Another year, another new set of tiebreak masters.
Despite the conventional wisdom, very few players demonstrate any kind of consistent tiebreak skill over and above their regular, non-tiebreak tennis playing ability. In other words, while someone like Novak Djokovic is bound to win well over half of the tiebreaks he plays–after all, he’s better than almost everyone he faces–there’s no secret sauce that allows him to win any more than his usual skill level would suggest.
Nowhere is this more evident than in this year’s top tiebreak performers. I calculated the likelihood of each player winning every tiebreak they played this year, given their typical rates of serve and return points won, giving us a ranked list of those players who most exceeded and most underperformed expectations. At the top of the list, names like Roberto Bautista Agut, Dmitry Tursunov, Marin Cilic, and Leonardo Mayer.
Maybe Bautista Agut is a clutch monster just waiting for recognition, but it’s more likely he just had a few bounces go his way. Cilic is an excellent example: While he won 54% more tiebreaks than expected this year, 2013 was only the second season of the last six in which the Croat exceeded expectations in tiebreaks. Whether tiebreak performance is clutch skill or simply luck, the numbers show that it isn’t persistent.
However, as I’ve noted before, a very few players do consistently outperform tiebreak expectations. They tend to be players who find themselves in tiebreaks often, and their success may be because they manage to maintain their serve at its usual level.
John Isner and Roger Federer are the usual suspects. Isner won 20% more tiebreaks this year than expected, in line with his numbers in 2011 and 2012. (In 2009 and 2010, he was even better.) Federer beat expectations by 10%, avoiding his first neutral-or-worse season since 2003 by winning a pair of breakers against tough opponents at the Tour Finals in London.
With another year’s worth of data in the books, we can safely add one more active player to this elite group. Rafael Nadal was fifth overall this year, winning 23% more tiebreaks than expected. Nadal hovered around the neutral level until 2008, winning almost exactly as many breakers as his overall skill level would suggest. But since then, he has had only good tiebreak seasons. No other player besides Isner and Federer has posted more than four better-than-expected tiebreak seasons in the last six.
For the rest of the ATP, it’s best to look at these numbers as indexes of luck. The men at the top will probably have to win more non-tiebreak sets next year to maintain their ranking, while the guys at the bottom can expect a modest boost with just a little less bad luck. That is, unless they play too many tiebreaks against John Isner.
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The complete list of 2013 tiebreak performance is below. ‘TBOE’ is “Tiebreaks Over Expectations,” the difference between the number of tiebreaks my algorithm expects a player to win and the number he actually won. ‘TBOR’ is a rate version of the same stat, calculated by dividing TBOE by the total number of tiebreaks played. TBOE rewards players like Isner who play lots of tiebreaks and play them well, while TBOR identifies those who have been particularly lucky in whatever number of tiebreaks they contested.
Player TB TBWon TBExp TBOE TBOR Roberto Bautista Agut 21 16 10.3 5.7 27.0% Dmitry Tursunov 21 16 10.4 5.6 26.8% Marin Cilic 15 11 8.2 2.8 18.7% Leonardo Mayer 15 9 6.8 2.2 14.9% Rafael Nadal 25 18 14.6 3.4 13.6% Gilles Simon 25 16 12.7 3.3 13.0% Ivo Karlovic 29 18 14.8 3.2 11.1% John Isner 53 36 30.1 5.9 11.1% Andy Murray 23 16 13.5 2.5 11.0% Fabio Fognini 23 14 11.7 2.3 10.0% Juan Martin Del Potro 33 21 17.7 3.3 10.0% Benoit Paire 29 17 14.3 2.7 9.3% Philipp Kohlschreiber 33 19 15.9 3.1 9.3% Jerzy Janowicz 26 15 12.9 2.1 8.2% Jarkko Nieminen 27 14 11.9 2.1 7.9% Bernard Tomic 30 16 13.7 2.3 7.6% Julien Benneteau 24 14 12.4 1.6 6.9% Alexandr Dolgopolov 21 11 9.6 1.4 6.8% Ernests Gulbis 23 13 11.5 1.5 6.4% Tommy Haas 26 16 14.4 1.6 6.3% Jeremy Chardy 21 12 10.7 1.3 6.0% Roger Federer 25 15 13.6 1.4 5.4% Grega Zemlja 19 10 9.0 1.0 5.3% Feliciano Lopez 24 14 12.9 1.1 4.4% Jo Wilfried Tsonga 30 17 15.8 1.2 4.2% Ryan Harrison 15 7 6.4 0.6 4.1% Tommy Robredo 24 14 13.1 0.9 3.8% Novak Djokovic 28 19 17.9 1.1 3.8% Lleyton Hewitt 16 9 8.4 0.6 3.5% Daniel Brands 19 10 9.4 0.6 3.4% Fernando Verdasco 24 14 13.5 0.5 1.9% David Ferrer 21 12 11.8 0.2 1.0% Kei Nishikori 16 9 8.9 0.1 0.9% Martin Klizan 15 7 6.9 0.1 0.9% Kevin Anderson 35 19 19.1 -0.1 -0.2% Marinko Matosevic 16 9 9.1 -0.1 -0.4% Mikhail Youzhny 23 11 11.4 -0.4 -1.8% Milos Raonic 36 19 19.7 -0.7 -1.9% Sam Querrey 31 15 15.6 -0.6 -2.1% Stanislas Wawrinka 32 17 17.7 -0.7 -2.3% Florian Mayer 18 8 8.4 -0.4 -2.4% Gael Monfils 27 13 13.7 -0.7 -2.5% Igor Sijsling 19 9 9.5 -0.5 -2.6% Andreas Seppi 19 9 9.5 -0.5 -2.8% Denis Istomin 24 11 11.8 -0.8 -3.2% Richard Gasquet 29 15 16.0 -1.0 -3.4% Daniel Gimeno Traver 18 7 7.6 -0.6 -3.5% Vasek Pospisil 24 11 11.9 -0.9 -3.6% Tomas Berdych 34 17 18.6 -1.6 -4.7% Victor Hanescu 24 10 11.2 -1.2 -5.2% Ivan Dodig 27 12 13.5 -1.5 -5.7% Robin Haase 24 10 11.4 -1.4 -5.9% Albert Ramos 16 7 7.9 -0.9 -5.9% Benjamin Becker 18 7 8.1 -1.1 -5.9% Horacio Zeballos 20 7 8.2 -1.2 -6.2% Jurgen Melzer 19 8 9.4 -1.4 -7.4% Nicolas Almagro 34 17 19.5 -2.5 -7.5% Lukas Rosol 15 6 7.3 -1.3 -8.9% Evgeny Donskoy 17 6 7.7 -1.7 -10.2% Alejandro Falla 15 6 7.6 -1.6 -10.9% Grigor Dimitrov 22 9 11.5 -2.5 -11.4% Marcos Baghdatis 20 6 9.5 -3.5 -17.4% Carlos Berlocq 18 7 10.2 -3.2 -17.5% Juan Monaco 15 5 7.7 -2.7 -18.3% Janko Tipsarevic 19 5 8.7 -3.7 -19.5% Edouard Roger Vasselin 19 4 8.2 -4.2 -22.3%