Author: jsackmann

Wawrinka d. Murray: Recap and Detailed Stats

The narrative felt familiar.  A flashy player from the fringes of the top ten takes on an established top-five guy, a great defender who would be sure to outlast his opponent in the end.

Yesterday, it was Gasquet and Ferrer.  Today, Stanislas Wawrinka and Andy Murray.  Even after Wawrinka took the first set, the same talking points reappeared: Surely Wawrinka would press, or tire, or Murray would wake up and play better tennis.  Fortunately for Stan, he didn’t have to fight off as spirited a comeback as Gasquet did; he simply kept employing the same successful strategies while Murray, passive and error-ridden, let him run away with the match.

While Murray’s impotence will be the story of this match–he hit only 15 winners in the entire match, and that includes six aces–much must be said about Wawrinka’s game plan.

The Swiss is known for his backhand, but unlike Gasquet, he doesn’t unduly favor it.  Roughly 40% of his groundstrokes are backhands (including slices), meaning he is willing to move around it and attack with the forehand.  The Wawrinka forehand is a weapon that is known to break down, but when it’s working, it can be just as deadly as the backhand.  It didn’t falter today: Stan earned 27 winners and induced five additional forced errors with shots from that side.

But the forehand was only a complementary part of the attack.  What continued to surprise throughout the match was Wawrinka’s willingness–sometimes over-eagerness–to come to net.  His transition game is a little awkward, and many of his errors came from failed approach shots, but by continually putting more pressure on Murray, he closed out points when Andy would’ve been content to let them go on for ten more shots.

Another underrated part of Wawrinka’s game is the serve.  While Stan will never post eye-popping ace numbers, it’s an effective shot that sets up the rest of his game well.  Today, he only tallied four aces and one unreturnable, but of 76 total serve points, Wawrinka won 29 of them with or before his second shot.  That isn’t as foolproof as an Isner-like ace tally, but the end result is the same.

And sure enough, it prevented Murray from even sniffing opportunity.  Murray didn’t earn a single break point in the match, the first time he has failed to generate one since his loss to Roger Federer in the 2010 World Tour Finals.

Wawrinka, on the other hand, pushed Murray to 30-30 in almost every one of his service games, and after suffering through a marathon game at the end of the first set, in which he needed seven opportunities to seal the break and the set, he didn’t waste nearly so much time again.  The Swiss converted three of five break point opportunities after that first set.

It was a bad day for Murray, that’s for sure.  It represented a step back to before his days as an Olympic and Grand Slam champion, and it may be a tough one to bounce back from.  Wawrinka, on the other hand, forces us to consider him as one of the “next four,” perhaps the Swiss #1 sooner rather than later.  He won’t always beat Murray with today’s game plan, but he’ll do more damage against higher-ranked players.

In Saturday’s semifinal against Djokovic? That’ll be a big ask, even playing the way he did today.  Novak has reeled off eleven victories in a row in their head-to-head, though their last match was the marathon fourth-rounder in Australia, when Stan pushed him to 12-10 in the fifth set.  The semi won’t have the star power it would’ve with Murray, but we can expect some great tennis.

Here are my detailed serve, return, and shot-type stats for today’s match.

Stubborn Richard and Fighting Flavia

We all know how great Richard Gasquet‘s backhand is.  It’s arguably the best one-hander in the game, and the down-the-line version is right up there with with any other men’s backhandweapon, one- or two-handed.

What has struck me in his last two matches is that, unlike virtually every other top player, he never runs around it.  Even Stanislas Wawrinka, another man with a claim on the “best one-hander” title, will frequently take several steps to get in position to hit a forehand from the backhand corner.

Gasquet doesn’t do that.  In 277 points yesterday, he ran all the way around a backhand once, and there were two or three other shots when he took a couple of steps to hit a forehand when he might have taken one to hit a backhand.  In other words, he’s totally comfortable hitting his backhand from anywhere on the court, against any spin, at any height, and he trusts it as his go-to offensive shot.

In my detailed stats tables, I added a chart last night showing shot types–how many each player hit, grouped into various categories.  Against David Ferrer, Gasquet hit 296 backhands (excluding slices) to 222 forehands, a ratio of 1.33.  Ferrer hit 274 to 297, a 0.923 ratio.  Ferrer is more typical.  He can hit solid crosscourt backhands all day long–even crush a down-the-line winner on occasion, but given the opportunity, he’ll move around it and hit a more powerful inside-out forehand.

Of the last five men’s matches I’ve charted, Gasquet’s backhand preference stands out.  Marcos Baghdatis vs Kevin Anderson: 0.58 for Baghdatis, 0.36 for Anderson.  Lleyton Hewitt vs Brian Baker?  0.72 for Hewitt, 0.86 for Baker. Tomas Berdych, 0.65, against Julien Benneteau, 0.73.  Against Denis Istomin, Andy Murray‘s ratio was 0.56.  Only Istomin is anywhere near Gasquet’s category, with a ratio of 1.15, and that may be more a testament to Murray’s ability to find his opponent’s backhand than anything else.

For all the beauty of Gasquet’s backhand, much of the time it is a simple rallying shot.  Move him deep into that corner, and he generally won’t hurt you. I’m not convinced all those backhands make up a wise tactical decision–perhaps more inside-out forehands would be in order.  Certainly, he’ll need to come up with something out of the ordinary when he faces Rafael Nadal on Saturday.

—

From the day the draw was announced, Flavia Pennetta‘s quarter was considered the wide-open section of the field.  Except, until yesterday, nobody thought of it as Pennetta’s quarter.  Technically it was fourth-seed Sara Errani‘s to lose, which she promptly did, to Pennetta in the second round.  It was also considered fair game for Caroline Wozniacki … who lost in the third round.  Then it was the domain of rising star Simona Halep … another Pennetta victim.

Surely Flavia’s run ends tomorrow at the hands of Victoria Azarenka.  In the meantime, let’s take a moment to celebrate a few amazing aspects of her accomplishment thus far.

Ranked 83rd–and ranked outside of the top 100 only six weeks ago–it took a late injury withdrawal to get her into the main draw.  Now, she is only the 10th woman in the Open era to reach a Grand Slam semifinal while ranked outside of the top 80.  Just one previous US Open semifinalist–Angelique Kerber two years ago–was ranked so low.

Another remarkable aspect of Pennetta’s run is that she has reached her first Slam semifinal at the age of 31.  Only three women–Gigi Fernandez, Nathalie Tauziat, and Wendy Turnbull–reached their first Slam semi after turning 30.  (Fernandez did it while ranked outside the top 80, making her the proto-Flavia.)  Turnbull is the only first-time semifinalist to have done so while older than Pennetta is now, by a couple of months.  She accomplished that feat at the 1984 US Open.  Amazingly, it wasn’t Turnbull’s only moment in the spotlight–she reached the semis of the Australian a few months later, beating a young Steffi Graf along the way.  She even reached the quarters at the following year’s US Open.

Finally, we may marvel at the fact that Pennetta, once a top-ten player, did not reach a semifinal until this, her 41st slam.  Also near the top of the all-time leaderboard, but not a record.  Francesca Schiavone had played 41 slams before reaching her first semi in the French Open a few years ago.  Tauziat makes another appearance here; she needed 44 tries before winning five straight matches.  The most dogged of all WTA players must be Elena Likhotseva, who played 56 career Slams, not making it to the semifinal in her 46th try.

Most of these precedents jibe with our intuition that, no matter how hot she is, Flavia doesn’t stand much of a chance against Vika.  But a couple of these cases–Schiavone with her two deep French open runs, and Turnbull with her pair of late-career semifinals–suggest that this could be more than a one-off for the Italian.

—

Rafael Nadal has yet to lose serve at the US Open, and has a string of 82 consecutive service holds going back to Cincinnati.  I plan to have more on this before his semifinal match.

Here’s a win-probability graph for yesterday’s Gasquet-Ferrer five-setter. And if you somehow missed it the last five times I linked to it, here are my detailed stats from that match.

I’ll chart one of the two men’s quarters today, though I’m not yet sure which one.  Keep an eye on my Twitter account, as I’ll post those stats after each set.

And last for today, here’s an example of thorough data collection that tennis organizations will almost certainly fail to follow.

Gasquet d. Ferrer: Recap and Detailed Stats

The knock on Richard Gasquet has long been his inability to play the big matches, to overcome higher-ranked opponents, even when he has the weapons to defeat them.  David Ferrer is the sort of guy who eats such players for lunch.  One might figure the Frenchman would win a set, but not that he would find his way into the semifinals of a Grand Slam.

For two sets today, Gasquet played as well as I’ve ever seen him play. He combined patience with his devastating down-the-line backhand, waiting eight, ten, or more shots before the opportunities arose to unleash the monster.

What’s remarkable is that most conventional stats don’t bear this out. He barely got half of his first serves in. He hit a mere seven winners in the first set, against a dozen unforced errors. But he coaxed plenty of mistakes out of an opponent who doesn’t often make many.

Gasquet was able to race to his two-set lead in large part because Ferrer wasn’t playing his best tennis. The tactics looked familiar, but Ferru wasn’t quite as aggressive as usual, letting Gasquet earn those opportunities to strike. Ferrer hit only three winners in the entire second set.

The next two sets fulfilled everyone’s expectations. Despite his five-set triumph over Milos Raonic, Gasquet’s history suggests he would mentally fade, and perhaps physically give out long before Ferrer would. As the Spaniard piled on the breaks, those forecasts appeared to come true.

Ferrer’s success against Gasquet’s serve tells the story. While failing to win more than 30% of return points in the first two sets, suddenly he won half of Gasquet’s service points. With Gasquet playing more listlessly, settling in further back in the court, a couple of breaks were plenty.

It would have been easy for the Frenchman to go away in the fifth set; he’s done it before. Ferrer’s reputation precedes him, and certainly, he showed no signs of physically weakening as the match went into its fifth hour.

But Gasquet dug out of a 15-30 hole to win his opening service game; he fought past two deuces and a break point to win his second. With both players settling in for a grind, the turning point came on Gasquet’s only break point of the deciding set, when Ferrer double-faulted to give his opponent a 5-2 advantage.

Thanks to a couple of errors from Ferrer in the final game and a big serve on match point, the Spaniard never had another opportunity. Gasquet moves to the semifinals and a probable date with Rafael Nadal.

It was only Gasquet’s second win against Ferrer in nine meetings, and only his seventh career win in a five-setter. His only previous five-set win against a higher-ranked opponent was in his only prior Grand Slam quarterfinal, in 2007 at Wimbledon against Andy Roddick.

And now, after winning his second Grand Slam fourth-round match in 17 tries, he moves to a perfect 2-0 in quarterfinals.

Here are my complete serve, return, and rally length stats for the match.

Number One Bagels and Clutch Break Points

The big story from yesterday’s action at the US Open was the dominance of the world #1s.  Both Novak Djokovic and Serena Williams dished out two 6-0 sets, making one wonder if we’d been transported back in time to the first Tuesday, when top players are more likely to face opponents who don’t challenge them.

Djokovic’s drubbing of Marcel Granollers was only the 146th men’s Grand Slam match of the Open era in which one player won two bagel sets.  That’s a little less than once per Slam for that time period.

Only 15 of those double-bagels have come in the fourth round or later, and such final-16 drubbings have gotten more rare over time–only 5 of the 15 have taken place since 1983.  The most recent was Rafael Nadal‘s defeat of Juan Monaco at last year’s French Open, 6-2 6-0 6-0.  Roger Federer shows up on the list as well, twice: His quarterfinal win over Juan Martin del Potro at the 2009 Australian, 6-3 6-0 6-0, and the final in his 2004 US Open title over Lleyton Hewitt, 6-0 7-6 6-0.

Double bagels are a bit more common in the women’s game, though not as frequent for Serena at Slams as you might expect.  While there have been over 180 in the Open era, yesterday’s defeat of Carla Suarez Navarro was only her fourth.  Several of the game’s greats tallied more than that, notably Chris Evert with 13, Margaret Court with 8, and Steffi Graf with 7.

Where Serena stacks up more impressively is in her record of 6-0 sets this year.  She has now served a bagel in ten different Grand Slam matches in 2013, including two double bagels.  Only Court in 1969 and Graf in 1988 won a 6-0 set in more Slam matches in a single year, and only Graf won more 6-0 sets at Slams in a single year.

Of course, Serena isn’t done yet.  However, in nine career matches against her semifinal opponent, Na Li, she has only won a single set 6-0.  She might not want to do it again: After serving a bagel set to open their 2008 in Stuttgart, Serena lost the next two sets for her only career loss against Li.

—

As we all mulled over Roger Federer’s future yesterday, Carl Bialik outlined a useful way of thinking about break point conversions.  As I noted yesterday, while Federer has played horribly on such key points in his last several slam losses, it’s not clear how much we should read into those numbers.  Yes, he probably would’ve won the match had he converted more break points, but does a dreadful 2-for-16 showing (or several) mean he is a fundamentally different player than he used to be?

Carl’s algorithm involves comparing performance on break points to performance on all other points.  If tennis players were robots, we would expect them to perform exactly as well at 30-40 as they do at 30-0.  The only slight difference is that most break points take place in the ad court, and lefties have an advantage there.  For now, let’s ignore that.

Thus, a player who wins 44% of break point opportunities against only 40% of other return points is playing 10% better in those pressure situations.  We might even say he is performing well in the clutch.

I ran these numbers for every member of the top 50 in 2013.  As is so often the case, the results don’t offer a lot of confidence in the connection between break point results and clutch skills.

The four players who have performed the best this year on break points, relative to other points in the same matches, are Jo-Wilfried Tsonga (+14%), Martin Klizan (+12%), Nicolas Almagro (+10%), and Ernests Gulbis (+10%).  Of the big four (or five, or seven), tops is Rafael Nadal, at +5%.

At the other end of the spectrum are Tommy Robredo (-5%), Sam Querrey (-6%), Kei Nishikori (-6%), Michael Llodra (-7%), and David Ferrer (-7%).

(These numbers don’t include the US Open.  If they did, presumably Robredo would move up a few spots.)

Federer ranks 38th among the top 50, winning 2.6% fewer break points than non-break points.  That’s certainly nothing to be proud of, but it’s only two spots behind Novak Djokovic, at -1.7%.

Another approach that matches our intuition a little better is to look only at break point opportunities–that is, clutch return points.  Here, Federer is -7.8%, worse than 40 members of the top 50.  Djokovic and Andy Murray are still in the bottom half, but a full 10 spots ahead of Roger, at -3.2% and -3.7%, respectively.  Nadal is +2.1%.

If nothing else, these numbers show us how thin the margins are in top-level men’s tennis.  A few percentage points differentiate the very best from a fading player having a disappointing season.

The presence of Djokovic so far down these lists serves as another reminder.  Converting break points is a numbers game.  Look through Novak’s season and you’ll find a couple 3-for-11s, a 2-for-12, and a 4-for-18 (against Bobby Reynolds!).  You only need to convert a few to win a match, and the best way to convert a few is to earn as many as possible.

In other words, break point conversion rates represent only a small part of a player’s performance on any given day.  Earning those break opportunities can be every bit as important, and that’s one category in which Federer remains strong.

—

If you missed it last night, check out my recap and detailed stats for Murray vs. Istomin.

Here’s another interesting graph from Betting Market Analytics, showing win probability throughout yesterday’s Ivanovic-Azarenka match.  Because Vika was so heavily favored yesterday, she retained a better than 50/50 chance of winning the match even after Ana took the first set.

Murray d. Istomin: Recap and Detailed Stats

Tonight Andy Murray defeated Denis Istomin in four sets for a place in the quarterfinals against Stanislas Wawrinka. I logged every point, and have lots of stats for you to check out.

In particular, check out the new “key points” and “rally length” tables.

Murray started out sluggishly and never appeared to play at 100%. But what he brought was good enough, especially in the second set, when Istomin went down an early break and immediately started looking to the third set.

Istomin has a big game, with the ability to dictate play from the baseline. Murray spent a lot of time in classic Andy defense mode, and often it worked, as perhaps Istomin’s greatest weakness is his predilection for low-percentage shots. His 58 unforced errors (not counting double faults) don’t even convey the whole story, as so many of those should have been simple rallying shots.  It may not be easy to construct a point against a defender like Murray, but Istomin’s tactics didn’t do him much credit.

While Murray came through tonight, it marks another sign of weakness for defending champ. Playing like he did tonight won’t be enough to beat Wawrinka, let alone Novak Djokovic in the semifinals. His serve never really got going, and once he learned he could trust Istomin to lose points without too much help, he waited out his opponent. It worked, but it took over three hours. Andy in champion mode should have won this one in less than two.

Here are the complete chart-based stats.

Unexpected Quarterfinalists: Gasquet, Hantuchova, and Not Fed

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 the Open era to do so.  The problem is what happens next.

Entering yesterday’s match, Gasquet was 1-15 in round-of-16 matches at majors, his one victory coming at 2007 Wimbledon over Jo-Wilfried Tsonga.  Since then, he’s lost his last eleven tries, including one to Tsonga and two to David Ferrer, his quarterfinal opponent this week.  No player has lost more than 15 fourth-round Slam matches; only Wayne Ferreira reached the same plateau, and Lleyton Hewitt will match it if he loses today.

One thing that has held him back is an inability to beat higher-ranked players, as Carl Bialik noted earlier this year.  At slams, he has played 28 matches against players with superior ATP rankings, and won only four of them.  Against lower-ranked players, he is 62-11.  Since Gasquet’s ranking has rarely reached the top eight, that mark hasn’t helped him the fourth round, where players outside of the top eight generally meet a higher-ranked opponent.

Now that Gasquet has broken through with his second Grand Slam quarterfinal appearance, history suggests he’ll go no further.  He has beaten Ferrer only one time in nine tries, and that was five years ago.  And Ferrer’s ranking puts him firmly in the category of guys Gasquet doesn’t beat at majors.

There’s one reason for hope, though.  Despite all the disappointment in the fourth round, he has never lost a Grand Slam quarterfinal.

—

Daniela Hantuchova‘s appearance in the quarterfinals of this year’s US Open is surprising for a different reason.  When the tournament began, her spot was pegged for Petra Kvitova, before an ailing Kvitova was upset by Alison Riske.  For all my talk recently about easy bracket on the men’s side, no one in either single’s draw has faced such lowly-ranked competition.

Hantuchova’s four opponents thus far include two qualifiers and two wild cards.  Among them, only Riske is ranked inside the top 100, and she’s #81.  By contrast, Hantuchova’s presumptive quarterfinal opponent, Victoria Azarenka, will have faced #13 and #28.

Of over 850 women’s Slam quarterfinalists since 1987, only six have reached the quarters without playing someone in the top 80.  The luckiest path was that of Claudia Kohde Kilsch, who reached the 1989 Wimbledon quarterfinals by beating #126, #246, #247, and #131.  Then her luck ran out: Steffi Graf ended her run in the quarters.  Steffi herself is one of the six, having won her first four rounds at 1993 Wimbledon without playing anyone ranked better than #87.

These lucky draws have become less common in recent years.  Of the six, only one has occurred since Steffi’s run in 1993.  Nadia Petrova reached the quarterfinals at the 2006 Australian Open without having to beat anyone ranked better than #100.

After four easy matches, there’s little pattern to how these players fare in the quarters.  As we might expect, the success rate in their fifth matches has much more to do with their quarterfinal opponents than the women they faced to get there.

—

And perhaps you’ve heard: Tommy Robredo defeated Roger Federer in straight sets.

It was the first time in twelve meetings that Robredo beat Fed.  It’s the Spaniard’s first quarterfinal appearance in New York, despite seven previous fourth-round showings (including one against Roger, in 2009).  Even Gasquet hasn’t been that bad, losing in the US Open round of 16 a mere four times.  And Robredo pulled off the upset while winning fewer return points than his opponent did–something that happens in only one of 15 US Open men’s matches.

When oddities like this occur–Gasquet’s match is another, as he won only 48.5% of total points–it is almost always because the winner played much better on high-leverage points.  In many matches, those important moments are at the back end of tiebreaks, when two points can make or break a set.  In Federer’s loss, the finger-pointing is directed at break points.  Roger barely converted any of them. It’s been a problem for Fed for years, particularly in his last several Slam losses.

It’s difficult to know how to evaluate poor break point performances.  In one sense, it’s obvious: If Fed was going to win the match, he needed to win more.  A failure to convert break points is a good explanation for any loss.

But what does it say about Fed’s current level, or about what we can expect from him going forward?  Is he suddenly weak on break points?  When I ran the numbers a couple of years ago, he was winning slightly fewer return points in the ad court, but the difference isn’t nearly extreme enough to explain a 2-for-16 performance on break points.

What’s particularly frustrating about squandering so many break points is that he earned them with good play on other return points. And, of course, there’s no difference between a typical ad-court point and a break point except for the pressure.

So, if Federer is still generating all those break-point opportunities, is he simply suffering through a run of bad luck?  Has he lost his clutch superpowers?  Have other players ceased to fear him in big moments?  Judging from the growing number of surprising defeats in Roger’s record, it certainly seems to be something more than bad luck.

—

Finally, a couple of notes.

Don’t miss this win probability graph of the Raonic-Gasquet match.  Mike says it’s “almost too interesting.”

In the New York Times Straight Sets blog (known for its coverage of the United States Open), Clayton Chin gives a brief overview of a forecasting method.  He emphasizes his reliance on the Monte Carlo method–a technique that utilizes thousands or even millions of simulations–which isn’t necessary here.

If you estimate each player’s serve and return points won, it’s straightforward to calculate each player’s chances of winning a game, set, or match.  Generally speaking, Monte Carlo techniques are useful when such closed-form solutions aren’t available.

The most important part of Chin’s approach is one he doesn’t shed any light on.  If Serena is holding serve at a certain rate and breaking serve at a certain rate over the course of the year, how do you generate hold and break rates for an individual match?  It can be done, and many have tried, but that’s much more challenging that simulating outcomes at the match or tournament level.  Without that glimpse under the hood, it’s tough to know how much weight to give his results.

Guaranteed Five-Setters, Exhausting Routes to R4, and Master Bakers

With so many of the world’s top players in action yesterday, it’s only fitting to lead with Denis Istomin and Andreas Seppi.

Istomin and Seppi have now met four times in the last 15 months, all at Grand Slams.  And thanks to yesterday’s effort, they’ve now gone five sets in all four of those matches.

Cue the chorus: “That’s got to be some kind of record, right?”

Yep, it is.  While their US Open third-rounder was Seppi and Istomin’s seventh meeting overall, it was only their fourth at a major, meaning that each time they’ve met in the best-of-five format, they’ve gone the distance.  Two pairs of players (Thomas Muster and Albert Costa, and Guillermo Canas and Gaston Gaudio) have met three times in a best-of-five and reached a decider each time, but no two players had ever gone four-for-four.

In fact, Seppi and Istomin are only the eighth pairing in the Open era to record four or more five-setters.  Petr Korda and Pete Sampras played four five-setters in five matchups, but their first such meeting, a 1992 Davis Cup match, only went four sets.  Radek Stepanek and David Ferrer are also close, having played four five-setters in five best-of-five meetings.

Most of the pairs that have played so many five-setters required many more meetings to do so.  You might be familiar with some of the guys who make up the three head-to-heads that have played five five-setters: Jimmy Connors–John McEnroe, Stefan Edberg–Ivan Lendl, and Roger Federer–Rafael Nadal.  But all of those pairs met more than 10 times in best-of-five situations.  In this context, all those three- and four-setters seem rather weak.

When the Australian Open draw comes out, while everyone else figures out whose quarter Federer landed in, I’ll be checking Seppi’s proximity to Istomin.

—

When Marcel Granollers edged by Tim Smyczek in five sets yesterday, the big story was the futility of American men’s tennis.  (Thankfully, for the depressed patriots among us, Sloane Stephens was putting up a spirited challenge against Serena Williams on another court.)

However, the Spaniard was making a bit of history of his own.  In beating Jurgen Zopp, Rajeev Ram, and Smyczek, he’s won three five-setters in his first three rounds, becoming only the 15th man to do so in the Open era, the first since Janko Tipsarevic did so at Wimbledon in 2007.  It’s only the third time someone has done it at the US Open.  The last man to do so in New York was Wayne Ferreira, in 1993.

Amazingly, three players have gone five sets in each of their first four matches in a slam.  The last such occurrence was when Dominik Hrbaty reached the fourth round at the Australian, in 2006.  He fell to Nikolay Davydenko in the fourth round.

This is one bit of history that Granollers surely won’t be making.  As remarkable as it is to reach the fourth round of the back of all those five-setters, it isn’t a good sign when you lose two sets apiece to three players ranked outside the top 100.

It certainly doesn’t bode well when your next opponent is Novak Djokovic.

—

As Federer, Nadal and Djokovic plow their way through the early rounds this year, none is wasting any time.  All three players have posted a 6-0 set in their second- or third-round matches, exclamation points amidst broader displays of dominance.

A quick check of the database reveals yet another category in which Federer is charging toward the top.  The Open era record for bagel sets won at Grand Slams is held by Andre Agassi, who retired with 49.  Fed’s bagel of Adrian Mannarino on Saturday was the 43rd of his career.

Here is the all-time list:

Player           Slam bagels  
Andre Agassi              49  
Roger Federer             43  
Ivan Lendl                42  
Jimmy Connors             41  
Bjorn Borg                35  
Guillermo Vilas           29  
John Mcenroe              29  
Stefan Edberg             25  
Boris Becker              23  
Rafael Nadal              22  
Novak Djokovic            21

Andy Murray is tied for 19th, with 16.

This is one category which highlights the extreme dominance of some of the greatest female players in history.  Chris Evert puts Agassi, Federer, and everyone else to shame, with a record 104 Grand Slam bagels.  Serena Williams’s first-round defeat of Francesca Schiavone moved her past Arantxa Sanchez Vicario into fifth place on the all-time list:

Player                   Slam bagels  
Chris Evert                      104  
Steffi Graf                       74  
Martina Navratilova               70  
Monica Seles                      51 
Serena Williams                   49 
Arantxa Sanchez Vicario           47  
Margaret Court                    44  
Gabriela Sabatini                 44  
Lindsay Davenport                 43  
Maria Sharapova                   41

With a quarterfinal matchup against Carla Suarez Navarro, it’s possible Serena isn’t done for the year.  Each of the two previous times the two women have played, Williams has won a 6-0 set.

Detailed Match Stats: Serena, Sloane, Halep, Vika, Berdych

I’ve charted several matches over the last two days, and there’s some new stuff to show you.

Follow these links, and you’ll see a new format for my detailed, chart-based match stats.  The same serve and return breakdowns you’ve seen earlier this week, but a little easier to navigate.

Best of all, there’s a new set of data: rally outcomes.  For each of these matches, you can see how each player performed in rallies of 1-3 shots, 4-6 shots, 7-9 shots, and 10+ shots, along with each of those categories on each player’s serve.

To get to the rally outcomes table, click on the link for the match you want to investigate, and then click the link for “Point outcomes by rally length.”

Enjoy!

Sunday: R16: Serena Williams vs Sloane Stephens: click here

Sunday: R32: Tomas Berdych vs Julien Benneteau: click here

Saturday: R32: Victoria Azarenka vs Alize Cornet: click here

Saturday: R32: Simona Halep vs Maria Kirilenko: click here

There will be more in the next few days, along with additional analysis, I hope as soon as tomorrow.

Halep’s Beatdown, Challenges by Gender, Djokovic Unthreatened

Thanks to the dominance of players like Serena Williams and Victoria Azarenka, it’s not much of a surprise to see a scoreline like 6-1 6-0 in the first week of a Grand Slam.  But when an upset comes with scores like that, we should sit up and take notice.

That’s what Simona Halep did to Maria Kirilenko, and trust me, it wasn’t any closer than the score suggests.  Halep has a deceptively big game, content to counterpunch but always looking for an opening for what can be a monster backhand.  I charted her match yesterday (along with Vika’s third-rounder against Alize Cornet), so look for some detailed stats from those matches later today.

Even before the first matches were played, it was clear that the Romanian landed in the right part of the draw, in a quarter free of Serena, Vika, Agnieszka Radwanska, and Na Li.  With the early upsets of Sara Errani and Caroline Wozniacki, the two highest-ranked women in her quarter, Halep’s position looks even better.

Strangely enough, though, her next two opponents are women she might prefer not to face.  Flavia Pennetta, who will play her in the round of 16, was the last woman outside of the top 20 to beat Halep.  (Granted, Simona retired in the third set with a lower back injury.)  Her likely quarterfinal opponent, Roberta Vinci, is a more  interesting case.  The pair have already faced off three times this year, and on the first of those occasions, Vinci dished out Halep’s worst loss of the year, a 6-0 6-3 drubbing on the carpet in Paris.  Since then, Simona has won two equally lopsided matches, on both clay and grass.

The way Halep was playing yesterday, though, we can safely pencil her into the semifinals, regardless who she draws in the meantime.

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Did you know that, at Grand Slams, men use the challenge system more that women do?

At the Open so far this year, men have made 7.52 challenges per match, while women have made 3.38.  The same pattern held at the Australian Open and Wimbledon this year.  In general, there are about twice as many challenges in a men’s Slam match than in a women’s slam match.

Of course, a big part of that discrepancy arises because men play best-of-5 matches while women play best-of-3.  The more sets, the more points, and the more points, the more potential reasons to challenge.

Still, the structural difference doesn’t entirely account for the gap.  For instance, there were roughly 90 men’s matches and 90 women’s matches played on Hawkeye courts in Melbourne this year, and the men’s matches averaged about 60% more points.  Men challenged calls once every 32 points, while women challenged once every 37 points.

That’s not quite as dramatic as the 2:1 ratio we started with, but it’s still notable, and it has remained consistent throughout multiple slams this year.

One possibility is that men challenge more because, on average, they hit the ball harder, particularly on the serve.  The harder the shot, the tougher it is for everyone to see exactly where it lands, and the greater likelihood of disagreement.  To corroborate, it would be interesting to know whether chair umpires are more or less likely to overrule in men’s matches.

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Yesterday I noted that Djokovic had a remarkably easy path to the quarterfinals.  If Marcel Granollers beats Tim Smyczek, the Spaniard will be Novak’s highest-ranked opponent en route to the quarters.  (That’s assuming Djokovic beats 95th-ranked Joao Sousa today.)

If Granollers advances, Djokovic’s first four opponents will have the following rankings: 112, 87, 95, and 43.  In 24 previous Grand Slam quarterfinal runs, Novak has needed to beat someone in the top 40 20 of those times, and someone in the top 30 17 of those times.

If, as all patriotic Americans fervently hope, Smyczek wins today, we’ll venture into more extreme territory.  In that case, Djokovic’s highest-ranked opponent will have been 87th-ranked Benjamin Becker.  One suspects that a fair number of ATP players could advance to the quarterfinals given this draw.

In the Smyczek scenario, Djokovic will have faced an easier path than Roger Federer ever has in his 36 Slam quarterfinal showings.  As Carl Bialik reported during last year’s French Open, Roger’s first four rounds at Roland Garros were the easiest of his career–his highest-ranked opponent was #78 Tobias Kamke.

Federer’s experience leaves it unclear whether such a friendly draw is a good thing.  In the quarterfinals of that tournament, he lost his first two sets to Juan Martin del Potro before charging back for the five-set victory.  Perhaps we can expect such a thriller from Djokovic and Tommy Haas next week.

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Want to know more about Tim Smyczek?  Here’s a good place to start.

Here’s another excellent win probability graph from Betting Market Analytics, this time covering the five-setter between Hewitt and del Potro.

Djokovic the Favorite, Murray the Vulnerable, Smyczek the Last Hope?

Last night, Novak Djokovic cemented his status as the US Open favorite, all without doing a thing.

The 32-man draw has 19 seeds left, but only two others remain in Novak’s quarter, and those two–Tommy Haas and Mikhail Youzhny–play each other in the 3rd round.  Djokovic will face the shocking Joao Sousa in his third-rounder, followed by the winner of Tim Smyczek–Marcel Granollers in the fourth.

Novak’s quarterfinal threat was supposed to be Juan Martin del Potro, and that’s where the Serbian has really gained.  Lleyton Hewitt upset Delpo in a slipshod five-setter last night, making Djokovic’s most likely QF opponent Tommy Haas. While Haas has a recent win against the world #1, you have to figure he remains the preferred opponent.

These shifts in the draw mean that my forecast now gives Djokovic almost exactly double the chances of winning of his nearest competitor, Rafael Nadal.  Nadal, of course, has a much trickier path to the semifinals, likely having to go through both John Isner and Roger Federer.  Andy Murray has a more fortunate draw than that, but he’ll probably need to beat Tomas Berdych to earn a matchup with Djokovic.

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Djokovic didn’t look dominant in his second-round win, but it was Murray who lost a set yesterday, to journeyman Argentine Leonardo Mayer, a 26-year-old who has yet to crack the top 50.  The defending champion recovered just fine, but is second-round weakness a sign of bad things to come?

The short answer is no.  Since 1991, seven US Open champions have been pushed to four or five sets in their second round match en route to the title, though none have suffered that fate since 2004, when eventual champ Federer dropped a set to Marcos Baghdatis.  Another three titlists lost at least one set in the first round.

However, few of those early-round challengers have been as anonymous as Mayer.  Besides Baghdatis, the most recent second-round threats have been Ivan Ljubicic and James Blake.  The last time an Open champion dropped a second-round set to such an anonymous figure was in 2000, when Marat Safin needed five sets to get past Gianluca Pozzi.

Also worth noting is that in Murray’s trio of notable victories–last year’s Olympics and US Open, plus this year’s Wimbledon–he has never dropped a set so early.  In fact, in London this summer, he won his first four matches in straights before battling through a five-setter against Fernando Verdasco.

Whatever else you might say about Verdasco, he’s a much more dangerous opponent than Leonardo Mayer.

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American grinder Tim Smyczek scored the biggest win of his career yesterday with a five-set victory over Alex Bogomolov.  Smyczek has taken advantage of an easy draw (Bogie defeated Benoit Paire in the first round) to reach his first Grand Slam round of 32 in his fifth main draw appearance.

He has a rare opportunity to go even further, facing 43rd-ranked Marcel Granollers, also the beneficiary of a friendly draw thanks to Fabio Fognini‘s first-round loss.  Granollers has played 18 slams on hard and grass courts, never reaching the round of 16.

It’s a strange world when Smyczek is one of only three Americans–along with John Isner and Jack Sock–still alive.  Stranger still is the very real possibility that Tim will be the only man standing two days from now.  Sock faces Janko Tipsarevic, a winnable match but not one he’ll be favored in.  Isner is ranked higher than his next opponent, Philipp Kohlschreiber, but the German eliminated him in last year’s Open.

Smyczek, on the other hand, has nothing to lose.  Well, except for his pride, when he reaches the fourth round and suffers a triple-bagel at the hands of Novak Djokovic.

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If you’re already worrying about not having enough matches to watch during week two, look no further than Colette Lewis’s thorough US Open Juniors preview, which lays out the contenders in both the boys’ and girls’ draw.