Welcome to the Stat Sheet, a new weekly Baseline feature that looks into some of the facts and numbers in and around the game.
The WTA wraps up its regular season this week with events in Moscow and Luxembourg, and with two of the game’s greatest players missing from both fields, a longtime streak comes to an end.
Serena officially ended her season, and, though unlikely, Venus could still hypothetically enter smaller WTA events in November in India, France, Houston or the Chinese Taipei.
Assuming Venus doesn't enter or win a title, it will be the first time since 2006, neither Venus nor Serena Williams will have won a tournament in an entire season. In fact, since Venus claimed her first title at the US National Indoors in 1998, at least one of the siblings emerged triumphant at a tour stop every year until ’06.
That year, injuries took a significant toll on the sisters as they both played reduced schedules. True to form, though, they rebounded in epic fashion: Serena won the Australian Open, becoming only the second unseeded woman in the Open Era to do so, while Venus took the top prize at Wimbledon for the fourth time, a remarkable feat in that she was the lowest-ranked woman (No. 31) and seed (No. 23) to ever triumph at the All England Club.
In 2017, the sisters met in the final in Melbourne, their first major championship bout in eight years, and Serena won in straight sets.
