Katarzyna Kawa in Bogota: the Most Exciting Qualifying Run

Using Excitement Index, we compare matches and runs across tournaments and time. In her two-match run through qualifying to the Bogota main draw, Poland’s Katarzyna Kawa made history with her fighting spirit.

The 32-year-old’s first qualifying match would have been a strong candidate for this week’s Match of the Week, had it not been for what came next. She opened with a 2-hour, 59-minute epic against Gergana Topalova of Bulgaria. Kawa squeaked out a 7-6(1) 4-6 6-4 win, with an Excitement Index of 97.2 that was in the 97th percentile for women’s qualifying matches in Bogota.

The final-round qualifying encounter between Katarzyna Kawa and Romania’s Patricia Maria Tig was historic. Every set of Kawa’s 7-5 6-7(2) 7-6(6) victory lasted over an hour. The match itself lasted 4 hours and 14 minutes. They played 283 points, which ranks 23rd among the over 40,000 women’s matches in our dataset. The Excitement Index reached 115.6, which comes in at 54th overall among the over 90,000 matches in our dataset.

When you put two brutal, grinding matches – over 7 hours on court in the brutal altitude (8,660 feet!) of Bogota – together, what do you get? Katarzyna Kawa earned herself a spot in the main draw and gained the respect of tennis fans around the world. And she also made some history. Of the 19,552 qualifying runs of at least 2 matches in our dataset, Kawa’s combined Excitement Index of 212.8 ranks 91st, but every run ahead of it was 3 rounds, not the 2 they played in Bogota. Her average across her qualifying matches of 106.4 is our record – and 1 of just 3 runs with an average over 100 (for reference: 55 is about average, 70 is interesting, around 80 I start telling my friends, 90 is rarified air, 100 is historic, and 110 basically never happens).

Kawa is Polish for coffee, and Bogota, Colombia is known for its coffee. In Bogota this week, Katarzyna Kawa summoned all the energy from the Colombian coffee culture and her own family tree and decided that, come hell or high water, she would make it to the main draw. Congratulations, Katarzyna. Your fighting spirit has landed you a place in the history books (and the quarterfinals).