Author: jsackmann

How Fast is the Ice Rink in Sarajevo?

The Sarajevo challenger is considered to have one of the fastest surfaces on the tennis circuit.  James Cluskey, playing doubles there this week, tweeted, “fast is being very kind. Soo fast!”  Last year, some fans got the point across by calling the surface an ice rink.

The raw numbers agree.  In 13 of the 31 main-draw matches last year, aces made up at least 18% of all points.  Champion Jan Hernych won both his semfinal and final matches against players who scored aces on more than one in five service points.  Two years ago, titlist Amer Delic recorded a 21.6% ace rate for the entire tournament. That’s fast.

Here’s how fast.  The average player who competed in Sarajevo in any of the last three years hit 50% more aces in Sarajevo than his season average.  That’s higher than any other European challenger, a tick above Ortisei (+46%) and well ahead of the third-place fast court, the carpet in Eckental (+31%). (For more on methodology, click here.)

These numbers probably understate just how speedy the Sarajevo surface is.  The players who show up for events like this generally have a game to match–they may not all know about the “ice rink” reputation, but they know it’s indoors.  That’s how you end up with Dustin Brown, Ilija Bozoljac, and Hernych in the late rounds last year.  Jerzy Janowicz was there as well.

Thus, the guys who play in Sarajevo are generally choosing fast surfaces.  So Sarajevo isn’t 50% faster than tour average, it’s 50% faster than the faster-than-average event that these types of players choose.  This is a much bigger factor on the challenger tour than at ATP level, because lower-level guys don’t all play the same events.  Clay-court specialists may show up for Valencia and the Paris Masters, but you won’t find a single South American playing in Bosnia this week.

So we can’t compare Sarajevo to Sao Paulo or Medellin.  (Due to the altitude, those are fast as well, but probably not to the same degree.)  But by any reasonable comparison we can calculate, Sarajevo is as fast as it gets–at least until some savvy promoter puts a tennis match on a real ice rink.

Futures Report: Switzerland F1 in Frauenfeld

It’s not every day you can spend ten hours at an indoor tennis club in Frauenfeld, Switzerland, watching a $20k combined event amongst a small number of tennis-loving friends.

At the main venue, today’s action included 12 matches, seven of which made up the men’s second round in the Switzerland F1 Futures.  They featured everyone from top-200-ranked 29-year-old Bastian Knittel to unranked 17-year-old Swiss wildcard Daniel Valent.  Here are reports on some of the highlights and some of the rest.

George Von Massow (GER) d. (2)Peter Torebko (GER) 6-4 6-3

Torebko is a veteran of Challengers and ATP qualifiers; like many of the seeds this week, he’s not someone you’d expect to see in a Futures event.  Alas, he wasn’t rewarded for dropping down a level.

The 25-year-old is steady, with perhaps the best defensive game on display all day.  Alas, the conditions featured an explosive indoor hard court that rewarded huge weaponry, and Von Massow had more of that.  The final scoreline disguises how close the match felt, especially until Von Massow sealed the first set.  For several games, Torebko withstood the firepower with a nice combination of flat and slice backhands, waiting until his younger opponent made errors.

Then Von Massow stopped making so many errors.  While Torebko hit his share of service winners, especially slices wide, he could only watch while his countryman’s unforced errors turned into winners.  A smarter player–or any player on a slower or less predictable court–probably could have gotten Von Massow off track, as the German looked awkward whenever he had to strike a ball outside of his hitting zone.  But he took advantage of the indoor conditions and kept his form long enough to get through to the quarters.

(Q)Bastian Wagner (GER) d. (7)Adrian Bossel (SUI) 6-4 6-4

Wagner is a David Goffin-sized 18-year-old from Germany with a game to match.  He swings hard, with a two-handed backhand he’s willing to hit anywhere, but he doesn’t seem to be that strong.  Unless he found  a perfect angle, he rarely hit winners.  His saving grace was Bossel’s inconsistency and apparent indifference.

It’s unclear whether Bossel’s performance today was due to an injury–he knelt over in pain in mid-game early in the first set and took a medical time out.  In any event, plenty of errors came off his racquet when he failed to bend his knees for rallying shots, and he refused to play much defense.  The Swiss is a tall lefty who takes advantage of his height to hit flat groundstrokes, but even with that advantage, he netted plenty of shots he shouldn’t have.

He also didn’t seem to use his lefthandedness for positive effect.  Wagner’s backhand took time to get zoned in–the German made at least four errors off that wing in the first two games alone–but once it did, the result was a foregone conclusion.  Wagner won 6-4 6-4, a line that says more about Bossel’s weakness than Wagner’s skill.

(6)Antoine Benneteau (FRA) d. Riccardo Maiga (SUI) 6-2 6-4

Protip: If you’re at a Futures event and looking for Antoine Benneteau, try to find the guy who looks like Julien Benneteau.  If Antoine shaved his beard, you might not be able to tell them apart.

Alas, the difference is evident when Antoine steps on the court.  In a day of aggressive indoor play, the Frenchman may well have been the most aggressive of all.  His serves could probably be heard outside the complex, and on the return, he often stepped well inside the baseline to respond to Maiga’s offerings–which were hardly weak.

While Maiga adapted to the indoor conditions–he played the second set much better than he did the first–he seemed like someone who would be more comfortable on clay.  In the first set, he rarely took the offensive, settling for topspin groundstrokes that gave Benneteau openings to grab the initiative.  What’s odd about Antoine’s style of play is that, once he settles in for a rally, he can be quite passive, camping a few feet behind the baseline, oblivious to openings.  But if the slightest opportunity appears within his first two or three shots, it’s a guarantee that the Frenchman will end the point (one way or another) immediately.

(3)Martin Fischer (AUT) d. Hugo Nys (FRA) 6-4 6-4

Another protip: If you’re trying to find Martin Fischer, look for the spitting image of Alan Ruck, the guy who played Ferris Bueller’s sidekick.  It’s eerie.  Fischer’s impenetrable demeanor on the tennis court even matches what Cameron’s might be.

This match was a study in contrasts and the most interesting of the day.  Fischer knows how to play indoors, but can’t overpower anyone; Nys is the most dynamic player who showed up in Frauenfeld.

Like his countryman Benneteau, Nys can be hyper-aggressive, going for second-shot winners, even stepping in and taking a swing against a first serve.  Particularly against Fischer’s second offerings, Nys would refuse to play defense, aiming for corners and often hitting them.

Alas, Fischer was too smart.  Strangely enough, the Austrian isn’t particularly steady; my notes are filled with references to types of shots he missed that he should have made, especially mid-court.  But he was steadier than Nys, who came unhinged after losing the first set on a late break of serve.  The Frenchman took lower and lower percentage shots, and one could sense Fischer getting increasing patient, realizing that he could just wait for errors.

All that said, the 22-year-old Nys has plenty of potential.  He plays aggressive tennis all over the court, with a powerful serve to set up sharp angles from both his forehand and a flashy one-handed backhand.  As with anyone ranked outside of the top 600, the odds are against him, but the talent is there.

(1)Bastian Knittel (GER) d. (Q)Maximilian Abel (GER) 7-5 6-3

Knittel is ranked within the top 200 and the #1 seed in Frauenfeld.  Based on the power he displayed today, it’s surprising that he hasn’t strung together a few solid challenger results and snuck into the top 100.  Alas, his peak so far is 157, and at 29, his opportunities for bettering that mark are slipping.

I don’t have many notes on this match–it’s tough to remember a single point that went beyond four shots.  Both players are huge servers with huge groundstrokes, and Abel was sufficiently inconsistent to keep points very short.  Abel has also peaked in the top 200, but that was 10 years ago.  He’s now a 31-year-old outside of the top 1000 in the world rankings, a minor obstacle for Knittel en route to a title that should go to the #1 seed.

Edoardo Eremin (ITA) d. (5)Victor Galovic (ITA) 6-4 6-4

This battle of Italians was a noisy one, full of huge serves and almost-as-huge forehands.  It was also tough to keep track of, since most of it took place while the women’s doubles final was played between the crowd and their court.

Galovic, ranked in the 300’s to Eremin’s 500’s, is the paper favorite, but he played a bit like Bossel, not moving as well as one would expect of a top-level player and relying on obvious opportunities to hit winners.  Neither player was particularly imaginative, settling in for crosscourt forehand-to-forehand rallies that, while impressive, hardly served to separate the two.

Ultimately, Galovic made a few more errors.  Neither player showed any notable talents except for the typical big-serve/big-forehand combination that, alone, gets so many guys into the top 500.

(4)Sandro Ehrat (SUI) d. (WC)Daniel Valent (SUI) 6-1 6-1

The match of the day, between two Swiss players, was a dud.  Ehrat, a highly-touted 21-year-old ranked in the top 350, is the best home hope to win the event.  Valent, merely 17 years old, is a wildcard who managed to beat yet another native son, Alexander Sadecky, the first round.

Valent doesn’t yet quite belong at this level, and worse, he doesn’t appear to believe he belongs at this level.  He was quickly broken in the opening game of the match, looking like he was in awe of his older and more accomplished opponent.  Whenever he seemed to be getting into the match, he got tight.  After nearly every winner, he pumped his fist; after every error, he swung his racquet as if he was about to smash it.  It was exhausting to watch.

Valent has a big game. He looks like he has some growing yet to do; with another few inches, his game could be even bigger.  More important, though, is that he learns some defensive skills.  Ehrat is hardly a counterpuncher, but Valent made him look like one.  The older player hit only a few flashy shots, generally withstanding the occasional ace or winner from Valent’s racquet and watching the games pile up on the teenager’s errors.

It’s a shame–I had hoped to see what the fuss is about.  Ehrat did look rather smooth and his serve appeared to be a bit tricky to read.  Those two qualities, combined with his nationality, are enough to generate some dangerous Federer comparisons.  For the time being, though, Roger’s spot on the Swiss Davis Cup team is safe.

Federer, Nadal, and Semifinal-or-Later Streaks

The Indian Wells men’s draw has been released, and a big question has been answered.  Rafael Nadal, about as dangerous a floater as can be imagined with a #5 seed, landed in Roger Federer‘s quarter.  (Sorry Roger, it had to happen to someone, and David Ferrer has suffered enough lately.)

If Fed and Rafa both win three matches, they’ll face each other in a quarterfinal match.  That’s something that’s never happened before.  The pair has met 28 times, 26 of them in a semifinal or final.  The only exceptions are their first match in 2004, when Nadal was seeded 32nd in Miami, and a round-robin pairing at the 2011 tour finals.  Ignoring the round-robin, that’s 26 matches in a row in one of the last two rounds of an event.

That’s a historically great streak, but it’s not the record.  In fact, one player is a part of two streaks–the only two streaks–that are better.

Jimmy Connors is 1st, with 28 consecutive semis or finals against Ivan Lendl, and 2nd, with 27 consecutive semis or finals against (who else?) John McEnroe.  He’s also eighth (21 straight against Bjorn Borg) and 12th (14 with Ilie Nastase).

Until the threat of this week’s draw, Federer and Nadal were right on Connors’s tail.  If Roger and Rafa meet in the quarters, the heir presumptive pair will have to include Novak Djokovic.

Here’s the all-time top ten:

Streak  Player1          Player2           
28      Jimmy Connors    Ivan Lendl        
27      Jimmy Connors    John McEnroe      
26      Rafael Nadal     Roger Federer     
23      Rafael Nadal     Novak Djokovic    
22      Stefan Edberg    Boris Becker      
22      Roger Federer    Novak Djokovic    
22      John McEnroe     Ivan Lendl        
21      Bjorn Borg       Jimmy Connors     
19      Stefan Edberg    Ivan Lendl        
17      Ivan Lendl       Boris Becker

If Nadal stays #5 for long (unlikely as that seems), both the all-time #3 and #4 streaks could be halted.  But as long as Federer stays within the top four, the current #6 streak will climb the rankings.

Of course, there are a couple of other combinations with the potential to crack this list, even reach the top:

Streak  Player1         Player2        
11      Andy Murray     Roger Federer  
10      Novak Djokovic  Andy Murray

But we shouldn’t get ahead of ourselves.  It took five years for Fed and Nadal to get from 11 up to 26.  As the top of the list shows, it takes two consistently great players to put together a streak like this.

All is not lost, though.  If they play in the quarters, they’ll just have to shift their focus to a new record: consecutive meetings in quarterfinals or later.  27 straight would put them behind Connors-McEnroe (32), Connors-Lendl (29), and one pair they’re unlikely to chase down: Nadal-Djokovic (29).

How to Fix the ATP’s 25-Second Rule

At the beginning of 2013, the ATP lessened the penalties for time violations, in hopes that chair umpires would call them more often. In a perfect world, that might lead to players committing fewer time violations.

So far this year, the new policy may have sped up the game a bit, but unsurprisingly, it has led to more disruptions of play.  Whenever a violation is called, an additional delay is virtually automatic.  After all, if a player is worn out from the previous point and lagging so much that he earns a time violation, why not take the opportunity to argue with the ump and physically recover for even longer?

Any time-violation policy should take into account three key guidelines:

  1. The game should move along at a reasonable pace. Some kind of time violation rule is here to stay.
  2. Any rule should be applied as fairly and consistently as possible, against all players, regardless of court, tournament, round, or set.
  3. Enforcement should interfere as little as possible with the flow of the game, both for fan enjoyment and player concentration.

The policy may be succeeding on (1).  It might be an improvement towards (2), though based on the unscientific sample of matches I’ve watched, it still seems that violations are more likely to be called on the guys playing the big four (or top ten) than the big four themselves.

As for (3), it’s a disaster.

Keep the penalties; keep the flow.

The solution is simple.  Instead of calling the time violation while the server is readying himself for the next point, call it immediately after the point is complete.  There may still be an argument, but coming right after a point instead of 30 seconds after (and five seconds before the next one would have started), it would be less disruptive.

Sometimes a post-point violation warning wouldn’t be disruptive at all, as when the point finishes a game.  Also, if the offending player has just won a point, he would probably be more in the mood to keep going than to stop and argue with the umpire.

This change would address (3).  However, to ensure that the rule is justly applied, a better system needs to be in place.  While a basketball-style shot clock is appealing for this reason, it would be far too distracting to both players and fans.  As always, the onus is on the chair umpire.

To keep the umpire honest, his record of the match should be made available to both players and their camps.  (Or best of all, to the public, but why suggest something the ATP would never consider?)

The umpire already keeps a point-by-point record of the match–that’s what you see him doing when he taps on the screen in front of him.  We’re talking about a minor technological improvement here: When he finishes entering the previous point, a clock starts.  In this new scenario, he would be asked to tap the screen again when the server starts his motion.  The addition of a clock (a shot clock, but visible only to the umpire) and that one extra tap is all that is required.

This way, the screen in front of the umpire would notify him of every possible time violation.  He would still be given leeway to call the time violation or not, perhaps ignoring the offense because of a long round of applause or a distraction on court.  With those records available after the fact, opponents and ATP supervisors would know whether time violations were called, especially when a player averages more than 25 seconds between points.

With these minor changes, we can hope for men’s tennis that moves along at a reasonable pace, thanks to unobtrusive rules that are equally applied to all players.

 

Nick Kyrgios and the Youngest Challenger Titlists

Last week at the Sydney Challenger, 17-year-old Nick Kyrgios won the title while only dropping a single set.  The young man has been on quite the run, first winning the Australian Open boy’s singles title, reaching the semifinals at his first challenger, then winning in Sydney.

Claiming a title at this level–even against a relatively weak challenger field like that in Sydney–is an impressive feat for any teenager, let alone a 17-year-0ld playing only his second challenger.  And while much has been made of the increasing age of the top ATP contenders, winning a challenger at 17 has never been a common feat.

In fact, this is only the 27th time it has happened, and Kyrgios is only the 16th man to do it.  The list he joins of previous 16- and 17-year-old winners is littered with some of the game’s contemporary greats.  (On Twitter earlier, I offered slightly different numbers; I mistakenly included Donald Young, who won a challenger on his 18th birthday.)

See below for the full list, or click here for a sortable table.

Date      Tournament         Winner                  Age  
20130225  Sydney CH          Nick Kyrgios           17.8  
20100201  Burnie CH          Bernard Tomic          17.3  
20090223  Melbourne CH       Bernard Tomic          16.4  
20060731  Segovia CH         Juan Martin Del Potro  17.9  
20060403  Aguascalientes CH  Juan Martin Del Potro  17.5  
20051031  Montevideo CH      Juan Martin Del Potro  17.1  
20051031  Aachen CH          Evgeny Korolev         17.7  
20050509  San Remo CH        Novak Djokovic         18.0 [17.98]  
20041101  Aachen CH          Novak Djokovic         17.5  
20040517  Budapest CH        Novak Djokovic         17.0  
20030922  Grenoble CH        Richard Gasquet        17.3  
20030811  Graz CH            Tomas Berdych          17.9  
20030728  Segovia CH         Rafael Nadal           17.2  
20030714  Olbia CH           Nicolas Almagro        17.9  
20030714  Budaors CH         Tomas Berdych          17.8  
20030623  Reggio Emilia CH   Richard Gasquet        17.0  
20030421  Napoli CH          Richard Gasquet        16.9  
20030324  Barletta CH        Rafael Nadal           16.8  
20030310  Sarajevo CH        Richard Gasquet        16.7  
20020701  Montauban CH       Richard Gasquet        16.0  
20020513  Fergana CH         Jimmy Wang             17.3  
20020204  Belgrade CH        Mario Ancic            17.9  
20000515  Samarkand CH       Mikhail Youzhny        17.9  
19981207  Perth CH           Lleyton Hewitt         17.8  
19970908  Espinho CH         Marat Safin            17.6  
19950306  Garmisch CH        Nicolas Kiefer         17.7  
19920803  Ribeirao CH        Gabriel Silberstein    17.8

ATP Finals Outside the Top 100

Yesterday in the Delray Beach semifinals, Edouard Roger-Vasselin and Ernests Gulbis upset the top two seeds, John Isner and Tommy Haas.  Both are ranked outside the top 100, meaning that the final in Florida will be contested by two players who started the event far outside of contention.

As with most “gee whiz”-type tennis events, it’s not the first time.  In fact, there have been at least 59 ATP events since the inception of the ranking system in which both finalists were outside the top 100.  (I don’t have ranking data for 1982, so there may be more.)

However, this is the first such final since 2007, when the Houston final was contested between Ivo Karlovic and Mariano Zabaleta.  As you’ll see in the overall list, these finalists skew toward the Gulbis’s more than the Roger-Vasselins–while such players might have gone through injury or slumps, they often reached a much higher level at some other time.

Newport has been the most common scene of these sorts of finals.  Eight times in the event’s history has the final been played between two men outside of the top 100.  In fact, four of the last nine such finals have been at Newport.

Finally, these finals have become progressively rarer as the number of events on the ATP calendar shrinks and more top players compete in a higher percentage of ATP events.  (Even Delray Beach, this week notwithstanding.)  There were (at least) 25 finals like this in the 1980s, 17 in the 1990s, 10 in the 2000s, and so far just one in the 2010s.

Click here for a list of all of these finals.

Jerzy Janowicz and the Frequency of Tiebreak Shutouts

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 not the first time anyone on the ATP tour has won two tiebreaks by a score of 7-0 in back-to-back matches.  It is, however, the first time it’s been done in best-of-3 matches.  In 1992, Brad Gilbert won both his 2nd- and 3rd-round contests at the US Open in five sets, winning 7-0 tiebreaks in the 5th set both times.  If that’s not a case for fifth-set tiebreaks at slams, I don’t know what is.

Janowicz’s accomplishment and Gilbert’s feat are the only two times anyone on tour has won two shutout breakers in the same event.  That’s not much of a surprise, since there are typically fewer than 25 such tiebreaks at tour level per year.

What’s particularly odd here is that Jerzy’s two shutouts weren’t the only ones in Marseille.  In the first round, wild card Lucas Pouille was 7-0’d by Benneteau, the same guy who Janowicz victimized first. Weirdly, both losing and winning 7-0 breakers in the same event is slightly more common than winning two.  It has happened three times before, most recently at the 2009 Belgrade event by Lukasz Kubot, who shut out Karlovic in a semifinal tiebreak then got 7-0’d by Novak Djokovic in the final.

Finally, while we’re wallowing in trivia, here’s one more.  Only once has a player lost two 7-0 tiebreaks at the same event.  This is quite the feat, because to pull it off, you have to win the first match despite losing a set in painful fashion.  The only man to do it is Simone Bollelli, who beat Dmitri Tursunov in the 2nd round of the 2007 Miami Masters despite losing the first set in a 7-0 tiebreak, then lost in the 3rd to David Ferrer, who threw in another tiebreak bagel on the way to straight-set win.

Rare, but not rare enough

Shutout tiebreaks don’t occur very often, but they occur more often than we might expect.  On tour since 1991, there have been 30,259 tiebreaks, and 524 of them–about 1.7%–have been by the score of 7-0.  That’s barely more than the number that end 11-9.

However, if we assume that players who reach a tiebreak are reasonably equal, that’s almost double the frequency we would expect.  A discrepancy like that has serious implications about player consistency.

The arithmetic here is simple.  Say that both players have a 70% chance of winning a point on serve.  In order to win a tiebreak 7-0, the player who serves first must win three points serving and four points returning.  The probability of pulling that off is about (0.7^3)(0.3^4) = 0.28%.  It’s easier if you serve second.  You must win four points serving and three returning: (0.7^4)(0.3^3) = 0.65%.  In this scenario, both players have equal skills, so each one has the same chance of winning 7-0, and the chance of the breaker ending in a shutout is the sum of those two probabilities, 0.93%.

Of course, this simple model obscures a lot of things.  First, players who reach a tiebreak aren’t necessary equal.  Just last month, Bernard Tomic got to 6-6 against Roger Federer, and even more recently, Martin Alund played a tiebreak against Rafael Nadal.  Second, any competitor’s level of play fluctuates, and some guys seem to fluctuate quite a bit when the pressure is on.

Still, the gap between predicted (no more than 0.93%) and observed (1.7%) is enormous.  To predict that 1.7% of tiebreaks would end in a 7-0, we’d need to start with much more extreme assumptions.  For instance, if one player is likely to win 77% of serve points and the other only 64% of serve points, the likelihood of a 7-0 tiebreak is 1.7%.  Those assumptions also imply that, if each man kept up the same level of play all day, the better player has a 93% chance of winning the match.  Perhaps true of Nadal/Alund or even Federer/Tomic, but certainly not Janowicz/Benneteau or Janowicz/Berdych, or most of the other matches that reach a tiebreak.

This is all a roundabout way of saying that–breaking news!–players are inconsistent. Or streaky, or clutch, or unclutch … pick your favorite.  Were players machines, 7-0 tiebreaks wouldn’t come around nearly as often.  As it is, we shouldn’t expect more from Jerzy for a while … unless Brad Gilbert is planning a comeback.

The Aceless Career of Filippo Volandri

While other players racked up mighty ace totals and remarked on the fast surface in Sao Paulo last week, one man stood alone.

Filippo Volandri played three matches, eventually losing in the quarters to Martin Alund.  In his seven sets on court, he hit a grand total of one ace.  Fellow quarterfinalists Carlos Berlocq and Albert Montanes, two men who aren’t exactly known for their serving prowess, hit 21 and 10 aces, respectively, for the tournament.

This isn’t Volandri’s first time defying the trend.  His career ace rate (which takes into account most ATP events and his many challenger appearances since 2007) is 0.8%, which represents less than one ace per typical three-set match.  In no season of his career has he topped 2%.  To compare to Berlocq again: Charly’s career ace rate is close to 5%, and in only one season has his rate fallen below 2%.

As big serves are such a mainstay of the men’s game, it’s amazing to see what the Italian has accomplished without one, even on clay.  (On hard courts, Volandri has an 18 match losing streak going back to Doha in the beginning of 2008.)

Several times he has reached the final of a challenger while hitting only one ace; at the 2008 San Marino Challenger, he won the event without a single free point on serve.  He was particularly impressive early in his career in Umag.  In both 2003 and 2004 at the tour-level event, he reached the final despite hitting only one lone, early-round ace.

Perhaps it is most remarkable just how much time can pass between Volandri aces.  11 times since 2007 has the Italian put together a streak of 10 or more matches with zero aces.  In 2010, he went almost twice as long.  After managing to send a serve past Pablo Andujar in the qualifying round at Costa do Sauipe in early February, he went aceless in a first-round loss to Pablo Cuevas.  He wouldn’t hit another ace for 19 matches, not until he faced Matteo Viola at the Rome Challenger more than two months later.

That’s a stretch of over 1,200 service points.  And for Volandri, it’s not at all uncommon; just last year, he put together a stretch of 16 straight aceless matches between June and September.

Unfortunately, thanks to the speedy surface in Sao Paulo and his single ace last week, the Italian won’t be breaking his personal record soon.  But with a ranking outside the top 100 and a full year of clay-court challengers to draw upon, it’s safe to say that this story is far from over.

WTA and ITF Results on TennisAbstract!

I hope that by now, you’ve taken advantage of the wealth of ATP results and stats at TennisAbstract.com.  This week, I’ve expanded the site to include women’s tennis–a lot of women’s tennis.

Not only does TA now contain all the matches from the entire history of the WTA  and Fed Cup, but it is also bursting at the seams with lower-level ITFs, all the way down to 10k’s and satellites.  You can track the progress of Annika Beck, keep tabs on Melanie Oudin‘s resurgence, or simply take a look into the history of a long-running event.

(If ITFs and men’s futures are your thing, you can always get a one-page look at this week’s events–men and women–from the TA homepage.  Players in those draws are linked to their TA results pages, as well.)

All told, the site now contains 317,815 matches across 12,807 tournaments.  That’s about 13,000 players, of whom about half have WTA ranking data.

I’ve also started churning out some additional data on the ladies.  The WTA Rankings by Age report shows the highest-ranked teenagers, under-21s, under-23s, and older players, while the WTA H2H Matrix shows the head-to-head records of the WTA top 15 in one place.  And there’s more to come.

To get started, just click some clinks in those reports, or use the search box on the front page (or almost any other page) to look up the WTA player of your choice.  Enjoy!

Milos Raonic’s (Almost) Unprecedented Three-peat

Last week, Milos Raonic won the SAP Open in San Jose without dropping a set.  Juts like he did last year … and the year before.  In fact, Raonic has won every set he has ever played at this event.

That’s not just impressive, it’s only the second time in ATP history that anyone has pulled off such a feat.

Simply winning an event three times in a row is not easy task, of course, even dropping plenty of sets along the way.  Raonic was only the 27th player in ATP history to do that, though of course many of his precursors strung together streaks of more than three years, and many three-peated at more than one event.  Just last month, David Ferrer made news by going back-to-back-to-back on hard courts in Auckland, having previously three-peated on clay in Acapulco.  (Raonic won’t be joining that club anytime soon.)

What’s particularly impressive about the group of three-peating champions is how tightly it overlaps with the very best in the game’s history.  18 of the 27 three-peaters reached the #1 ranking during their careers.  Two more peaked at #2.  (Honorable mention goes to Balazs Taroczy, who never cracked the top 10, but did win Hilversum five years running.)

For all the accolades earned by those #1s, though, only one of those players did what Raonic just completed.  That was John McEnroe, who went back-to-back-to-back-to-back from 1980 to 1983 at the Sydney Indoor.  Had he not returned to the event in 1992, he would have retired with a perfect record at the tournament.

Johnny Mac had a tougher time of it than did Raonic.  Milos has only beaten one top-20 player in San Jose, and when he edged by #9 Fernando Verdasco to win his first title, he did so while winning far fewer than half of points, resulting in a pitiful dominance ratio of 0.66.  (1.0 represents an even match; Raonic’s average in San Jose is 1.71.)  The Canadian was only broken twice in these three years, but he rarely did much breaking of his own, going to nine tiebreaks.

McEnroe, by contrast, beat at least three top-20 players (including #4 Vitas Gerulaitis) and played only a single tiebreak in his  20-match winning streak.  He also had to play best-of-five-set matches in three of the four finals.

To match McEnroe’s mark, either in number of consecutive titles or difficulty of winning them, Raonic will need to start a new streak. The smaller number of ATP-level events now on the circuit, however, make it more difficult to find the perfect blend of conditions and weak opposition to put together such a streak.

That doesn’t mean McEnroe’s mark is safe, however.  Rafael Nadal is just five matches and one title way from matching at least the straight-set three-peat, sitting on a 10-match win streak in Barcelona.  In fact, Nadal has only lost one set in Barcelona since 2006.  Had he played in 2010, we might have been talking about a very different record right now.