Italian translation at settesei.it
Andy Murray is the #1 seed this week in London, but as I wrote for The Economist, Novak Djokovic likely remains the best player in the world. According to my Elo ratings, he would have a 63% chance of winning a head-to-head match between the two. And with the added benefit of an easier round-robin draw, the math heavily favors Djokovic to win the tournament.
Here are the results of a Monte Carlo simulation of the draw:
Player SF F W Djokovic 95.3% 73.9% 54.6% Murray 86.3% 58.3% 29.7% Nishikori 60.4% 24.9% 7.8% Raonic 50.9% 16.3% 3.3% Wawrinka 29.4% 7.8% 1.6% Monfils 33.2% 8.7% 1.4% Cilic 23.9% 5.8% 1.1% Thiem 20.7% 4.1% 0.5%
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a player favored so heavily to progress out of the group stage. Murray’s 86% chance of doing so is quite high in itself; Novak’s 95% is otherworldly. His head-to-heads against the other players in his group are backed up by major differences in Elo points–Dominic Thiem is a lowly 15th on the Elo list, given only a 7.4% chance of beating the Serb.
If Milos Raonic is unable to compete, Djokovic’s chances climb even higher. Here are the probabilities if David Goffin takes Raonic’s place in the bracket:
Player SF F W Djokovic 96.8% 75.2% 55.4% Murray 86.2% 60.7% 30.6% Nishikori 60.7% 26.3% 8.1% Monfils 47.7% 12.4% 1.8% Wawrinka 29.3% 8.5% 1.7% Cilic 23.8% 6.2% 1.1% Thiem 29.5% 5.8% 0.7% Goffin 26.0% 4.9% 0.5%
The luck of the draw was on Novak’s side. I ran another simulation with Djokovic and Murray swapping groups. Here, Djokovic is still heavily favored to win the tournament, but Murray’s semifinal chances get a sizable boost:
Player SF F W Djokovic 92.8% 75.1% 54.9% Murray 90.9% 58.1% 29.8% Nishikori 58.4% 26.9% 7.5% Raonic 52.3% 14.3% 3.3% Wawrinka 26.9% 8.4% 1.6% Monfils 35.3% 7.5% 1.4% Cilic 21.9% 6.2% 1.0% Thiem 21.6% 3.4% 0.5%
Elo rates Djokovic so highly that he is favored no matter what the draw. But the draw certainly helped.
Doubles!
I’ve finally put together a sufficient doubles dataset to generate Elo ratings and tournament forecasts for ATP doubles. While I’m not quite ready to go into detail, I can say that, by using the Elo algorithm and rating players individually, the resulting forecasts outperform the ATP rankings about as much as singles Elo ratings do.
Here is the forecast for the doubles event at the World Tour Finals:
Team SF F W Herbert/Mahut 76.4% 49.5% 32.1% Bryan/Bryan 68.7% 36.8% 19.9% Kontinen/Peers 55.7% 29.1% 13.8% Dodig/Melo 58.4% 28.1% 13.2% Murray/Soares 48.3% 20.8% 8.6% Lopez/Lopez 37.7% 16.4% 6.2% Klaasen/Ram 30.2% 11.9% 4.0% Huey/Mirnyi 24.6% 7.3% 2.2%
This distribution is more like what round-robin forecasts usually look like, without a massive gap between the top of the field and the rest. Pierre-Hugues Herbert and Nicolas Mahut are the top rated team, followed closely by Bob Bryan and Mike Bryan. Max Mirnyi was, at his peak, one of the highest Elo-rated doubles players, but his pairing with Treat Huey is the weakest of the bunch.
The men’s doubles bracket has some legendary names, along with some players–like Herbert and Henri Kontinen–who may develop into all-time greats, but it has no competitors who loom over the rest of the field like Murray and Djokovic do in singles.