australian open Archives

Surprise Semifinalists at the Australian Open

Of the eight singles semifinalists in Melbourne, only two entered the tournament seeded in the top four. Rafael Nadal, the top seed in the men’s draw, has survived, and Li Na, the fourth seed in the women’s draw, is the highest-ranked player still alive on her side.

We haven’t exactly followed the script.

The women’s singles draw, with the top three seeds eliminated, is particularly unusual. It is only the 10th time in the last 35 years that none of the top three seeds have made it through to the final four of a Grand Slam. Such events have been heavily concentrated in the last decade or so–the fourth seed was the highest-ranked surviving player at Wimbledon in 2011 (Victoria Azarenka) and 2013 (Agnieszka Radwanska), and the fifth seed was the apparent favorite at Roland Garros in 2011 (Francesca Schiavone).

You might notice a pattern. In these nine Slams when no top-three seed reached the semifinal stage, the best remaining player didn’t fare so well. Both Vika and Aga fell to lower-ranked opponents when they were the remaining favorites at Wimbledon, and Schiavone lost her shot at the French Open to Li. Only twice in these nine majors did the highest-remaining seed in the semifinals go on to win: Martina Hingis, when she was seed fourth at the 1997 Australian Open, and Anastasia Myskina, when she was the sixth seed at the 2004 French Open.

In a tournament full of surprises, we might not be done yet. It stands to reason that once the favorites are eliminated, the odds of subsequent upsets increase. The lower you go in the rankings, the less difference there usually is between players–there’s a bigger gap between Azarenka and Maria Sharapova than there is between, say, Jelena Jankovic and Angelique Kerber. The smaller the gap, the more likely the upset.

—

While only one top-four seed remains in the men’s draw, the odds of upsets are moving in the opposite direction. While Nadal can always count on a tough fight from second-seed Novak Djokovic, he typically has little trouble with lower-ranked players. He has won his last 15 matches against the other three players left in the draw—Roger Federer, Tomas Berdych, and Stanislas Wawrinka–and lost only 4 of 41 matches against the trio since 2008.

The historical precedent for this sort of semifinal draw also favors Rafa. 14 Grand Slams in the Open Era have featured a semifinal round in which the top seed is the only one remaining of the top four. The top seed has gone on to win 9 of the 14, including 8 of the last 10. The most recent final four that fit this profile was in Melbourne four years ago, when Federer swept the final two rounds without losing a set.

But even this rosy picture for Nadal offers Roger a glimmer of hope. The last time the top seed was alone in the final four and didn’t go on to win was the 2002 US Open. Lleyton Hewitt was the #1 who failed, paving the way for a 31-year-old Pete Sampras to win one final slam before he retired.

Roger isn’t going to call it quits this week, but he’d sure like to emulate Pete’s success in seizing a wide-open Grand Slam draw.

A Quarterfinal on Federer’s Racquet

The Roger Federer–Andy Murray head-to-head is a bit of a baffling one. In twenty career meetings–18 of them on hard courts–Murray has won 11, including four of the last five.

Yet for a superficially tight one-on-one record, Fed and Murray haven’t played many tight matches against each other, especially lately. When they went five sets in last year’s Australian Open semifinal, it was the first time they had gone the distance in ten matches. The outcome of a match between them is up for grabs, but whoever wins it tends to do so by a handy margin.

Even that five-set semifinal last year wasn’t as close as it looked. Murray won 54.0% of total points and racked up a Dominance Ratio (DR) of 1.32, meaning that he won far more return points than Roger did. Five setters are usually much closer to 50% and 1.0, respectively. While Murray won far more points, Federer displayed his historically-great tiebreak skill to keep himself in the match.

DR is a convenient measure of the closeness of a match, where 1.0 is a dead heat. Only two Fed-Murray matches–both before 2009–fell in the range between 0.85 and 1.15. By contrast, Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal have played seven matches (including two Grand Slam finals) in that range, and Djokovic and Murray have played five.

Tactical nonsense

To traffic in conventional wisdom for a moment, Federer is the most aggressive of the Big Four, while Murray is the most passive. To the extent Andy is likely to hurt Roger, it has more to do with his ability to force Fed into trying to do too much, particularly on the backhand side. If Federer plays patiently and picks his spots, he can crush Murray. If he plays too passively or hits bunches of unforced errors, it can be a rough day at the office.

However, there may not be much Murray can do to determine which Roger shows up. Simply forcing Fed to hit backhands certainly isn’t enough. The Match Charting Project has amassed shot-by-shot data, including the number of groundstrokes hit from either side, for 23 Federer matches so far. Nadal is particularly good at directing the ball to Federer’s backhand, forcing Roger to hit 56% to 58% of groundstrokes from the backhand side in both a win (last year’s World Tour Finals) and a bad loss (the 2011 Tour Finals).

Taking the average of these 23 matches (most of which are Federer wins, as the Match Charting Project seems to have drawn lots of Fed fans), Roger hits 52.5% of his groundstrokes from the forehand side. This reflects the balance of two factors: Federer wanting to hit his forehand, and opponents trying to keep the ball away from it.

Surprisingly, hitting lots of balls to Fed’s backhand side seems to have few benefits. There is no meaningful correlation between DR and the percentage of groundstrokes Fed hit on the backhand side.

Based on the limited data available, it appears that Murray has tried a variety of tactics.

In the two Fed-Murray matches for which we have shot-by-shot data–the 2010 Australian Open final and the 2012 Dubai final–Murray took opposite approaches to the problem. In the Melbourne final, he managed to direct 57% of balls to Fed’s backhand, which is as good as anyone but Nadal has managed. In the Dubai match, Roger hit 64% of his groundstrokes from the forehand side, the second-highest rate of any of the 23 Federer matches in the database.

In both cases, Murray lost. To take another example, Juan Martin del Potro has beaten Fed while letting him hit 57% forehands and lost to him while forcing him to hit 57% backhands.

The database–limited in matches and biased as it is toward Fed’s victories–probably can’t take us any farther. But from here, we can speculate that Federer has it in his power to win or lose regardless of the tactics thrown his way. Murray, like Nadal, has always forced him to hit one extra ball. The sort of aggression that takes a player far out of position to hit, for instance, an inside-out forehand can backfire against such a talented defensive player.

In four matches at the Australian Open so far, Federer has offered us plenty of glimpses of his glory days. Murray will likely prove to be his biggest test of the tournament, but Fed’s fate still hangs on his own racquet.

Bouchard, Halep, and First-Time Quarterfinalists

Two of the final eight women in Melbourne, Eugenie Bouchard and Simona Halep, are playing in their first Grand Slam quarterfinals. Let’s take a look at how other women have done in their first appearances this late in a Slam.

In the Open era, 267 different women have reached the final eight of a Slam. At the time of their debut quarterfinal, their average age was roughly 21 years and four months. Their average WTA ranking was 42, not considering those who predated the ranking system or those who reached their first quarterfinal as an unranked player.

Of the 267, 197 (73.8%) progressed no further in their breakthrough slam. 52 (26.4%) won one more match, losing in the semifinals; 12 (6.1%) reached the final but lost; and the remaining six players won the title when the reached their first Open-era quarter.

However small 6 of 297 sounds, such an outcome is actually even rarer. Three of those six first-time quarterfinalists don’t really count–they reached their first QF in 1968, the first year of the Open era. Billie Jean King, winner of the Australian Open that year, isn’t that great a comp for Bouchard or Halep. The only other players to win a Grand Slam in their first quarterfinal appearance are Chris O’Neil (1978 Australian), Barbara Jordan (1980 Australian), and Serena Williams (1999 US Open).

While we can’t count on Bouchard or Halep winning the tournament this week, their appearances in Slam quarterfinals at relative young ages bodes well. The earlier a player reaches her first major QF, the more QFs she is likely to reach over the course of her career. In fact, of the 22 women who have reached more than 10 Slam quarterfinals since 1984, only one of them–Jana Novotna–failed to reach her first one in her teens. She didn’t make it until the ripe old age of 20 years and 8 months.

Bouchard has just snuck in before her 20th birthday, which she’ll celebrate next month. Her most age-appropriate comp is Victoria Azarenka, who reached her first major quarterfinal–at the 2009 French Open–just a few weeks younger than Genie is now. Less than five years later, Vika will play her 12th Slam QF.

Less optimistic comparisons for Bouchard are Yanina Wickmayer and Anna Chakvetadze, both of whom reached their first major quarterfinal in the last two months of their teens. Chakvetadze made two more final eights; Wickmayer is still looking for her second.

If history is any guide, Halep’s prospects are bleaker. At 22 years and four months, she is much older than any of the players who have reached double-digit Slam quarterfinals except for Li Na, who is playing in her 10th QF this week. Li didn’t play in the final eight of a Grand Slam until she was 24 years old.

The 61 players who reached their first Slam QF at an older age than Halep did not, on average, achieve much more. They’ve totaled 81 additional QFs–well below two per person.

Of course, the age profile of the WTA is changing, so a 22-year-old debutante isn’t nearly the oddity it was a decade or two ago. It’s no coincidence that Halep’s most optimistic comp is Li, an active player. That’s the most positive outlook for the Romanian, anyway. To rack up an impressive career record, she’ll have to follow Li’s lead and overcome a late start.

—

The ATP final eight also features a newbie, Grigor Dimitrov. The changing age profile of the ATP is even more drastic, so age-based analysis is less meaningful. But we can take a quick look at the precedents for the Bulgarian’s first Slam quarterfinal.

There have been 329 ATP Slam quarterfinalists in the Open era, and first-timers stand a better chance in the men’s game. 32.5% of debut Slam quarterfinalists have advanced to the semis, and 13 of them (4.0%) went on to win the tournament. Then again, none of them had to beat Rafael Nadal in the quarters.

While Dimitrov is older than Halep–and as noted, 22-year-olds didn’t used to be considered so young on the ATP tour–there are some positive examples for Grigor to follow.

Michael Stich reached his first Slam QF at almost exactly the same age as Dimitrov is now, and he not only reached the semis at that event (the 1991 French Open), but qualified for the final eight in nine more majors. Jo Wilfried Tsonga, David Ferrer, and Nikolay Davydenko all reached their first Slam QF later than Dimitrov, and each has played in the final eight at least ten times.

On average, those optimistic comps are outweighed by all the guys who made it to one or two Slam QFs later in their career. The 153 players who reached their first final eight later than Dimitrov’s current age have returned to a total of 362 additional quarterfinals–good for one or two more appearances per player.

Despite all the hype, Dimitrov’s performance this year isn’t a drastic breakthrough. It’s only a single step in the right direction–especially considering that he reached this milestone by beating the #73 player in the world. He could be the next Tsonga, or he could be the next Robby Ginepri.