Are Conditions Slower? Faster? Weirder?

Many players didn’t like the conditions at Roland Garros this year. The clay, apparently, was slower and heavily watered, at least on some courts. The balls were heavier than usual, especially when they had been in play for a little while and the clay began to stick to them.

Maybe the courts really did play differently. We could compare ace rate, rally length, or a few other metrics to see whether the French played slower this year.

I’m interested in a broader question. Were the conditions weirder? To put it another way, were they outside the normal range of variation on tour? We could be talking about anything that impacts play, including surface, balls, weather, you name it.

This is surprisingly easy to test. The weirder the conditions, the more unpredictable the results should be. If you don’t get the connection, think about really strange conditions, like playing in mud, or in the dark, or with rackets that have broken strings. In those situations, the factors that determine the winner of a match are so different than usual that they will probably seem random. At the very least, there will be more upsets. Holding a top ranking in “normal” tennis doesn’t mean as much in “dark” tennis or “broken string” tennis. While unusually heavy balls don’t rank up there with my hypotheticals, the idea is the same: The more you deviate from typical conditions, the less predictable the results.

We measure predictability by taking the Brier score of my Elo-based pre-match forecasts. Elo isn’t perfect, but it’s pretty good, and the algorithm allows us to compare seasons and tournaments against each other. Brier score tells us the calibration of a group of predictions: Were they correct? Did they have the right level of confidence? The lower the score, the better the forecast. Or put another way, for our purposes today: The lower the score, the more predictable the outcomes.

Conclusion: This year’s French wasn’t that weird. Here are the Brier scores for men’s and women’s completed main draw matches, along with several other measures for context:

Tourney(s)     Men  Women  
2023 RG      0.177  0.193  
2022 RG      0.174  0.189  
2021 RG      0.177  0.194  
2020 RG      0.200  0.230  
2000-23 RG   0.169  0.184  
00-23 Slams  0.171  0.182  
Min RG       0.133  0.152  
Max RG       0.214  0.230

(“Min RG” and “Max RG” show the lowest and highest tournament Brier scores for each gender at the French since 2000.)

Again, lower = more predictable. For both men and women, the 2023 French was no more upset-ridden than the 2021 edition, and it ran considerably closer to script than the zany Covid tournament in autumn 2020. The results this year were a bit more unpredictable than the typical major since 2000. But the metrics tell us that the outcomes were closer to the average than to the extremes.

However unusual the conditions at Roland Garros felt to the players, the weirdness didn’t cause the results to be any more random than usual. While adjustments were surely necessary, most players were able to make them, and to similar degrees. The best players–based on their demonstrated clay-court prowess–tended to win, about as often as they always do at the French.

June 5, 1973: The Brigands Final

Ilie Năstase (left) and Niki Pilić ahead of the 1973 Roland Garros final

“The greatest thing about the French,” said John Newcombe, “is that it’s so bloody hard to win.”

The greatest thing about Ilie Năstase was that he made everything look so easy.

The 26-year-old Romanian was, by all accounts, the greatest clay-court player on tour. He had cruised through six rounds in Paris without dropping a single set. Only one man–Roger Taylor, in the quarter-finals–earned a set point against him. Năstase erased it with a sharply-angled backhand that few other men would’ve dared attempt.

The surprise of the tournament was the other finalist: Yugoslavia’s Niki Pilić. Pilić had begun the fortnight in the news for other reasons, after his national federation suspended him for missing a Davis Cup tie. The ILTF allowed him to play the French and delayed a decision on his appeal to June 1st. “Somebody would be embarrassed,” wrote the New York Times, “if by then Pilić was in the final.” Oops.

Pilić, a 33-year-old lefty who hadn’t reached the quarter-finals of a major since 1967, took advantage of a soft draw, then turned in the match of his life to defeat Adriano Panatta in the semi-finals. “He must have been annoyed at me for serving so well,” said the southpaw. “The way I played today, I could beat anyone.” Even Năstase?

A week of rain pushed the schedule back two days, and the final was at last contested on Tuesday, June 5th. The Romanian came out tense, and he dropped the first three games. The embattled Pilić appeared capable of an enormous upset.

“I can always tell after the first two or three games how I will play,” Năstase told Laurie Pignon of the Daily Mail. “The feel of the ball on the racket; the way my body moves, and if my eyes take in everything. When I play badly I get cross with myself for I know I am not giving the people what they have paid to see.”

At the second change of ends, Ilie must have known something that wasn’t yet apparent to the rest of the stadium. He unleashed backhand after backhand to win six games in a row and 11 of the next 12. When Pilic shifted tactics and attacked his forehand in the third set, Năstase hit a string of winners off that wing as well. Final score: 6-3, 6-3, 6-0.

Pilić might have repeated the post-match summary of Năstase’s semi-final victim, Tom Gorman: “Not a good enough volley. Not a good enough second serve. Too good an opponent.”

One French newspaper called the championship match “A Brigands Final,” referring to Pilić’s limbo and Năstase’s on-court antics. The Romanian often veered between charming character and combative cad, but on this day, he kept the theatrics in check. He struck an off-key note only after the match, when he told the crowd that his US Open title the previous year had meant more. With the French title in the bag, he was ready to take on Wimbledon, where he had come within two games of victory the year before. His idol, Manolo Santana, had ridden clay-court expertise to a title at the All-England Club, and Năstase was ready to do the same.

* * *

As if an 80-minute drubbing wasn’t bad enough, Pilić’s day got worse after the match. The ILTF delivered its judgment. It wouldn’t uphold the entire nine-month suspension sought by the Yugoslavian federation, but it assessed a one-month ban. That would keep the Croatian out of both the Italian Open–already underway in Rome–and Wimbledon.

Astute observers recognized that this was only the beginning. David Gray of the London Daily Telegraph reported various retaliatory proposals mooted by members of the Association of Tennis Professionals, the new players’ union. The men could boycott the Davis Cup, or perhaps they would no longer cooperate with the ILTF’s tournament schedule, essentially unleashing an outright war between the old guard and newer pro circuits like Lamar Hunt’s World Championship Tennis.

Gray felt that the ILTF had overplayed its hand. “They still apparently feel that they can control the destinies of the players without proper consultation,” he wrote. “They are likely to find that they are living in the past.”

* * *

This post is part of my series about the 1973 season, Battles, Boycotts, and Breakouts. Keep up with the project by checking the TennisAbstract.com front page, which shows an up-to-date Table of Contents after I post each installment.

You can also subscribe to the blog to receive each new post by email:

 

June 3, 1973: Half Grand

Margaret Court (left) and Chris Evert in the 1973 French Open final

When Margaret Court was in form, playing a full schedule, the Grand Slam watch began on the first day of the season. She entered the 1973 campaign with a record 21 major titles, including the complete set in 1970. Number 22 came when she beat Evonne Goolagong for the Australian championship in January. She got past Goolagong again in the French semi-finals for a chance to play for her 23rd.

The final hurdle was the most hotly anticipated match of the women’s tennis season. Court and Chris Evert had dominated their respective tours. Evert was riding a 23-match win streak; Margaret had won 59 of 62 since the beginning of the year. Despite Court’s experience, there were reasons to favor the 18-year-old Chrissie in her first grand slam final. She had won three of four meetings, with a game better suited to clay. And Evert hadn’t just suffered an embarrassing defeat–with the world watching–to a 55-year-old man.

On June 3rd, the top two women in the game played a match for the ages. It was clear from the start that this wasn’t the same Court who had flubbed an exhibition just three weeks before. “I wish [she] had been in this form when she played Bobby Riggs,” said Chrissie afterward. “She would have hit him off the court.”

A week’s worth of rain had pushed the final back a day; it also delayed the start time. Tournament organizers, showing their usual gender preference, scheduled two men’s quarter-finals first. Evert was visibly jittery and lost four of the first five games. “It took me two or three games to find out where I was,” she said. “I had never seen so many people there before.” But the teenager warmed to the 12,000-strong crowd, dragged Court into longer rallies, and evened the score at 5-all. Margaret failed to convert two set points, then recovered to take a 5-2 lead in the tiebreak. Here Evert showed that she wasn’t overawed by the setting: She reeled off five points in a row to take the first set.

The second frame developed in the opposite fashion. Chrissie rode her baseline game to a 5-3 advantage, but failed to serve out the match. The set was decided by another tiebreak, this one perhaps the best tennis of the season. Both women aimed for lines and hit their targets. “In cold blood,” wrote David Gray for the Guardian, “no one would have taken such risks.” Court eked out the breaker, 8-6.

As the match passed the two-hour mark, Margaret finally took command. Neither woman had much left in the tank. Even Chrissie began to come forward in an effort to shorten points. That was all the opening that the veteran needed. The cramps that had taken her out of the Family Circle Cup threatened once again, but this time she could manage. “If my legs can hold out,” she told herself, “I can win.” They did, and she claimed the deciding set, 6-4.

“I must confess I didn’t know Margaret could play so well on clay,” Evert said. “It’s no disgrace to be beaten by Margaret.”

Chrissie was still slam-less, but more than ever, it was clear that she’d change that soon. Could Court hold her off for two more majors? She was now halfway to a second career Grand Slam.

* * *

This post is part of my series about the 1973 season, Battles, Boycotts, and Breakouts. Keep up with the project by checking the TennisAbstract.com front page, which shows an up-to-date Table of Contents after I post each installment.

You can also subscribe to the blog to receive each new post by email:

 

May 29, 1973: The Super-Swede

Björn Borg shaking hands with Dick Stockton after their 1973 French Open match

The 1974 World of Tennis annual noted in its capsule biography of Björn Borg that the Swede had never been beaten by a younger player. That was hardly a surprise. He didn’t turn 17 until June 1973, so he didn’t face many younger players. And he wasn’t in the habit of losing to anybody.

Still, the adult game had its learning curve. Borg won the Orange Bowl junior event in both 1971 and 1972, and he picked up the Wimbledon boys’ title in 1972. He made his Davis Cup debut as a 15-year-old and upset New Zealand’s veteran Onny Parun. He was less consistent on tour, reaching the Monte Carlo final one week, losing a first-rounder in straight sets the next. He made his share of youthful mistakes, but the signature two-handed backhand and the unnaturally calm demeanor were already in place.

The 1973 French Open was his coming-out party. Borg began the event with a 6-2, 6-3 defeat of 9th-seeded American Cliff Richey. In the second round, he outlasted the veteran Frenchman Pierre Barthes, 3-6, 6-1, 8-6. “I didn’t expect to even win today,” said the young man. “He should have beat me.”

When Borg took the court for his third-round match against Dick Stockton on May 29th, he already had a fan club. The “long, fair hair flopping round his neck” won over scores of young women, and his acrobatic game appealed to the rest. Parisian fans were treated to a hard-fought battle in the first best-of-five-set round. Stockton was steadier, but Borg snuck away with the big points.

The 16-year-old advanced with a four-set victory, 6-7, 7-5, 6-2, 7-6. Stockton had four set points in the final tiebreak. Borg needed to run down a smash to save the second one. He awed the crowd one more time on his own match point at 10-9, which he secured with a lob winner.

No young player had a brighter future than the Swede. Adriano Panatta, the flashy Italian waiting for him in the fourth round, had beaten him twice already in 1973. Borg would be the underdog in that encounter, but he was playing the long game. “Now it all depends on me,” he said. “I think I can go all the way.”

* * *

The day was not so rewarding for Virginia Wade. Though the third seed wasn’t known for her clay-court prowess, she had reached the quarter-finals the year before. There was no reason she couldn’t do it again.

She lost anyway, to little-known Frenchwoman Odile de Roubin, 1-6, 6-2, 6-3. “I hate playing bad players and she was so bad,” Wade said. “Then the stadium was empty and there was no atmosphere and I played so stupidly.” No one was prepared to argue the point.

* * *

This post is part of my series about the 1973 season, Battles, Boycotts, and Breakouts. Keep up with the project by checking the TennisAbstract.com front page, which shows an up-to-date Table of Contents after I post each installment.

You can also subscribe to the blog to receive each new post by email:

 

May 25, 1973: Unbroken

Ion Țiriac in the 1972 Davis Cup Finals

Here’s a trivia question for you: What was the first grand slam singles match without a break of serve?

In 1973, it hadn’t been possible for long. The US Open was the first major to adopt the tiebreak, in 1970. Before that, every set would continue until someone broke serve and established a two-game lead. Only in 1973 did the other slams follow suit. There weren’t any zero-break matches at the Australian Open, just as there hadn’t been in the first three years of tiebreak tennis at Forest Hills. Even with sudden death shootouts in place, it would be unusual for two men to string together a minimum of three unbroken sets, 36 consecutive holds of serve.

The 1973 French Open made it easier. The tournament experimented with best-of-three-set contests for the first two rounds. Now 24 holds would be enough, even if the slow Parisian clay worked in the returner’s favor.

On May 25, Roland Garros delivered such a match. Two veterans–31-year-old American Frank Froehling and 34-year-old Romanian Ion Țiriac–locked horns for a second-round baseline slugfest that, somehow, never resulted in a break. Froehling advanced, 7-6(3), 7-6(3).

It was a strange outcome. Froehling, like most Americans of his generation, served big. Țiriac, despite his barrel chest and “Brașov Bulldozer” nickname, did not. When the two men faced off in a decisive 1971 Davis Cup match, only one of five sets reached 6-all; two others finished at 6-1. The Romanian had played both Olympic ice hockey and international-level rugby, yet on the tennis court he was a jackrabbit. He realized he didn’t have the strokes of a champion, but he was smart, he was stubborn, and he could run.

And if he couldn’t break your serve, Țiriac could usually break your spirit. No one in the sport practiced more gamesmanship, a polite term for what was often outright cheating. The Romanian’s antics in the 1972 Davis Cup final were flagrant enough that the ILTF suspended him. So obnoxious were the hosts in Bucharest that the United Nations gave a “Fair Play” award to Stan Smith, one of the Americans who withstood it all. Smith’s citation: sportsmanship “in the face of a hostile, chauvinistic public, irregularities in the scoring and aggressive behavior by one of his opponents.” The UN was calling out Ilie Năstase, but Țiriac was probably worse.

By May 1973, the Brașov Bulldozer was wondering if it was worth it anymore. For eight years, he had mentored Năstase, now the best clay courter in the world and the top seed in Paris. Now, they were no longer on speaking terms.

“Năstase was becoming impossible,” Țiriac told a British journalist. “I am the sort of competitor who plays to win but, in doubles, Năstase just wanted to clown about. He let me down badly in the French Championships last year when we were the favorites to win the title. We lost in the first round.”

After the 1972 Davis Cup finals, the Romanian quit the national team. He told the same journalist that he’d retire after the 1974 season. It was clear to another spectator at the Froehling duel that “his heart was clearly not in the match.”

No one knew what Țiriac would do once he gave up full-time competition, but he was always a man to watch. Behind his perpetual glower was a brilliant mind, capable of idiosyncratic conversation in six languages. He had raised Năstase up from what he called “a nothing in the streets of Bucharest.” Perhaps he could do it again.

* * *

Coincidentally, Țiriac’s next project was also in action on May 25th, 1973. 20-year-old Guillermo Vilas of Argentina was little known outside of South America, but that was about to change.

In the second round, the young left-hander drew seventh seeded Spaniard Andrés Gimeno. A year before, Gimeno had become the oldest first-time major champion when he won the French at age 34. This isn’t to say he was a late bloomer: He signed up for the professional ranks when he was 23, after a sterling amateur season in 1960. He held his own against Rod Laver, Ken Rosewall, and the rest for seven years before the start of the Open era. He faced Laver at least 120 times between 1960 and 1971, winning nearly one in three.

But after a four-title 1972 season, Gimeno suffered a meniscus injury. He was a meager 5-4 on the season coming into the French Open, fading as fast as Vilas was rising.

The inter-generational battle was a dramatic one. The Argentinian finally triumphed, 6-2, 5-7, 8-6. Țiriac would later say that Vilas lacked a killer instinct–“This guy not capable in life to kill a fly”–but he was always able to exhaust opponents into submission. For the second year in a row, the lefty had reached the third round in Paris.

Soon, Vilas’s accomplishments would be measured not in match wins, but in finals–often against rival Björn Borg. The coincidences multiply: Yet another match on May 25th was a delayed opening-round tilt, 16-year-old Borg’s first-ever appearance at the French. He, too, made a statement that day, handing a routine defeat to 1971 Roland Garros quarter-finalist Cliff Richey, 6-2, 6-3.

While Țiriac’s two-tiebreak loss to Froehling was the quirkiest result of the day, tennis history was in the making all over the grounds.

* * *

This post is part of my series about the 1973 season, Battles, Boycotts, and Breakouts. Keep up with the project by checking the TennisAbstract.com front page, which shows an up-to-date Table of Contents after I post each installment.

You can also subscribe to the blog to receive each new post by email:

 

May 24, 1973: All Together Now

Jimmy Connors

It was even more exciting than usual to look over the draw for the 1973 French Open. 128 men, 64 women, and no senseless divisions. Margaret Court, queen of the Virginia Slims circuit, in the same bracket as Chris Evert and Evonne Goolagong for the first time all year. Ilie Năstase and Jimmy Connors, flashy standouts of the USLTA’s winter indoor circuit, alongside Stan Smith and the pros of the World Championship Tennis tour.

“This is the way it should have been all the time,” said Jimbo. “We should all be together to find out the best in the world.”

The field wasn’t quite complete. Billie Jean King and Rosie Casals stayed home and would headline an event in Alabama instead. Rod Laver was injured. Ken Rosewall opted to rest, saving energy for what the 38-year-old believed would be his final shot at a Wimbledon title.

On the other side of the ledger was a surprise: Niki Pilić, suited up and ready to play. Suspended by the Yugoslavian federation for missing a Davis Cup tie, the French Open allowed him to enter while he waited for the ILTF to decide on his appeal. Most insiders just wanted the problem to go away. One journalist suspected that the tournament committee “will probably root for him to lose.”

Pilić was drawn to face Connors, the 12th seed, if both men reached the round of 32. On May 24th, they began their campaigns. Pilić had little problem with Hungarian qualifier Géza Varga, winning 6-4, 6-4. The tournament was experimenting with the rules: The first two men’s rounds were best-of-three, and for the first time, French Open sets would be decided by tiebreaks at 6-all.

Connors, however, wouldn’t last long enough to meet the Croatian. Making just his second appearance in Paris, Jimbo drew a tricky first-round opponent. Raúl Ramírez, a 19-year-old Mexican who had upset Tom Gorman to open a recent Davis Cup tie in Mexico, was probably no secret to Jimbo–he was the star freshman for the University of Southern California Trojans–and his comfort with the slow Parisian clay was enough for an upset. Ramírez played hard, competing for every point. Connors reached 5-3 in the second-set tiebreak, but a string of errant forehands gave away the lead and the match, 6-4, 7-6.

At the top and bottom of the draws, though, there were no surprises. Năstase, who was already 25-1 on clay courts for the season, straight-setted Chilean Jaime Pinto-Bravo. Smith overcame an early stumble to advance against Frenchman Georges Goven.

For Court, Goolagong, and Evert, the early going was a mere formality. None of the trio lost more than two games in a first-round set. Chrissie, making her first appearance at Roland Garros, was the most impressive of all. She disposed of Australian Marilyn Tesch, 6-1, 6-0, missing a double bagel only because of a pair of double faults.

Connors would have to wait to prove his mettle against the established order. But a long-awaited Evert-Court showdown was shaping up nicely.

* * *

This post is part of my series about the 1973 season, Battles, Boycotts, and Breakouts. Keep up with the project by checking the TennisAbstract.com front page, which shows an up-to-date Table of Contents after I post each installment.

You can also subscribe to the blog to receive each new post by email:

 

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Marco Cecchinato’s Run to the Roland Garros Semifinal

This is a guest post by Peter Wetz.

When a 25 year old Italian tennis player named Marco Cecchinato defeated Marius Copil in the first round of this year’s edition of Roland Garros, some people may have noticed that it was one of the longer first round matches. With a duration of 3 hours and 41 minutes the match was the fifth longest of the 64 opening round matches. However, I am confident that no one suspected the winner of this encounter would go much farther in the draw. Little did we know.

After his unexpected four set win in the quarterfinal against a hard-fighting Novak Djokovic–bookmakers were giving him about an 11 percent chance of winning–many tweets emphasized the uniqueness of this achievement. Since it is difficult to provide more context in a tweet, I was interested in just how often something like this happened in the past. So I looked into the data and came up with more complete lists of the tweeted facts which are presented in the remainder of this post.

The first and obvious question is, when was the last time that a player ranked as high as Cecchinato reached a Grand Slam semifinal?

The following table shows players ranked outside of the top-70 that reached a Grand Slam semifinal. Rows denoting achievements at Roland Garros are bold.

Tourney Player		       Rank	Round
RG 18	Marco Cecchinato	 72	SF
W  08	Rainer Schuettler	 94	SF
W  08	Marat Safin		 75	SF
AO 04	Marat Safin		 86	F
W  01	Goran Ivanisevic	125	W
W  00	Vladimir Voltchkov	237	SF
RG 99	Andrei Medvedev		100	F
AO 99	Nicolas Lapentti	 91	SF
AO 98	Nicolas Escude		 81	SF
W  97	Michael Stich		 88	SF
RG 97	Filip Dewulf		122	SF
RG 92	Henri Leconte		200	SF
UO 91	Jimmy Connors		174	SF
AO 91	Patrick Mcenroe		114	SF

As the tweet points out the most recent comparable runs by Rainer Schuettler and Marat Safin happened after the players have reached top-10 rankings. Hence, the most recent really comparable run where the player has not reached his career high ranking at the time of the tournament, is by Vladimir Voltchkov, who reached the semifinal at Wimbledon 2000.*

Another unique thing about Cecchinato’s run is that until last week he did not win a single match at a Grand Slam event.

The following table shows players that won their first match at a Grand Slam event and went on to win more matches. To prevent showing an extremely short table, I relaxed the condition on how far the player should have gone when winning his first Grand Slam match to reaching the quarterfinal. The last column Attempts denotes the number of main draw appearances until his first main draw win.

Tourney   Player	   Rank    Reached Attempts
RG 18	  Marco Cecchinato   72	   SF	   6
AO 18     Tennys Sandgren    97	   QF	   3
RG 03	  Martin Verkerk     46	   F	   3
W  00     Alexander Popp    114	   QF	   2
W  97	  Nicolas Kiefer     98	   QF	   3
RG 97	  Galo Blanco	    111	   QF	   4
W  96	  Alex Radulescu     91	   QF	   1
RG 95	  Albert Costa	     36	   QF	   4
RG 94     Hendrik Dreekmann  89	   QF	   2
AO 93	  Brett Steven	     71	   QF	   1

As the table shows, rarely has a player gotten past the quarterfinal after recording his debut win at a Grand Slam, with the notable exception of Martin Verkerk, who reached the final 15 years ago at his third attempt. Still–especially in the 1990s–there were a few players who won four consecutive matches. Not included in the table, but not less impressive, is the run by Mikael Pernfors. Interestingly, he had not won a single Grand Slam match, but he had built himself a ranking of 26, when he reached the final round of Roland Garros 1986, where he also won his first main draw match.

When looking at male Grand Slam competitors from Italy, not many names besides Fabio Fognini, Andreas Seppi, Simone Bolelli, and Paolo Lorenzi spring to mind. With 150 main draw appearances, the quartet shares a mere ten appearances in the round of 16 and one quarterfinal appearance (Fabio Fognini at Roland Garros 2011). Marco Cecchinato is the first Italian player in the semifinal of a Grand Slam in 40 years.

The following table shows all appearances of Italian players past the round of 16.

Tourney   Player	    	Reached
RG 18	  Marco Cecchinato  	SF
RG 11	  Fabio Fognini		QF
W  98	  Davide Sanguinetti 	QF
RG 95	  Renzo Furlan	     	QF
AO 91	  Cristiano Caratti  	QF
RG 80	  Corrado Barazzutti 	QF
W  79     Adriano Panatta	QF
RG 78	  Corrado Barazzutti	SF
UO 77	  Corrado Barazzutti	SF
RG 77	  Adriano Panatta	QF
RG 76	  Adriano Panatta	W
RG 75	  Adriano Panatta	SF
RG 73	  Paolo Bertolucci	QF
RG 73	  Adriano Panatta	SF
RG 72	  Adriano Panatta	QF

Despite the fact that male Italian players seem strongest on the dirt, since 1978 no one reached the semifinal of a Grand Slam. Even Fabio Fognini’s quarterfinal appearance at Roland Garros 2011 was the first in 13 years. Marco Cecchinato is one win away of being the first Italian Grand Slam finalist since 1976.

Marco Cecchinato was not seeded. If we look at Grand Slam semifinals comprised of unseeded players an interesting pattern appears.

Tourney Player  	    	Reached
RG 18	Marco Cecchinato  	SF
AO 18	Hyeon Chung		SF
AO 18	Kyle Edmund		SF
W  08	Rainer Schuettler	SF
W  08	Marat Safin		SF
RG 08	Gael Monfils		SF
AO 08	Jo Wilfried Tsonga	F
UO 06	Mikhail Youzhny		SF
W  06	Jonas Bjorkman		SF
AO 06	Marcos Baghdatis	F
UO 05	Robby Ginepri		SF
RG 05	Mariano Puerta		F
W  04	Mario Ancic		SF
RG 04	Gaston Gaudio		W
AO 04	Marat Safin		F
W  03	Mark Philippoussis	F
RG 03	Martin Verkerk		F
AO 03	Wayne Ferreira		SF
W  01	Goran Ivanisevic	W
UO 00	Todd Martin		SF
W  00	Vladimir Voltchkov	SF
RG 00	Franco Squillari	SF

Since 2008 this is only the third time that an unseeded player reached the semifinal. All three occurrences happended this year. It appears that we can again get used to see new faces deep into the second week of a Grand Slam tournament.

Finally, let’s take a look at Grand Slam semifinals between players using a one-handed backhand. The decreasing popularity of the one-hander has already been discussed here and with this in mind it seems even more unique that Dominic Thiem–the player who Marco Cecchinato will face tomorrow in the semifinal–inititally played a two-hander, but then changed to a one-hander.

Tourney Player 1	    	Player 2
RG 18	Marco Cecchinato  	Dominic Thiem
AO 17	Roger Federer		Stanislas Wawrinka
UO 15	Roger Federer		Stanislas Wawrinka
W  09	Roger Federer		Tommy Haas
W  07	Roger Federer		Richard Gasquet
AO 07	Fernando Gonzalez	Tommy Haas
UO 04	Roger Federer		Tim Henman
UO 02	Pete Sampras		Sjeng Schalken
RG 02	Albert Costa		Alex Corretja
W  99	Pete Sampras		Tim Henman
UO 98	Patrick Rafter		Pete Sampras
W  98	Pete Sampras		Tim Henman

If we ignore Roger Federer and Stanislas Wawrinka, two players who brought the one-handed backhand back into discussion, the last Grand Slam semifinal between two one-handers was played between Fernando Gonzalez and Tommy Haas at the Australian Open 2007. Before that, Pete Sampras was involved in four of six such encounters. Without Roger and Pete the world of one-handed Grand Slam semifinals would look really thin.

Whatever the result of the semifinal between Marco Cecchinato and Dominic Thiem will be, we know already that Marco achieved what only few players have done before him, especially in recent years. Whether he will be able to repeat this feat at Wimbledon, where he will be seeded despite having never won a match on a grass court, is arguable. Still, placing a bet on his own first round loss probably won’t be a good idea–at the very least, a lot more fans will be watching his opening match than ever before.

* A previous version of this article wrongly stated that the Wimbledon 2001 championship run by Goran Ivanisevic is more similar to Marco Cecchinato’s run. However, in 2001 Ivanisevic had already achieved his career high ranking, which is not the case for Cecchinato. Thanks for @rtwkr at Twitter for pointing this out.

Peter Wetz is a computer scientist interested in racket sports and data analytics based in Vienna, Austria.

Rafael Nadal and the Greatest Single-Tournament Performances

Italian translation at settesei.it

In the last two weeks, Rafael Nadal recorded his 11th titles in both Monte Carlo and Barcelona. His career records at those two events, along with his ten Roland Garros championships, reflect a level of dominance never before seen on a single surface. They have to be considered among the greatest achievements in tennis history, and perhaps in all of sport.

The tennis fan in me is content to speculate about whether anyone will ever stop him. The analyst wants to dig deeper: Has Nadal’s performance at one of the tournaments been even better than the rest? How do these single-event records compare to other exploits, such as Roger Federer’s trophy haul at Wimbledon, or Bjorn Borg’s nearly-undefeated career at the French Open?

Barcelona by the numbers

Let’s start with Barcelona. Since 2005–we’ll ignore his 2003 appearance as a 16-year-old wild card–he has played the event 13 times, winning 11 of them. That’s a won-loss record of 57-2.

Usually, I would calculate the probability of a player winning so many tournaments in that many chances, then come up with a tiny percentage that would represent his odds of achieving such a feat. That would miss the mark here. Instead, I want to look at the problem from the opposite perspective: In order to win so many titles, how good must Nadal be?

We already know that Rafa is the best of all time on clay, in general. Using the Elo rating system, his peak surface-specific rating–that is, Elo calculated using only results on clay courts–is over 2,500, better than anyone else on clay … or anyone else on any surface. (Nadal’s current clay-specific Elo is around 2,400, and the closest things he has to rivals on the surface right now, Dominic Thiem and Kei Nishikori, sit at about 2,190 and 2,150. Stefanos Tsitsipas’s rating is 1865.) Since Rafa has posted his best results at these three events, it stands to reason that his tournament-specific levels are even higher.

Here, then, is the method we can use to figure that out. First, for each year he entered Barcelona, determine his path to the title. (For the 11 titles, that’s easy; for the other two, we use the players he would have faced had he kept winning.) Using each opponent’s clay court Elo rating at the time of the match, we can determine the odds that various hypothetical (and dominant) players would have progressed through the draw and won the title.

Here is Nadal’s path to the 2018 title, showing each player’s pre-match clay court Elo*, along with the odds that Rafa (given his own current rating) would beat him:

Round  Opponent                 Opp Elo  p(Rafa W)  
R32    Roberto Carballes Baena     1767      97.3%  
R16    Guillermo Garcia Lopez      1769      97.2%  
QF     Martin Klizan               1894      94.5%  
SF     David Goffin                2079      84.5%  
F      Stefanos Tsitsipas          1900      94.3%

* from this point on, the clay court Elos I use are 50/50 blends of clay-specific Elo–that is, a rating calculating only with clay court results–and overall Elo. The blended rating is the one that has proven best at predicting match outcomes. Nadal is the all-time leader in this category as well, with a 50/50 clay Elo that peaked around 2,510.

Given those five single-match probabilities, the odds that Nadal would win the tournament were just over 70%. That’s dominant, but it’s not 11-out-of-13 dominant.

What if Rafa were underrated by Elo, at least in Barcelona? Here is the probability that a player at various Elo ratings would have beaten the five opponents that he faced last week:

Clay Elo  p(2018 Title)  
2200              41.2%  
2250              50.4%  
2300              59.1%  
2350              66.9%  
2400              73.6%  
2450              79.3%  
2500              83.9%  
2550              87.6%  
2600              90.5%

It turns out that this year’s title path was one of the weakest since 2005. It is roughly equivalent to the players Nadal needed to defeat in 2006 (with Nicolas Almagro in the semis and Tommy Robredo in the final), and a bit tougher than last year’s route, which didn’t feature a top-50 player until Thiem in the final. The toughest was his hypothetical path in 2015, when he lost to Fabio Fognini in the second round. Had he progressed, he would have faced David Ferrer in the semis and Nishikori in the final.

Once we figure out the quality of Rafa’s opponents (and would-have-been opponents, for the two years he lost early), we can work out the odds that any player–given those paths–would have won the tournament each year.

If we assume that Rafa’s average level since 2005 is the same as his current level–a clay Elo of around 2,400–the odds that he would have won 11 Barcelona titles in 13 tries is 13.0%. We don’t have the luxury of replaying those 13 tournaments in a few thousand alternate universes, so it’s not entirely clear what to make of that number–was Rafa lucky? would he do it again, given the chance? is he actually way better than an Elo level of 2,400 in Barcelona?

I don’t know the answer to those questions; all we know is what happened. To compare (un)decimas (and related accomplishments by other players), we’re going to look at the Elo level that would have resulted in the achievement at least 50% of the time. In other words, how good would Nadal have to have been to give himself a 50/50 chance at winning 11 Barcelona titles in 13 tries?

At various clay Elo levels, here are the odds that Rafa would have completed the Barcelona undécima:

Clay Elo  p(11 of 13)  
2300             1.0%  
2350             4.6%  
2400            13.0%  
2450            28.0%  
2500            47.2%  
2550            64.2%  
2600            77.7%  
2650            87.3%  
2700            93.1%

Thus, a player with a clay Elo of about 2,505 would have had a 50% chance of matching Nadal’s feat at his home tournament. To put it another way: At this event, over a span of 14 years, he has played at a level roughly equal to his career peak which, incidentally, is the all-time best clay Elo rating ever achieved by an ATP player.

Comparing las (un)decimas

I hope that my method makes sense and seems like a reasonable way of quantifying a rare feat. Algorithm in hand, we can compare Nadal’s Barcelona record with his efforts in Monte Carlo and Paris.

Monte Carlo

Rafa has entered 14 times since 2005 (again, excluding his 2003 appearance) and won 11. That’s a bit less impressive than 11-of-13, but the competition level is much higher. Only last year’s tournament, in which the opposing finalist was Albert Ramos, is in the same league as most of the Barcelona draws.

Sure enough, the Monte Carlo undécima is lot more impressive. To have a 50% chance of winning 11 titles in 14 attempts, a player would need a clay Elo of about 2,595, almost 100 points higher than the comparable number for Barcelona, and well above the level any player has ever achieved, even at their peak.

Roland Garros

At the French Open, Nadal has entered 13 times, winning 10. The field is even more challenging than in Monte Carlo, but on the other hand, the five-set format gives a greater edge to favorites, lessening the chance of an underdog scoring an upset with two magical sets.

The Roland Garros 10-of-13 is not quite as eye-popping as the record at Monte Carlo. The clay Elo required to give a player a 50% chance of matching Nadal’s French Open feat is “only” around 2,570–still better than any player has ever attained, but a bit short of the comparable mark for Monte Carlo.

But wait … what about 2016? Rafa won two rounds and then withdrew from his third-rounder against Marcel Granollers. I don’t know whether that should count, but at least for argument’s sake, we should run the numbers without it, treating Nadal’s French Open record as 10 titles in 12 appearances, not 13. In that case, the clay Elo that would give a player a 50/50 shot at matching the record is 2,595–the same as the Monte Carlo number.

At the moment, Monte Carlo appears to be the tournament where Nadal has played his very best. With another French Open a few weeks away, though, that answer may be temporary.

Rafa vs other record holders

A few other players have racked up impressive totals at single events. Wikipedia has a convenient list, and a few accomplishments stand out: Federer’s tallies at Wimbledon, Basel, and Halle, Guillermo Vilas’s eight titles in Buenos Aires, and Borg’s six French Open titles in only eight appearances.

Let’s have a look at how they compare, ranked by the surface-specific Elo rating that would give a player a 50% chance of equaling the feat:

Player   Tourney          Wins  Apps  50% Elo  
Nadal    Monte Carlo        11    14     2595  
Nadal    French Open*       10    12     2595  
Nadal    French Open        10    13     2570  
Borg     French Open**       6     7     2550  
Nadal    Barcelona          11    13     2505  
Borg     French Open         6     8     2475  
Vilas    Buenos Aires***     8    10     2285  
Federer  Wimbledon           7    18     2285  
Federer  Halle               8    15     2205  
Federer  Basel               8    15     2180

* excluding 2016

** excluding 1973, when Borg was 16 years old, and lost in the fourth round

*** excluding 1969-71, both because Vilas was very young, and due to sketchy data

The only single-event achievement that ranks with Nadal’s is Borg’s record at Roland Garros–and even then, only when we don’t consider Borg’s loss there as a 16-year-old. Federer’s records in Wimbledon, Halle, and Basel are impressive, but fail to rate as highly because he has entered those tournaments so many times. Federer didn’t appear on tour ready to win everything on his chosen surface, the way Rafa did, and those early losses are part of the reason that his records at these tournaments are so low.

We never needed any numbers to know that Nadal’s accomplishments at his three favorite tournaments are among the best of all time. With these results, though, we can see just how dominant he has been, and how few achievements in tennis history can even compare. The scary thing: A month from now, I may need to come back and update this post with even more eye-popping numbers. The greatest show on clay courts isn’t over yet.

Just How Aggressive is Jelena Ostapenko?

Italian translation at settesei.it

If you picked up only two stats about surprise Roland Garros champion Jelena Ostapenko, you probably heard that, first, her average forehand is faster than Andy Murray’s, and second, she hit 299 winners in her seven French Open matches. I’m not yet sure how much emphasis we should put on shot speed, and I instinctively distrust raw totals, but even with those caveats, it’s hard not to be impressed.

Compared to the likes of Simona Halep, Timea Bacsinszky, and Caroline Wozniacki, the last three women she upset en route to her maiden title, Ostapenko was practically playing a different game. Her style is more reminiscent of fellow Slam winners Petra Kvitova and Maria Sharapova, who don’t construct points so much as they destruct them. What I’d like to know, then, is how Ostapenko stacks up against the most aggressive players on the WTA tour.

Thankfully we already have a metric for this: Aggression Score, which I’ll abbreviate as AGG. This stat requires that we know three things about every point: How many shots were hit, who won it, and how. With that data, we figure out what percentage of a player’s shots resulted in winners, unforced errors, or her opponent’s forced errors. (Technically, the denominator is “shot opportunities,” which includes shots a player didn’t manage to hit after her opponent hit a winner. That doesn’t affect the results too much.) For today’s purposes, I’m calculating AGG without a player’s serves–both aces and forced return errors–so we’re capturing only rally aggression.

The typical range of this version AGG is between 0.1–very passive–and 0.3–extremely aggressive. Based on the nearly 1,600 women’s matches in the Match Charting Project dataset, Kvitova and Julia Goerges represent the aggressive end, with average AGGs around .275. We only have four Samantha Crawford matches in the database, but early signs suggest she could outpace even those women, as her average is at .312. At the other end of the spectrum, Madison Brengle is at 0.11, with Wozniacki and Sara Errani at 0.12. In the Match Charting data, there are single-day performances that rise as high as 0.44 (Serena Williams over Errani at the 2013 French Open) and fall as low as 0.06. In the final against Ostapenko, Halep’s aggression score was 0.08, half of her average of 0.16.

Context established, let’s see where Ostapenko fits in, starting with the Roland Garros final. Against Halep, her AGG was a whopping .327. That’s third highest of any player in a major final, behind Kvitova at Wimbledon in 2014 (.344) and Serena at the 2007 Australian Open (.328). (We have data for every Grand Slam final back to 1999, and most of them before that.) Using data from IBM Pointstream, which encompasses almost all matches at Roland Garros this year, Ostapenko’s aggression in the final was 7th-highest of any match in the tournament–out of 188 player-matches with the necessary data–behind two showings from Bethanie Mattek Sands, one each from Goerges, Madison Keys, and Mirjana Lucic … and Ostapenko’s first-round win against Louisa Chirico. It was also the third-highest recorded against Halep out of more than 200 Simona matches in the Match Charting dataset.

You get the picture: The French Open final was a serious display of aggression, at least from one side of the court. That level of ball-bashing was nothing new for the Latvian, either. We have charting data for her last three matches at Roland Garros, along with two matches from Charleston and one from Prague this clay season. Of those six performances, Ostapenko’s lowest AGG was .275, against Wozniacki in the Paris quarters. Her average across the six was .303.

If those recent matches indicate what we’ll see from her in the future, she will likely score as the most aggressive rallying player on the WTA tour. Because she played less aggressively in her earlier matches on tour, her career average still trails those of Kvitova and Goerges, but not by much–and probably not for long. It’s scary to consider what might happen as she gets stronger; we’ll have to wait and see how her tactics evolve, as well.

The Match Charting Project contains at least 15 matches on 62 different players–here is the rally-only aggression score for all of them:

PLAYER                    MATCHES  RALLY AGG  
Julia Goerges                  15      0.277  
Petra Kvitova                  57      0.277  
Jelena Ostapenko               17      0.271  
Madison Keys                   35      0.261  
Camila Giorgi                  17      0.257  
Sabine Lisicki                 19      0.246  
Caroline Garcia                15      0.242  
Coco Vandeweghe                17      0.238  
Serena Williams               108      0.237  
Laura Siegemund                19      0.235  
Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova       17      0.230  
Danka Kovinic                  15      0.223  
Kristina Mladenovic            28      0.222  
Na Li                          15      0.218  
Maria Sharapova                73      0.217  
                                              
PLAYER                    MATCHES  RALLY AGG  
Eugenie Bouchard               52      0.214  
Ana Ivanovic                   46      0.211  
Garbine Muguruza               57      0.210  
Lucie Safarova                 29      0.209  
Karolina Pliskova              42      0.207  
Elena Vesnina                  20      0.207  
Venus Williams                 46      0.205  
Johanna Konta                  31      0.205  
Monica Puig                    15      0.203  
Dominika Cibulkova             38      0.198  
Martina Navratilova            25      0.197  
Steffi Graf                    39      0.196  
Anastasija Sevastova           17      0.194  
Samantha Stosur                19      0.193  
Sloane Stephens                15      0.190  
                                              
PLAYER                    MATCHES  RALLY AGG  
Ekaterina Makarova             23      0.189  
Lauren Davis                   16      0.186  
Heather Watson                 16      0.185  
Daria Gavrilova                20      0.183  
Justine Henin                  28      0.183  
Kiki Bertens                   15      0.181  
Monica Seles                   18      0.179  
Svetlana Kuznetsova            28      0.174  
Timea Bacsinszky               28      0.174  
Victoria Azarenka              55      0.170  
Andrea Petkovic                24      0.166  
Roberta Vinci                  23      0.164  
Barbora Strycova               16      0.163  
Belinda Bencic                 31      0.163  
Jelena Jankovic                24      0.162  
                                              
PLAYER                    MATCHES  RALLY AGG  
Alison Riske                   15      0.161  
Angelique Kerber               83      0.161  
Flavia Pennetta                23      0.160  
Simona Halep                  218      0.160  
Carla Suarez Navarro           31      0.159  
Martina Hingis                 15      0.157  
Chris Evert                    20      0.152  
Darya Kasatkina                18      0.148  
Elina Svitolina                46      0.141  
Yulia Putintseva               15      0.137  
Alize Cornet                   18      0.136  
Agnieszka Radwanska            90      0.130  
Annika Beck                    16      0.126  
Monica Niculescu               25      0.124  
Caroline Wozniacki             62      0.122  
Sara Errani                    23      0.121

(A few of the match counts differ slightly from what you’ll find on the MCP home page. I’ve thrown out a few matches with too much missing data or in formats that didn’t play nice with the script I wrote to calculate aggression score.)

Is Jelena Ostapenko More Than the Next Iva Majoli?

Italian translation at settesei.it

Winning a Grand Slam as a teenager–or, in the case of this year’s French Open champion Jelena Ostapenko, a just-barely 20-year-old–is an impressive feat. But it isn’t always a guarantee of future greatness. Plenty of all-time greats launched their careers with Slam titles at age 20 or later, but three of the players who won their debut major at ages closest to Ostapenko’s serve as cautionary tales in the opposite direction: Iva Majoli, Mary Pierce, and Gabriela Sabatini. Each of these women was within three months of her 20th birthday when she won her first title, and of the three, only Pierce ever won another.

However, simply comparing her age to that of previous champions understates the Latvian’s achievement. Women’s tennis has gotten older over the last two decades: The average age of a women’s singles entrant in Paris this year was 25.6, a few days short of the record established at Roland Garros and Wimbledon last year. That’s two years older than the average player 15 years ago, and four years older than the typical entrant three decades ago. Headed into the French Open this year, there were only five teenagers ranked in the top 100; at the end of 2004, the year of Maria Sharapova’s and Svetlana Kuznetsova’s first major victories, there were nearly three times as many.

Thus, it doesn’t seem quite right to group Ostapenko with previous 19- and 20-year-old first-time winners. Instead, we might consider the Latvian’s “relative age”—the difference between her and the average player in the draw—of 5.68 years younger than the field. When I introduced the concept of relative age last week, it was in the context of Slam semifinalists, and in every era, there have been some very young players reaching the final four who burned out just as quickly. The same isn’t true of women who went on to win major titles.

In the last thirty years, only two players have won a major with a greater relative age than Ostapenko: Sharapova, who was 6.66 years younger than the 2004 US Open field, and Martina Hingis, who won three-quarters of the Grand Slam in 1997 at age 16, between 6.3 and 6.6 years younger than each tournament’s average entrant. The rest of the top five emphasizes Ostapenko’s elite company, including Monica Seles (5.29, at the 1990 French Open) and Serena Williams (5.26, at the 1999 US Open).

Each of those four women went on to reach the No. 1 ranking and win at least five majors–an outrageously optimistic forecast for Ostapenko, who, even after winning Roland Garros, is ranked outside the top ten. By relative age, Majoli, Pierce, and Sabatini are poor comparisons for Saturday’s champion–Majoli and Pierce were only three years younger than the fields they overcame, and Sabatini was only two years younger than the average entrant. By comparison, Garbine Muguruza, who won last year’s French Open at age 22, was two and a half years younger than the field.

Which is it, then? Unfortunately I don’t have the answer to that, and we probably won’t have a better idea for several more years. For most of the Open Era, until about ten years ago, the average age on the women’s tour fluctuated between 21 and 23. Thus, for the overall population of first-time major champions, actual age and relative age are very highly correlated. It’s only with the last decade’s worth of debut winners that the numbers meaningfully diverge. For Ostapenko and Muguruza–and perhaps Victoria Azarenka and Petra Kvitova–we have yet to see what their entire career trajectory will look like. To build a bigger sample to test the hypothesis, we’ll need a few more young first-time Slam winners, something we may finally see with Sharapova and Williams out of the way.

For more post-French Open analysis, here’s my Economist piece on Ostapenko and projecting major winners in the long term. Also at the Game Theory blog, I wrote about Rafael Nadal and his abssurd dominance on clay in a fast-court-friendly era.

Finally, check out Carl Bialik’s and my extra-long podcast, recorded Monday, with tons of thoughts and the winners and the fields in general.