Italian translation at settesei.it
A couple of years ago, I wrote an article introducing D-Lo, an Elo-like rating system for doubles, which crowned Jack Sock as the best doubles player on the men’s tour. Sock grabbed the top spot in October 2016 and hung on for about nine months, largely by not playing very much. A couple of first-round losses in Washington and Montreal last summer sent him tumbling, landing at 8th after the US Open and as low as 14th going into this year’s Australian Open.
Despite his preference for singles, Sock has rocketed back into the lead, first pairing with John Isner for the Indian Wells title, and then partnering Mike Bryan (replacing injured brother Bob) to win both Wimbledon and the US Open. With the exception of one week immediately after Indian Wells, Sock sits at the head of the D-Lo table for the first time in more than a year. Here are the current top ten, along with their ratings:
Rank Player D-Lo 1 Jack Sock 1949 2 Bob Bryan 1930 3 Mike Bryan 1917 4 Pierre Hugues Herbert 1906 5 Nicolas Mahut 1893 6 Jamie Murray 1886 7 Bruno Soares 1883 8 Oliver Marach 1867 9 Robert Farah 1863 10 Nikola Mektic 1863
Yes, that’s the injured Bob Bryan in the second spot. More on that in a moment.
A quick refresher on the D-Lo system: It mostly works like a standard Elo algorithm, in that players gain points for winning matches and lose points for losing them, based on the quality of the opponent and the amount of prior information already baked into their ratings. A big upset earns more points than a victory over an equal, and for players with fewer prior matches, the effect of each match is greater. Thus, Sock got a few more points than Mike did for winning the 12 matches at the last two slams, because we knew relatively less about him before those tournaments.
D-Lo assumes that the quality of each team is equal to the average of the two players. If a team wins, each member of the partnership gains points, with one tweak: If the two players have different ratings, their ratings slightly move toward the average of the two. This is because it’s impossible to know how much each player contributes to a win. The system is designed so that, after a year or so of playing together, the two mens’ ratings will meet in the middle. It’s an imperfect system, but it does a reasonably good job of forecasting results, which means it usually provides a solid representation of each player’s skill level.
Back to the matter at hand: Doubles ratings have been particularly volatile this year, with five different men (Sock, Bob, Pierre Hugues Herbert, Mate Pavic, and Henri Kontinen) holding the #1 spot, and two more (Nicolas Mahut and John Peers) peaking at #2. This parity means that no player has a particularly high rating. Two years ago, Sock’s mark of 1949 would have been good for only fourth (behind himself, Herbert, and Mahut), and several players (the Bryans, Herbert, and Daniel Nestor among them) have peaked with ratings above 2000.
Take a look at how much the rank order has fluctuated since the beginning of 2018:
For clarity’s sake, I’ve left off Oliver Marach (whose rating tracks closely with that of his partner, Pavic, and whose season hasn’t lived up to its early promise) and Peers (ditto, with Kontinen). Herbert has reached the highest level of anyone this season, but a rough second half so far has left him behind the American trio of Jack, Bob, and Mike.
Back to the curious case of Bob Bryan. The Bryan brothers’ title at the Madrid Masters this year gave the twins their highest D-Lo ratings in nearly two years. “Standard” Elo doesn’t penalize players for absence, so Bob’s mark has remained at 1930 ever since. (I’ve added an injury/absence penalty in my singles Elo ratings, but haven’t done so for D-Lo. I suspect there is less of an effect, but still a measureable one, in doubles.) Mike’s rating has slipped because of some bad results apart from the pair of majors, and only Sock has caught up.
If Bob is healthy enough to play this fall, the twins are expected to pair up for the World Tour Finals, once again leaving the best doubles player in the world out of the field. In that case, Sock, down to 157th in the ATP singles race, could end up spending that week playing the new ATP Challenger event in Houston. Without their young compatriot in the way, the Bryans will be back in familiar territory, headed to London as the favorites for another year-end title.