He's tied for 213th in the world this indoor season.

And Rybakina, who ironically won Wimbledon last year, will meet Sabalenka in the final. She's born and raised in Russia but represents Kazakhstan due to lack of support from the Russian federation.

The Russian (and Belarussian) government would certainly prefer that their players were banned so that they could point fingers and say that the West are discriminating athletes purely because they were born in Russia.

All top players (Medvedev, Rublev, Sabalenka, Azarenka, Kasatkina, Kudermetova, Khachanov, Karatsev etc) have spoken negatively about the war. Do you think the Russian government supported newspapers are happy to report on that?

Here is a long interview with Rublev and Kasatkina, the two highest ranked Russian tennis players who both are amongst the best in the world. They live in Barcelona and travel the world playing on the ATP and WTA tour respectively. Kasatkina came out as gay when this interviewed aired, something that is heavily frowned upon in her native Russia. Rublev has been vocally against the war since day 1. He proposed that Russian and Ukrainan players could play together in doubles at Wimbledon as a statement towards Putin, but was declined by the tournament.

There is, in my opinion, an important difference between playing on the ATP/WTA tour where you only represent yourself, compared to playing the Davis Cup/Billie Jean Cup/Olympics where you represent your country. When you are an individual player you employ your own coaches, physios, psychologists, etc and travel around the world with them as your entourage. You're more like a small independent business. When you represent your country in international competitions you have to get support from the federation as they select you. That's why Russia and Belarus are banned from ITF, ATP and WTA competitions, but simply being Russian or Belarussian is not enough to suspend individuals.

3/19 matches so far were won by the underdog (looking at the betting market).

Outside of Japan and Saudi beating big nations the results have largely been fairly expected so far, and they were pretty lucky in doing so if you rewatch the games.

Belgium-Canada is the only big surprise in terms of how the match looked out of the 19 played. I wouldn't say this World Cup has been more unpredictable than the most previous editions.