Italian translation at settesei.it At Wimbledon this year, 19-year-old rising star Nick Kyrgios has shown himself to be impervious to pressure. In his second round upset of Richard Gasquet, he tied a Grand Slam record by surviving nine match points. Against Rafael Nadal, he withstood perhaps the best clutch player in the game. Despite Nadal’s stature as … Continue reading Nick Kyrgios, Young Jedi of the Tiebreak
Remember Roger Federer‘s dreadful performance on break points against Tommy Robredo at last year’s US Open? Of course you do. He had 16 chances to break, converted only two of them, and lost the match in straight sets. Then we all cried. Yesterday, Federer won in straight sets against James Duckworth, but his break point … Continue reading Roger Federer’s Break Point Opportunities
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 … Continue reading The Luck of the Tiebreak, 2013 Edition
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 … Continue reading Unexpected Quarterfinalists: Gasquet, Hantuchova, and Not Fed
In Marseille this week, Jerzy Janowicz played two dominant tiebreaks. In his second-round win over Julien Benneteau, he put away the first set with a 7-0 breaker en route to a straight-set victory. In the quarterfinals, he won another 7-0 tiebreak to even his match with Tomas Berdych before falling in three. Amazingly, this is … Continue reading Jerzy Janowicz and the Frequency of Tiebreak Shutouts
Italian translation at settesei.it Yesterday, I introduced a method to separate “good tiebreak playing” from “good tennis playing.” For the most part, better players win more tiebreaks, but some guys win more tiebreaks than their general betterness would suggest. That impels some questions: Why do those players win more tiebreaks than expected? Do they do so regularly? … Continue reading The Luck of the Tiebreak
Italian translation at settesei.it Yesterday, wildcards Jonathan Marray and Frederick Nielsen won the Wimbledon doubles title. Nobody saw that one coming–in recent years, men’s doubles has been dominated by a small number of specialists. When a team outside the top 10 wins an event, it’s often thanks to a top singles player or two. Marray … Continue reading How Underdogs Could Win Wimbledon Doubles
A glance at the stat sheet from Serena Williams’s third-round match against Jie Zheng suggests that Serena dominated. 23 aces to 1, 3 break point conversions to none, 54 winners to 21, 84% 2nd-serve points won to 50%, and 55% of the total points played. Of course, according to the more important stats–games and sets–Serena … Continue reading The Misleading Stat Sheet
Continuing with our point-by-point player profiles, let’s look at Andy Murray. The Scot finished strong and performed up to expectations at the grand slams despite a dreadful stretch following the Australian Open. Using all of his grand slam matches from 2011, we can begin to analyze his tendencies on serve and return. The first table … Continue reading Point-by-Point Profile: Andy Murray
Win probability graphs and stats are now available for over 600 grand slam matches from 2011. Thanks to IBM Pointstream from this year’s slams, there is a wealth of data available like never before. Here’s the main menu. Here’s a sample match: The US Open semifinal between Federer and Djokovic. When I first started publishing … Continue reading Win Probability Graphs and Stats