 117). They were dead even on ‘discipline’ (+6 at winners less errors). The outcome could easily have gone the other way.
Eala won. She served better than ever. But the key stat was Rybakina’s unforced errors.
Stats tell the story of the serve. Eala had a nice Ace/DF ratio.
The key difference is the ace-DF ratio and who won the 2nd points.
Wikipedia says it was formed out of two previous aggrupations — Privince of Manila, and a military district called Morong.