Australian Open Men’s Quarterfinal Projections

The field is down to eight. It still includes the top five seeds and seven of the top ten players in the game, so there’s still plenty of uncertainty. Novak Djokovic showed some chinks in the armor during yesterday’s match against Lleyton Hewitt; Rafael Nadal is never a lock on a hard court; Roger Federer has what may be the toughest quarterfinal draw of the top four; and despite a drubbing last time he played Andy Murray, Kei Nishikori is playing as well as ever.

Oddly enough for such a steady player, this is only David Ferrer‘s second grand slam quarterfinal since 2008 and just his sixth quarterfinal in 36 career slams. In his last slam quarter–Melbourne last year–he beat world number one Nadal. The odds will be even steeper against him this week.

Player                        SF      F      W  
(1)Novak Djokovic          75.4%  49.2%  31.0%  
(5)David Ferrer            24.6%   9.6%   3.4%  
(4)Andy Murray             66.5%  30.9%  16.2%  
(24)Kei Nishikori          33.5%  10.4%   3.8%  

(11)Juan Martin Del Potro  36.0%  14.0%   4.9%  
(3)Roger Federer           64.0%  34.0%  16.4%  
(7)Tomas Berdych           36.6%  15.9%   6.0%  
(2)Rafael Nadal            63.4%  36.1%  18.3%

5 thoughts on “Australian Open Men’s Quarterfinal Projections”

  1. Does the fact that, according to your table, Del Potro had approximately a 1 in 3 chance of beating Federer jibe with the fact that he actually won one third of the games?

    At least that represented a threefold improvement over the last quarter final they played in Melbourne.

    1. I haven’t looked at margin-of-victory at all in generate my rankings or my forecasts, but I’m guessing that a 1 in 3 chance of winning should translate to a slightly better showing. At the rate he’s going, as you point out, Delpo will be beating Fed in three or four years.

  2. “At the rate he’s going, as you point out, Delpo will be beating Fed in three or four years”.

    Except that Fed will cleverly retire before that starts happening!

  3. I finally realised what Roger meant after the US Open 2009 when he predicted Del Potro would be the world #1. “After I’m gone, knock yourself out”.

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