Treesa Jolly and Gayatri Gopichand begin their campaign at the World Tour Finals, making their first appearance at the end-of-season event in Hangzhou starting on Wednesday. They were the only Indians to win this year.
While the pair of 21-year-olds have 5 top 10 hair in 2024, three consecutive matches with the world’s Top 10 will be their biggest challenge. Here’s how the stats stack up, according to data released by Statminton.
OPEN THE GROUP
Treesa-Gayatri will feature in the lightest competition group of the two at the World Tour Finals, paired with World No 1 Liu-Tan, World No 4 Matsuyama-Shida and World No 6 Tan-Thinaah. While Liu-Tan boast 6 titles – the most of any WD pairing in Hangzhou, the entire Pool A has only 8 titles compared to Group B’s 12 this season, including champions Paris Olympics Chen-Jia. Group A with Liu-Tan has one Super 1000, and two Super 750s, while Group B has won the Olympics, two Super 1000s for Baek-Lee and three Super 750s for Iwanaga -Nakanishi and Chen-Jia together.
13th-ranked Treesa-Gayatri, who has one Super300 title, will fancy her chances of causing an upset, although cracking the Top 6 at the richest event of the year will be difficult.
THE TASTE OF THE MARATHON
Statminton’s interesting number is the Longest Win, and the Indians have the shortest Most Win at 79 minutes among the 8 teams. Malaysian Tan-Thinaah in particular are the champions of the long games, which were released on par with their 102-minute marathon. a year, while Liu-Tan despite their aggressive performance won an 81-minute humdinger recently.
All the pairs in the other team (Iwanaga-Nakanishi, Baek-Lee, Kusuma-Pratiwi and Chen-Jia) fought at the top in 85 minutes. And the women’s doubles is still a test of endurance, something that the Indians will be tested on again. repeating the theme for Gayatri-Treesa upset who wins this year has been heavily strategized to close battles endurance doesn’t always work, and wringers they are unavoidable in WD.
THIRD DECISIONS, THE CHALLENGE
Out of the 8 qualifiers to end the year, Treesa-Gayatri ranked 3rd lowest in winning percentage in rubber matches – winning the decider after sets at a rate of 54.55%. While China’s Olympic champions Chen-Jia dominated the decisions an astonishing 85.71% of the time, Liu-Tan trailed well behind with 77.78%.
Although it will be considered remarkable for Treesa-Gayatri to drag Liu-Tan to the finals, in the end the numbers won out. Indonesian newcomers Kusuma-Pratiwi also have a healthy 70% win rate in deciders, while Japanese Iwanaga-Nakanishi is at 64.29%.
However, Treesa-Gayatri will take hope from the relative values ​​of other pairings in their group, to continue fighting. Tan-Thinaah doesn’t have a good record for deciders, at 52.94%, while Matsuyama-Shida is at 57.89%.
However, a 19-21 final loss to Matsumoto-Nagahari in Indonesia, and the inability to push for a decision against Liu-Tan in Hong Kong will add up. Their third-set loss to Taiwan’s Hsei-Hung signaled the end of steam, and is the biggest KRA of 2025 for the young Indians.
While Jwala Gutta – V Diju was India’s first World Tour Finals finalist in the last 15 years, the Women’s Doubles is notorious for the year-end event. However, Treesa-Gayatri will aim to cause a few disturbances in the event.