Month: September 2013

Murray d. Istomin: Recap and Detailed Stats

Tonight Andy Murray defeated Denis Istomin in four sets for a place in the quarterfinals against Stanislas Wawrinka. I logged every point, and have lots of stats for you to check out.

In particular, check out the new “key points” and “rally length” tables.

Murray started out sluggishly and never appeared to play at 100%. But what he brought was good enough, especially in the second set, when Istomin went down an early break and immediately started looking to the third set.

Istomin has a big game, with the ability to dictate play from the baseline. Murray spent a lot of time in classic Andy defense mode, and often it worked, as perhaps Istomin’s greatest weakness is his predilection for low-percentage shots. His 58 unforced errors (not counting double faults) don’t even convey the whole story, as so many of those should have been simple rallying shots.  It may not be easy to construct a point against a defender like Murray, but Istomin’s tactics didn’t do him much credit.

While Murray came through tonight, it marks another sign of weakness for defending champ. Playing like he did tonight won’t be enough to beat Wawrinka, let alone Novak Djokovic in the semifinals. His serve never really got going, and once he learned he could trust Istomin to lose points without too much help, he waited out his opponent. It worked, but it took over three hours. Andy in champion mode should have won this one in less than two.

Here are the complete chart-based stats.

Unexpected Quarterfinalists: Gasquet, Hantuchova, and Not Fed

Yesterday, Richard Gasquet won a fourth-round match at a Grand Slam.

If that doesn’t surprise you, you haven’t been paying much attention to Gasquet for, say, the last eight years.  The Frenchman with the stunning backhand has advanced to the fourth round at a Slam 17 times now, making him only the 35th man in the Open era to do so.  The problem is what happens next.

Entering yesterday’s match, Gasquet was 1-15 in round-of-16 matches at majors, his one victory coming at 2007 Wimbledon over Jo-Wilfried Tsonga.  Since then, he’s lost his last eleven tries, including one to Tsonga and two to David Ferrer, his quarterfinal opponent this week.  No player has lost more than 15 fourth-round Slam matches; only Wayne Ferreira reached the same plateau, and Lleyton Hewitt will match it if he loses today.

One thing that has held him back is an inability to beat higher-ranked players, as Carl Bialik noted earlier this year.  At slams, he has played 28 matches against players with superior ATP rankings, and won only four of them.  Against lower-ranked players, he is 62-11.  Since Gasquet’s ranking has rarely reached the top eight, that mark hasn’t helped him the fourth round, where players outside of the top eight generally meet a higher-ranked opponent.

Now that Gasquet has broken through with his second Grand Slam quarterfinal appearance, history suggests he’ll go no further.  He has beaten Ferrer only one time in nine tries, and that was five years ago.  And Ferrer’s ranking puts him firmly in the category of guys Gasquet doesn’t beat at majors.

There’s one reason for hope, though.  Despite all the disappointment in the fourth round, he has never lost a Grand Slam quarterfinal.

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Daniela Hantuchova‘s appearance in the quarterfinals of this year’s US Open is surprising for a different reason.  When the tournament began, her spot was pegged for Petra Kvitova, before an ailing Kvitova was upset by Alison Riske.  For all my talk recently about easy bracket on the men’s side, no one in either single’s draw has faced such lowly-ranked competition.

Hantuchova’s four opponents thus far include two qualifiers and two wild cards.  Among them, only Riske is ranked inside the top 100, and she’s #81.  By contrast, Hantuchova’s presumptive quarterfinal opponent, Victoria Azarenka, will have faced #13 and #28.

Of over 850 women’s Slam quarterfinalists since 1987, only six have reached the quarters without playing someone in the top 80.  The luckiest path was that of Claudia Kohde Kilsch, who reached the 1989 Wimbledon quarterfinals by beating #126, #246, #247, and #131.  Then her luck ran out: Steffi Graf ended her run in the quarters.  Steffi herself is one of the six, having won her first four rounds at 1993 Wimbledon without playing anyone ranked better than #87.

These lucky draws have become less common in recent years.  Of the six, only one has occurred since Steffi’s run in 1993.  Nadia Petrova reached the quarterfinals at the 2006 Australian Open without having to beat anyone ranked better than #100.

After four easy matches, there’s little pattern to how these players fare in the quarters.  As we might expect, the success rate in their fifth matches has much more to do with their quarterfinal opponents than the women they faced to get there.

—

And perhaps you’ve heard: Tommy Robredo defeated Roger Federer in straight sets.

It was the first time in twelve meetings that Robredo beat Fed.  It’s the Spaniard’s first quarterfinal appearance in New York, despite seven previous fourth-round showings (including one against Roger, in 2009).  Even Gasquet hasn’t been that bad, losing in the US Open round of 16 a mere four times.  And Robredo pulled off the upset while winning fewer return points than his opponent did–something that happens in only one of 15 US Open men’s matches.

When oddities like this occur–Gasquet’s match is another, as he won only 48.5% of total points–it is almost always because the winner played much better on high-leverage points.  In many matches, those important moments are at the back end of tiebreaks, when two points can make or break a set.  In Federer’s loss, the finger-pointing is directed at break points.  Roger barely converted any of them. It’s been a problem for Fed for years, particularly in his last several Slam losses.

It’s difficult to know how to evaluate poor break point performances.  In one sense, it’s obvious: If Fed was going to win the match, he needed to win more.  A failure to convert break points is a good explanation for any loss.

But what does it say about Fed’s current level, or about what we can expect from him going forward?  Is he suddenly weak on break points?  When I ran the numbers a couple of years ago, he was winning slightly fewer return points in the ad court, but the difference isn’t nearly extreme enough to explain a 2-for-16 performance on break points.

What’s particularly frustrating about squandering so many break points is that he earned them with good play on other return points. And, of course, there’s no difference between a typical ad-court point and a break point except for the pressure.

So, if Federer is still generating all those break-point opportunities, is he simply suffering through a run of bad luck?  Has he lost his clutch superpowers?  Have other players ceased to fear him in big moments?  Judging from the growing number of surprising defeats in Roger’s record, it certainly seems to be something more than bad luck.

—

Finally, a couple of notes.

Don’t miss this win probability graph of the Raonic-Gasquet match.  Mike says it’s “almost too interesting.”

In the New York Times Straight Sets blog (known for its coverage of the United States Open), Clayton Chin gives a brief overview of a forecasting method.  He emphasizes his reliance on the Monte Carlo method–a technique that utilizes thousands or even millions of simulations–which isn’t necessary here.

If you estimate each player’s serve and return points won, it’s straightforward to calculate each player’s chances of winning a game, set, or match.  Generally speaking, Monte Carlo techniques are useful when such closed-form solutions aren’t available.

The most important part of Chin’s approach is one he doesn’t shed any light on.  If Serena is holding serve at a certain rate and breaking serve at a certain rate over the course of the year, how do you generate hold and break rates for an individual match?  It can be done, and many have tried, but that’s much more challenging that simulating outcomes at the match or tournament level.  Without that glimpse under the hood, it’s tough to know how much weight to give his results.

Guaranteed Five-Setters, Exhausting Routes to R4, and Master Bakers

With so many of the world’s top players in action yesterday, it’s only fitting to lead with Denis Istomin and Andreas Seppi.

Istomin and Seppi have now met four times in the last 15 months, all at Grand Slams.  And thanks to yesterday’s effort, they’ve now gone five sets in all four of those matches.

Cue the chorus: “That’s got to be some kind of record, right?”

Yep, it is.  While their US Open third-rounder was Seppi and Istomin’s seventh meeting overall, it was only their fourth at a major, meaning that each time they’ve met in the best-of-five format, they’ve gone the distance.  Two pairs of players (Thomas Muster and Albert Costa, and Guillermo Canas and Gaston Gaudio) have met three times in a best-of-five and reached a decider each time, but no two players had ever gone four-for-four.

In fact, Seppi and Istomin are only the eighth pairing in the Open era to record four or more five-setters.  Petr Korda and Pete Sampras played four five-setters in five matchups, but their first such meeting, a 1992 Davis Cup match, only went four sets.  Radek Stepanek and David Ferrer are also close, having played four five-setters in five best-of-five meetings.

Most of the pairs that have played so many five-setters required many more meetings to do so.  You might be familiar with some of the guys who make up the three head-to-heads that have played five five-setters: Jimmy Connors–John McEnroe, Stefan Edberg–Ivan Lendl, and Roger Federer–Rafael Nadal.  But all of those pairs met more than 10 times in best-of-five situations.  In this context, all those three- and four-setters seem rather weak.

When the Australian Open draw comes out, while everyone else figures out whose quarter Federer landed in, I’ll be checking Seppi’s proximity to Istomin.

—

When Marcel Granollers edged by Tim Smyczek in five sets yesterday, the big story was the futility of American men’s tennis.  (Thankfully, for the depressed patriots among us, Sloane Stephens was putting up a spirited challenge against Serena Williams on another court.)

However, the Spaniard was making a bit of history of his own.  In beating Jurgen Zopp, Rajeev Ram, and Smyczek, he’s won three five-setters in his first three rounds, becoming only the 15th man to do so in the Open era, the first since Janko Tipsarevic did so at Wimbledon in 2007.  It’s only the third time someone has done it at the US Open.  The last man to do so in New York was Wayne Ferreira, in 1993.

Amazingly, three players have gone five sets in each of their first four matches in a slam.  The last such occurrence was when Dominik Hrbaty reached the fourth round at the Australian, in 2006.  He fell to Nikolay Davydenko in the fourth round.

This is one bit of history that Granollers surely won’t be making.  As remarkable as it is to reach the fourth round of the back of all those five-setters, it isn’t a good sign when you lose two sets apiece to three players ranked outside the top 100.

It certainly doesn’t bode well when your next opponent is Novak Djokovic.

—

As Federer, Nadal and Djokovic plow their way through the early rounds this year, none is wasting any time.  All three players have posted a 6-0 set in their second- or third-round matches, exclamation points amidst broader displays of dominance.

A quick check of the database reveals yet another category in which Federer is charging toward the top.  The Open era record for bagel sets won at Grand Slams is held by Andre Agassi, who retired with 49.  Fed’s bagel of Adrian Mannarino on Saturday was the 43rd of his career.

Here is the all-time list:

Player           Slam bagels  
Andre Agassi              49  
Roger Federer             43  
Ivan Lendl                42  
Jimmy Connors             41  
Bjorn Borg                35  
Guillermo Vilas           29  
John Mcenroe              29  
Stefan Edberg             25  
Boris Becker              23  
Rafael Nadal              22  
Novak Djokovic            21

Andy Murray is tied for 19th, with 16.

This is one category which highlights the extreme dominance of some of the greatest female players in history.  Chris Evert puts Agassi, Federer, and everyone else to shame, with a record 104 Grand Slam bagels.  Serena Williams’s first-round defeat of Francesca Schiavone moved her past Arantxa Sanchez Vicario into fifth place on the all-time list:

Player                   Slam bagels  
Chris Evert                      104  
Steffi Graf                       74  
Martina Navratilova               70  
Monica Seles                      51 
Serena Williams                   49 
Arantxa Sanchez Vicario           47  
Margaret Court                    44  
Gabriela Sabatini                 44  
Lindsay Davenport                 43  
Maria Sharapova                   41

With a quarterfinal matchup against Carla Suarez Navarro, it’s possible Serena isn’t done for the year.  Each of the two previous times the two women have played, Williams has won a 6-0 set.

Detailed Match Stats: Serena, Sloane, Halep, Vika, Berdych

I’ve charted several matches over the last two days, and there’s some new stuff to show you.

Follow these links, and you’ll see a new format for my detailed, chart-based match stats.  The same serve and return breakdowns you’ve seen earlier this week, but a little easier to navigate.

Best of all, there’s a new set of data: rally outcomes.  For each of these matches, you can see how each player performed in rallies of 1-3 shots, 4-6 shots, 7-9 shots, and 10+ shots, along with each of those categories on each player’s serve.

To get to the rally outcomes table, click on the link for the match you want to investigate, and then click the link for “Point outcomes by rally length.”

Enjoy!

Sunday: R16: Serena Williams vs Sloane Stephens: click here

Sunday: R32: Tomas Berdych vs Julien Benneteau: click here

Saturday: R32: Victoria Azarenka vs Alize Cornet: click here

Saturday: R32: Simona Halep vs Maria Kirilenko: click here

There will be more in the next few days, along with additional analysis, I hope as soon as tomorrow.

Halep’s Beatdown, Challenges by Gender, Djokovic Unthreatened

Thanks to the dominance of players like Serena Williams and Victoria Azarenka, it’s not much of a surprise to see a scoreline like 6-1 6-0 in the first week of a Grand Slam.  But when an upset comes with scores like that, we should sit up and take notice.

That’s what Simona Halep did to Maria Kirilenko, and trust me, it wasn’t any closer than the score suggests.  Halep has a deceptively big game, content to counterpunch but always looking for an opening for what can be a monster backhand.  I charted her match yesterday (along with Vika’s third-rounder against Alize Cornet), so look for some detailed stats from those matches later today.

Even before the first matches were played, it was clear that the Romanian landed in the right part of the draw, in a quarter free of Serena, Vika, Agnieszka Radwanska, and Na Li.  With the early upsets of Sara Errani and Caroline Wozniacki, the two highest-ranked women in her quarter, Halep’s position looks even better.

Strangely enough, though, her next two opponents are women she might prefer not to face.  Flavia Pennetta, who will play her in the round of 16, was the last woman outside of the top 20 to beat Halep.  (Granted, Simona retired in the third set with a lower back injury.)  Her likely quarterfinal opponent, Roberta Vinci, is a more  interesting case.  The pair have already faced off three times this year, and on the first of those occasions, Vinci dished out Halep’s worst loss of the year, a 6-0 6-3 drubbing on the carpet in Paris.  Since then, Simona has won two equally lopsided matches, on both clay and grass.

The way Halep was playing yesterday, though, we can safely pencil her into the semifinals, regardless who she draws in the meantime.

—

Did you know that, at Grand Slams, men use the challenge system more that women do?

At the Open so far this year, men have made 7.52 challenges per match, while women have made 3.38.  The same pattern held at the Australian Open and Wimbledon this year.  In general, there are about twice as many challenges in a men’s Slam match than in a women’s slam match.

Of course, a big part of that discrepancy arises because men play best-of-5 matches while women play best-of-3.  The more sets, the more points, and the more points, the more potential reasons to challenge.

Still, the structural difference doesn’t entirely account for the gap.  For instance, there were roughly 90 men’s matches and 90 women’s matches played on Hawkeye courts in Melbourne this year, and the men’s matches averaged about 60% more points.  Men challenged calls once every 32 points, while women challenged once every 37 points.

That’s not quite as dramatic as the 2:1 ratio we started with, but it’s still notable, and it has remained consistent throughout multiple slams this year.

One possibility is that men challenge more because, on average, they hit the ball harder, particularly on the serve.  The harder the shot, the tougher it is for everyone to see exactly where it lands, and the greater likelihood of disagreement.  To corroborate, it would be interesting to know whether chair umpires are more or less likely to overrule in men’s matches.

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Yesterday I noted that Djokovic had a remarkably easy path to the quarterfinals.  If Marcel Granollers beats Tim Smyczek, the Spaniard will be Novak’s highest-ranked opponent en route to the quarters.  (That’s assuming Djokovic beats 95th-ranked Joao Sousa today.)

If Granollers advances, Djokovic’s first four opponents will have the following rankings: 112, 87, 95, and 43.  In 24 previous Grand Slam quarterfinal runs, Novak has needed to beat someone in the top 40 20 of those times, and someone in the top 30 17 of those times.

If, as all patriotic Americans fervently hope, Smyczek wins today, we’ll venture into more extreme territory.  In that case, Djokovic’s highest-ranked opponent will have been 87th-ranked Benjamin Becker.  One suspects that a fair number of ATP players could advance to the quarterfinals given this draw.

In the Smyczek scenario, Djokovic will have faced an easier path than Roger Federer ever has in his 36 Slam quarterfinal showings.  As Carl Bialik reported during last year’s French Open, Roger’s first four rounds at Roland Garros were the easiest of his career–his highest-ranked opponent was #78 Tobias Kamke.

Federer’s experience leaves it unclear whether such a friendly draw is a good thing.  In the quarterfinals of that tournament, he lost his first two sets to Juan Martin del Potro before charging back for the five-set victory.  Perhaps we can expect such a thriller from Djokovic and Tommy Haas next week.

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Want to know more about Tim Smyczek?  Here’s a good place to start.

Here’s another excellent win probability graph from Betting Market Analytics, this time covering the five-setter between Hewitt and del Potro.