Around the Net is my attempt to provide a clearinghouse for tennis analytics on the web. Each week, you’ll find a summary of recent articles, podcasts, papers, and data sources, as well as trivia and the occasional bit of interesting non-tennis content. If you would like to suggest something for a future issue, drop me a line.
Articles
- Which Components of “Player DNA” Best Explain ELO? (hiddengameoftennis.com)
- TRIX-y Tennis Players (hiddengameoftennis.com)
- Men’s Top Pressure Performances in February (on-the-t.com)
- Belinda Bencic Won a Historically Difficult Title, Just Not Last Week (tennisabstract.com/blog)
- The Best Draw That Money Can Buy (tennisabstract.com/blog)
Multimedia
Data
- Match Charting Project: The dataset has grown by more than 50 matches in the last week, from 5,143 to 5,194. Highlights include the 100th charted Elina Svitolina match, all of last week’s tour-level finals, and several classic Pete Sampras Wimbledon matches, which round out our complete set of his semi-finals and finals at the All-England Club.
Trivia
- Nick Kyrgios beat Rafael Nadal in Acapulco, but he didn’t exactly play better than the Spaniard. Nadal’s dominance ratio (DR) in the match was 1.36, higher than in any loss of his career. (Usually a DR larger than 1.0 corresponds with a win.)
- The Acapulco upset means that Kyrgios improved his record in completed matches against the Big Three to 6-6. Only three other players (plus Djokovic and Nadal) have won at least half of their matches against the famous trio, minimum five matches. Kyrgios joins Alex Corretja, Yevgeny Kafelnikov, and Dominik Hrbaty.
- Nadal wasn’t the only unlucky loser this week. Henri Kontinen and John Peers lost their first round doubles match in Dubai to Raja/Nedunchezhiyan despite winning 59% of total points–20 more than their opponents.
- Gael Monfils discovered that a well-timed exclamation can give his forehead a bit of extra juice.
- Last week in Bergamo, 17-year-old Jannik Sinner won his first Challenger title, becoming the youngest ever champion from Italy, the first born in 2001, and youngest since Alexander Zverev won his first challenger at Braunschweig in 2014.
- Felix Auger-Aliassime is a bit older, but by reaching the final in Rio de Janeiro, he became the first 2000-born player to crack the ATP top 100.
Beyond the Net
- More on youthful record-holders: Short thought on sport: The curse of the precocious athlete (sportsscientists.com)
- And more on aging patterns, though not physical ones: When Does Intelligence Peak? (blogs.scientificamerican.com)
- Attacking Contributions: Markov Models for Football (statsbomb.com)
- Statcast Lab: Active Spin Percentage (tangotiger.com)
Thanks to Peter for help with this week’s issue.