jsackmann – Page 109 – Heavy Topspin

The Fastest Surface on the ATP Tour

Last week, Rafael Nadal claimed that the indoor clay surface in Sao Paulo didn’t play like clay–it was faster than the surface of the US Open. It also wasn’t up to standard, with frequent bad bounces and occasional slides gone wrong.

It’s easy to write off Rafa’s complaints as the whining of a once-dominant player who inexplicably loses sets to competitors who might otherwise never appear on television. But what if he’s right? What if some clay surfaces are faster than some hard surfaces?

In fact, I stumbled on this paradox when sharing some surface speed numbers last fall. In the Brasil Open’s first year at a new venue in Sao Paulo, it’s main draw players hit 58% more aces than expected, the highest rate of any ATP tour event, comfortably ahead of European indoor events in Marseille and Montpellier.

Amazingly, this year, players in Sao Paulo hit 78% more aces than they would have on an average surface. Some of the individual performances are impressive: Nicolas Almagro hit aces on 21% and 26% of service points in his two matches; Joao Souza cracked 27% in a qualifying match. The raw numbers aren’t as eye-popping as they might be simply because most of the competitors prefer clay-courts for a reason. Put Carlos Berlocq on an ice-skating rink and he still won’t hit many aces. In fact, Berlocq’s ace rates last week account for three of the top eight of the 55 matches he played in the 52 weeks.

Ace rate doesn’t tell the whole surface speed story, but it’s an awfully good proxy. It consistently places the expected indoor tournaments near the top of the rankings and traditionally slower clay events like Monte Carlo and Rome near the bottom. So when a clay event spits out numbers like these, something wacky is going on.

Much has been written of the homogenization of surface speed, and certainly many hard courts have gotten slower. But the clay courts in Sao Paulo aren’t drifting toward a bland average–they are going where few clay courts have gone before. Perhaps, as more events are played on temporary surfaces, we’ll continue to see unexpected results like these. Certainly, we cannot assume that all clay courts are created equal.

The Most Lopsided ATP Semifinals

In the latest step of Rafael Nadal‘s minor league rehab assignment comeback, he’ll play Martin Alund tonight in the Sao Paulo semifinals. Yes, the same Martin Alund who had never played a tour-level event before last week, has a career losing record in challengers, and only made the main draw as a lucky loser.

The jrank forecast gives Alund a 4.3% chance of beating Rafa tonight which, even having seen Nadal’s unconvincing win over Carlos Berlocq last night, seems a bit generous.

It also seems odd. Even in lower-rung ATP events, players of Alund’s caliber (even a caliber or two above that) rarely reach the semis. In San Jose this week, the lowest-ranked player in the semifinals is #22 Tommy Haas, assuring fans in California a very different level of play today.

As it turns out, hugely lopsided semifinals do occur now and then, and occasionally they even result in upsets.

Since the beginning of 2001, there have been about 1600 tour-level semifinals. Using jrank, I estimated each player’s chances in those matches. Nadal’s 95.7% probability of winning tonight doesn’t even rank in the top ten most lopsided semis.

Rafa has long been a stalwart of one-sided semifinals. His dominance on clay is reflected in the numbers, and when he does play smaller events, he makes some opponents look woefully overmatched. Of the 11 semifinals that were more lopsided than tonight’s showdown, Rafa was the favorite in four–including last week’s dismantling of Jeremy Chardy. At the 2008 Barcelona event, Denis Gremelmayr had a mere 1.6% chance of triumphing over Rafa. He won a single game.

(Chardy is rated quite a bit higher than Alund, but after last week’s loss to Horacio Zeballos, Nadal’s rating has fallen accordingly. The jrank forecast for this week’s semifinal is thus almost identical to last week’s.)

Of course, there’s a big difference between a high probability and a certainty, and some of these lopsided matchups have generated surprises. In Washington in 2007, the virtually unknown John Isner took out Gael Monfils, despite a mere 2.4% chance of victory. The same year in Amersfoort, qualifier and eventual champion Steve Darcis defeated Mikhail Youzhny, overcoming a pre-match probability of only 6.1%.

Even Nadal has suffered in these situations. The third-biggest ATP semifinal upset was Rafa’s 2010 Bangkok loss at the hands of Guillermo Garcia Lopez.

In all of those examples the underdog was a player of undeniable talent, while Alund has stumbled into his first ATP semifinal. But as Nadal’s stumbles against Zeballos and Berlocq have shown us, it doesn’t matter so much who is across the net–the king of clay is far from his usual invincible self.

(After the break, find a list of the 63 most lopsided ATP semifinals since 2001. Asterisks denote upsets.)

Continue reading The Most Lopsided ATP Semifinals

Is Davis Cup About the Chalk?

In today’s tennis landscape, Davis Cup is a weird anachronism, in which no-name players contest five-set epics for national glory. The usual guidelines about the invincibles and the journeymen are set aside, and we can watch a few days of raw, emotional tennis.

That’s the story, anyway. And when John Isner beats Roger Federer on clay (or loses to Thomaz Bellucci on hard), it makes for good copy. As Sam Querrey battled Thiago Alves in Jacksonville last weekend, the USTA’s Tim Curry tweeted, “On paper the @USDavisCupTeam is in good shape. No. 20 Sam Querrey (USA) v No. 141 Thiago Alves (BRA) but @DavisCup is never about the chalk.”

In the end, of course, it was about the chalk. Most of the time, it is. Legendary Davis Cup upsets stand out because of their rarity, not because they define the event.

Quantifying Davis Cup favorites

To determine whether there are a disproportionate number of upsets in Davis Cup, we first need to know what a proportionate number would be. We can get there via two (similar) routes: using a projection system to determine how many upsets there should have been, or comparing Davis Cup results to another group of similar matches.

Since the beginning of 2009, there have been exactly as many Davis Cup upsets as we would have predicted, and almost the same upset rate in Davis Cup matches as in Grand Slam matches from the same time frame.

(I’m including matches contested between top-200 players, and live rubbers from all levels of Davis Cup–though the ranking requirement means we’re mostly looking at World Group and WG Playoffs. Projections are surface-specific and are derived from jrank; I’ve also discarded matches where one player has very few [<10 clay or <30 hard matches] recent results on the surface.)

In these last four-plus years, 352 Davis Cup matches and 1853 Grand Slam matches have fit these parameters. 93, or 26.4%, of the DC matches were upsets, against 474, or 25.6%, of the Slam matches. I’m using surface-specific jrank to define “upset” here, in an attempt to remove surface (and the home team’s ability to choose it) as a confounding variable.

The similarity of those percentages starts to cast some doubt on the “different game” theory of Davis Cup. But it isn’t the whole story.

Raw tallies of upsets don’t tell us how big the upsets were, or how lopsided the average match was. For that, we need more detailed projections.

Projecting the outcome of each one of those 352 Davis Cup matches (using only data that would have been available pre-match) gives us an estimate of 92 upsets. That’s almost identical to the observed total of 93 upsets.

Importantly, the prediction algorithm I’m using here is derived from ATP results. Thus, when we say that the number of Davis Cup upsets is the same as expected, what we’re really saying is that the number of upsets is the same as would be expected if they were five-setters on the ATP tour.

Davis Cup is unusual, it is fun, and it can be thrilling. But it is “about the chalk” no more and no less than your average ATP tour event.

Warming Up and Losing Out

Italian translation at settesei.it

This week’s pair of ATP warmups for the Australian Open provide quite the contrast.

In Sydney, only one seeded player (the hardly automatic Andreas Seppi) reached the semifinals, and only one other even made the quarters. Across the ditch in Auckland, three of the final four are among the top four seeds, and the fourth, Gael Monfils, would typically sport a ranking in the same range.

Sydney fits a conventional narrative, while Auckland confounds it. The week before a Grand Slam, many of the top players are out of action, while those who are in action … well, let’s just say warmups don’t always appear to be their top priority.

Winning in 250s

The ATP schedule gives us a convenient natural experiment in order to determine whether slam warmups really are different.

(For convenience, I’m using the term “warmups.” However, we’re only looking at tournaments the week before a slam starts. Sydney is included, but not Brisbane, even though events two weeks before Austrlian and Wimbledon are generally called “warmups.”)

Since 2009, all of the lowest rung of tour-level events have been worth 250 points to the winner. Conveniently, all tourneys the week before slams have fallen into this category.

To see if players seem to treat slam warmups differently from other events, we can simply compare results from warmups to those from other 250s. It isn’t perfect, since a few 250s have draws of more than 32 players and the field quality isn’t identical in all tourneys at this level, but by looking at a few different metrics, we can limit the impact of those quibbles.

Who cares?

Let’s start by simply counting wins and losses of seeded players. In slam warmups from 2009 through 2012, seeds won about 61% of matches against unseeded opponents (224 of 365), while in other 250s, seeds win over 70% of those matches (1499 of 2129). That’s a substantial difference.

To eliminate the quirks of the bigger 250 draw at Queen’s Club, and perhaps toss out some first-round retirements as well, let’s consider the records that seeds have posted in specific rounds.

In the round of 16 at slam warmups, seeds have gone 71-50, for a winning percentage of 58.7%. At other 250s, seeds have won 591 against 223 losses, a percentage of 72.6%.

In the quarterfinals of slam warmups, seeds have beaten unseeded players in 33 of 46 matches–71.7% of encounters. In other 250s, similar matchups have gone to the seeded player 200 of 275 times, or 72.7% of the time.

It seems that many top-ranked players show up at slam warmups with the intent of getting one or two matches under their belt. (Or perhaps fulfilling an obligation to a sponsor.) Those players don’t perform up to their usual standard. But as shown by the comparable records in quarterfinals, those who come to compete play at their usual level.

A few other looks

One issue that seems to have a particular impact in slam warmups is last-minute withdrawals, like that of second-seed Gilles Simon in Sydney this week. Those don’t show up in the won-loss records.

To consider the overall picture, including withdrawals, we can count the number of seeds who reach the semifinals in our different categories of ATP 250s.

In slam warmups, the semifinal fields in the last four years have consisted of 53 seeds and 43 nonseeds–about 55% top-ranked players. In other 250 semifinals, we’ve seen 365 seeds against 191 nonseeds–66% seeds.

Yet another angle is the performance of the top four seeds. In 250s, the 5 through 8 seeds are often barely distinguishable from the rest of the pack. For example, in Sydney this week, those last four seeds are Florian Mayer, Radek Stepanek, Jeremy Chardy, and Marcel Granollers. Not much difference between those guys and unseeded semifinalists Julien Benneteau, Kevin Anderson, and Bernard Tomic.

There’s no clear line between first-rank guys and the rest of the pack, but taking the top half of the seeds seems as good as any other option.

The results are similar to what we saw with the larger pool of seeds. Overall, when a top-four seed played a non-top-four opponent in a slam warmup, he won 65% of matches (129 of 199). In other 250s, he won 74% (978 of 1321).

In the round of 16, top-fours went 51-24 in slam warmups, for a record of 68%, compared to 76% (366-114) in other 250s.

Where the top four seeds differ from other seeds is in the quarterfinal round. In slam warmup QFs, top-fours went 31-20, winning 61% of matches. In other tourneys, they won 71% (261-105). Perhaps the first-round bye in many slam warmups means that top seeds want two warmup matches, but no more.

As mentioned, these experiments give us imprecise results, as they don’t take into account the exact field quality of the various 250s. While they may not be the final word on this question, these numbers do strongly indicate that higher-ranked players don’t view slam warmups as particularly important. Against a similar pool of opponents, they win far more matches in 250s at other times throughout the year.

Perhaps that’s one reason why winning an Aussie Open warmup doesn’t forecast any particular level of success in Melbourne–these are tournaments where some of your most highly-ranked opponents just aren’t trying as hard as usual.

ATP Finalists in Qualifying Draws

Earlier this week, twitterer Double_Faute noted that 13 former ATP finalists were among the 128 men in the Australian Open qualifying draw. Since the term “finalist” evokes names like James Blake and Tommy Haas, that sounds like quite the minefield for other qualifiers to navigate.

As it turns out, though, 13 is exactly what we should expect. Since 2007, the average qualifying draw at a Grand Slam event has included 13.4 former finalists. Of course, Blake and Haas aren’t typical. The usual finalist-turned-qualifier is more likely to have a record like that of Jerome Haehnel or Wayne Odesnik.

If you missed Odesnik’s crazy week at the 2009 US Clay Courts, I don’t blame you. The discovery here isn’t that qualifying draws are so strong, its that so many players have reached an ATP final at some point along the way. The top four may have a stranglehold on the game’s highest honors, but like spots in the rest of the top ten, finalists at ATP berths seem awfully easy to come by.

Some records

There were plenty of former champions (or finalists, anyway) who hit hard times in the spring and summer of 2007. The ’07 Wimbledon qualifying draw featured 19 former ATP finalists, while qualies at Roland Garros included 23. To give you a flavor of what that meant for the week of qualifying matches, here’s the complete list of former finalists in that draw:

Davide Sanguinetti, Albert Portas, Bohdan Ulihrach, Adrian Voinea, Ivo Minar, Gilles Muller, Ricardo Mello, Rainer Schuettler, Santiago Ventura, Ramon Delgado, Alex Calatrava, Andrei Pavel, Wesley Moodie, Harel Levy, Wayne Arthurs, Fernando Vicente, Christophe Rochus, Younes El Aynaoui, Jerome Haehnel, Mariano Zabaleta, Michel Kratochvil, George Bastl, Kenneth Carlsen

Yep, I had forgotten about most of those guys, too.

Of the last 24 slams–my records of qualie draws only go back to 2007–every one has had at least 7 former finalists in qualifying. All but five have had at least 10. The large numbers in 2007 may have been due in part to the wider array of ATP events in 1998 and before, but by 1999, the number of ATP events had dwindled to 71, just six more than in 2012. So the effect is likely minimal, and we might find more former finalists in slam qualifying draws if we were able to look another 10 years back.

Anyway, in the time span we do have to work with, the number of former finalists in slam qualie draws isn’t going down. Last year, those draws at Wimbledon and the French both had 16 former finalists.

The next wave

A question that qualifying-watchers might find more interesting is, how many men in these draws go on to reach ATP finals? We’d all like to catch the next del Potro or Raonic on court 14, so how many future finalists are there?

The 2007 French continues to impress and amaze, with 22 men in the qualifying draw who went on to play in an ATP final. There were certainly some guys worth watching that week in Paris:

Horacio Zeballos, Sergiy Stakhovsky, Pablo Andujar, Jeremy Chardy, Robin Haase, Lukasz Kubot, Mischa Zverev, Rajeev Ram, Michael Berrer, Martin Klizan, Frederico Gil, Frank Dancevic, Alexandr Dolgopolov, Lukas Lacko, Viktor Troicki, Marcel Granollers, Dudi Sela, Wayne Odesnik, Fabio Fognini, Raemon Sluiter, Marin Cilic, Santiago Giraldo

(Yes, Zverev reached a final–after qualifying for the Metz event in 2010. This post has taken an unusually long time to research and write because of the number of times I’ve felt the need to check. I’m looking at you, Federico Gil.)

The 2007 Australian Open qualifying draw also featured 22 future finalists, and US Open qualies that year included 21. Of course, many of those names overlap.

Here’s where the six years of data holds us back–I have no idea whether 22 is a historically high number. Perhaps it’s typical once players’ careers have run their course. Glancing at the full list of the 2007 Roland Garros qualifying draw, it does appear that we’ve seen all the finalists we’ll see, but of course the same doesn’t apply to qualies from 2009 or 2010.

Remarkably, though, we’ve already had two finalists from the 2012 US Open qualifying draw: Grega Zemlja and Roberto Bautista Agut.

Keep all of this in mind when you next watch a qualifying match. The tennis might be messy and the players you’re watching may never be famous, but in a few years, you may see them again in the finals of your neighborhood ATP 250.

Sao Paulo Challenger: Day Two

In Sao Paulo, Tuesday brought the second half of first-round singles, a scattering of interesting doubles matches, and inexplicable swarms of gnats. The gnats were almost as aggravating as the singles matches.

Click here for my reports on day one matches.

Renzo Olivo (ARG) vs Julio Cesar Campozano (ECU)

The question of the day was, “Who knows how to play tennis on hard courts?” The answers were not encouraging.

Olivo is one of only 18 players under the age of 21 inside the ATP top 300, and it only takes a few minutes to realize he got there based on clay-court results. That’s the generous assumption, anyway, since he looked simply dreadful.

His groundstrokes and movement looked as if somehow told him to try playing closer to the baseline, and he was trying it for the first time. He missed easy forehands in every direction, often misjudging the bounce. As the situation grew increasingly bleak (he ultimately lost the match 6-2 6-0), he went for more and more drop shot/lob combinations. This was particularly painful since he missed most of the drop shots and then, when he made one, managed to miss the lob.

Perhaps Olivo is a future star, but that future isn’t any time soon.

Campozano isn’t a future star either–he’ll turn 27 later this month and has yet to crack the top 200–but he looked much more comfortable on the surface. In fact, he looked like a good doubles player trying his hand at singles, with a consistent, well-placed serve and aggressive, compact groundstrokes. His movement to the backhand was particularly impressive.

Perhaps Campozano’s most notable achievement in this first-round match was to stay steady through Olivo’s barrage of random unforced errors. A lesser players would have let his level slip after an easy 6-2 first set; the Ecuadorian simply kept up the same style, letting Olivo lose the second set the same way he lost the first.

Devin Britton (USA) vs Jorge Aguilar (COL)

This was the strangest match I saw at the tournament. If such a thing is possible, Aguilar looked worse than Olivo. Sure, Aguilar has much more experience on clay, but he has a winning record in challenger-level hard court matches. Whether it was the beginning of the season or Britton’s game, the Colombian never found a rhythm.

For the American, let’s start with the positive. Throughout the match, he served wonderfully, utilizing the slice out wide in the deuce court repeatedly, especially once he learned Aguilar was never going to get it back.

Beyond that, however, I don’t see the weapons that will make Britton a future top player. Even his serve, well-placed as it was, didn’t look like a first-class weapon. In build and game plan, he’s a bit like Sam Querrey, but without nearly as much power. When it came time to get aggressive on the ground, he seemed even less sure of himself than some of the awkward clay-courters in the draw. While I wasn’t able to watch the entire match (Olivo-Campozano started at the same time), I’m not sure I saw a single clean forehand winner from Britton. To succeed, his game will need to be built around quick points that end that way, so that’s an enormous gap.

As far as Aguilar is concerned, the less said, the better.

Austin Krajicek (USA) vs Horacio Zeballos (ARG)

As noted yesterday, I’m not impressed by Krajicek’s game. But his performance against the #1 seed (and the only top-100 player in the draw) gave me some reasons to reevaluate my opinion.

Even when every player in the draw is within a fairly narrow range of about #100 to #400 in the world, it’s remarkable how much the better players stand out. Zeballos is in a class by himself, especially in the way he moves around the court. He simply makes the game look easier than anyone else at this event. And for all that, he barely squeaked past the American.

Against a better player than the day before, Krajicek’s forehand was a bigger weapon, even if he doesn’t yet have the tactical sense or net game to follow up some opportunities. Most impressive, though, was his mental steadiness at a time when many–far superior–players would have wilted.

At 2-2 in the second set tiebreak, Zeballos hit an “ace” that dribbled off the net cord. Krajicek had fought hard just to get to that tiebreak, and now luck turned against him. On the next point, he hit an ace to even the score. Then, after a couple of clunky points, he hit two more aces to save the first two match points at 6-3. It wasn’t good enough, as Zeballos took the breaker 7-5, but it made for a good showing against a very talented top-100 player.

Guido Andreozzi (ARG) vs Rafael Camilo (BRA)

Two years ago, Camilo reached the finals of this event as a qualifier. In this, his first match returning from an injury that kept him off tour for nearly 15 months, he showed no signs of the talent required to reach those heights.

Camilo has much in common with Adam Kellner, not even close to an appropriate fitness level for a pro tennis player, relying on one or two big (erratic) weapons to win points. The Brazilian did collect his share of cheap points off the serve. When forced to hit a second shot (or, heaven forbid, return a serve), the ball was more likely to end up in the hands of a fan than a ballboy.

As for Andreozzi, it was difficult to evaluate a player who was able to sit back and watch his opponent lose the match. The Argentine’s motions are bit unorthodox–his forehand reminds me of Marsel Ilhan‘s, if not quite that unusual–and he wasn’t quite comfortable with the surface. He also seemed a bit overwhelmed by the power of Camilo’s serve.

There must be more to Andreozzi, as he’s reached the top 200 at age 21, and is playing a tight quarterfinal match with Zeballos as I write this. Alas, he didn’t have to play much tennis to reach the second round.

Assorted doubles notes

Simon Stadler and Rameez Junaid squeaked by Facundo Bagnis and Alejandro Gonzalez. Junaid, who I’m embarrassed to admit I had never even heard of, is now a full-time doubles specialist, and appears to have the skills to reach the next level. Stadler seemed less sure of himself on the doubles court, while Junaid took control of the net like a pro.

Rik De Voest, the record-holder for most career challenger doubles titles, was in action with Marcelo Demoliner, against Marco Trungelliti and Ariel Behar. It was a rather mediocre match, with few entertaining points and a fair bit of sloppy play. But what caught my eye was De Voest’s absolutely relentless efforts to keep his partner in the right frame of mind. The veteran South African was joking and smiling throughout the entire match, redoubling (ahem) his efforts whenever Demoliner seemed the least bit frustrated. De Voest and Demoliner ended up losing in the second round to Britton and Krajicek, but I’ll bet they were smiling until the end.

Finally, the day ended with the top-ranked doubles team of James Cerretani and Adil Shamasdin against the Brazilians Julio Silva and Thiago Alves. In this case, it was the Brazilians joking around and the North Americans showing intensity. In fact, Cerretani may be the most intense player I have ever seen on a tennis court. A few ballboys from that match are probably still suffering nightmares in which they simply can’t find his towel.

More relevant to the outcome of the match, Cerretani and Shamasdin were by far the most professional doubles team in the draw. They moved forward like the Bryans, at the slightest opportunity and as an imposing unit. Both–and especially Cerretani–are absolute magicians at net, making for several entertaining points against the loose and talented Brazilians.

The bad news for the North Americans is that apart from doubles tactics and net play, they don’t have much to fall back on. Even accounting for the precision required from doubles groundstrokes, their unforced error rates from the baseline were outrageous. Neither had a particularly strong serve, and Shamasdin mixed in too many double faults for comfort. It’s perhaps indicative of their general level that, despite looking like the far superior team, they needed a match tiebreak to win–and in the tiebreak, the lost the first four match points at 9-3.

More on the rule changes

Despite the occasional lucky point, like Zeballos’s ace against Krajicek, the players seem completely unfazed by playing service lets. It eliminates arguments, speeds up the game, and doesn’t strongly favor any particular kind of player. I’m afraid the traditionalists may win this round and prevent wider use of no-let service rules, but I’m convinced the sport will be better off as soon as we get rid of lets altogether.

The 25-second warning is a different issue altogether. It sounds fine on paper, giving chair umpires a way to draw attention to a player’s slow pace without immediately affecting the course of the match. But in practice, it simply opens more doors to pointless arguments–that, incidentally, slow down the game.

On Tuesday, umpires gave time warnings to two players, Andreozzi and Cerretani. Andreozzi hadn’t been playing particularly slowly, and he certainly wasn’t gaining any advantage from it. When the warning was called, it took another minute for the player to talk it out with the umpire. In the second set of an otherwise brisk, lopsided match, it was unnecessary and bizarre.

Cerretani’s warning came near the business end of the match and raised more difficult issues. Cerretani and Shamasdin play at a very deliberate pace, and while it didn’t occur to me to clock them between points, there’s no doubt they were regularly exceeding 25 seconds. Cerretani, in particular, asked for the towel after nearly every point, and the ballboys weren’t very quick about it. That, in fact, was his complaint to the umpire when the warning was called–that the ballboy was slow.

More troubling, though, is that the umpire seemed to call that warning at the immediate behest of the opposing team. I didn’t understand the Portuguese, but it seemed as if Silva felt he’d been waiting too long, asked the umpire if he was going to call a time violation, and the ump immediately did so. So that’s what the official was waiting for?

And of course, Cerretani had to argue about it, giving him another 30 seconds or more to rest before the next point.

I understand the arguments against a shot clock, especially if the clock were to be prominently displayed and generate excitement as it crept down to zero. But the problem with the current system, regardless of the penalty for a first or second violation, is that it is so discretionary. Sure, there are reasons that more time is required before some points, like moving the balls to the correct end of the court, or distractions in the audience. So let the umpire (or some other official) reset the clock when those delays occur.

If tennis needs a time limit between points, that limit needs to be enforced fairly and consistently. Until it is, no minor rule tweak is going to stop officials from selectively applying it–or ignoring it altogether.

Sao Paulo Challenger: Day One

Happy new year, fellow tennis geeks!

By chance, I found myself in Sao Paulo at the same time as the beginning of the first challenger of 2013. Plenty of challengers these days are streamed online, so if you really want to see these guys play, you can swing it, but there’s still some magic to watching the action live.

Ok, well, “magic” might be a little strong for the first round of a South American challenger. You know what I mean.

Before I dig into my notes on specific players, a couple of general issues:

Brazilian style. Brazil hasn’t had a major tennis star since the retirement of Gustavo Kuerten. Many of the highest-ranked Brazilians are in Sao Paulo this week–on hard courts. While Brazil, like the rest of South America, has traditionally been associated with clay courts, that is changing. The 2016 Olympics event will be held on a hard surface, and Sao Paulo has hosted the challenger tour finals on indoor hard courts.

In time, I wouldn’t be surprised to see hard-court specialists emerge from this country and make an impact at the top range of the ATP rankings. Many of the Brazilians kicking around the 100-200 range (Joao Souza, Rogerio Dutra Silva, Ricardo Hocevar) have an unworkable combination of hard-court games and clay-court tactics. These aren’t Argentinian-style dirtballers–they back up their booming serves with aggressive groundstrokes and are rarely spotted more than a few feet behind the baseline. But they still aren’t as aggressive as their games merit. While Thomaz Bellucci has had the most success of his generation, his game has some of the same limitations.

As we’ll see in a moment, the next generation of Brazilians might have more pure hard-court success. The additional hard-court exposure they are getting at home these days can’t hurt.

No-let serving. Finally, the ATP is following the lead of World Team Tennis and the NCAA … at least a little bit. For the first quarter of this year, Challenger tournaments will abandon the “let” rule on serves. If the ball lands in, it’s good, regardless of whether it made contact with the net.

In seven hours of tennis yesterday, I expected to see plenty of awkwardness around the no-let rule, since players haven’t had much time to adjust. But that wasn’t the case. Only once did a serve dribble over the net cord for an easy ace. One or two other times the server had a late reaction, hitting a weak defensive return that he might improve on in another few weeks. For the most part, the no-let rule didn’t raise an eyebrow.

The advantages are minor but very real. I don’t think any fans like to see players argue pointlessly with chair umpires, and lets (real and imagined) have always been a source of friction. No-let serving gives us smoother matches with fewer of those sorts of hiccups.

Now, on to the matches.

Guilherme Clezar (BRA) vs Thiago Monteiro (BRA)

The future of Brazilian tennis got off to an early start this morning. Clezar, 20, was the top-ranked teenager in the world until his birthday yesterday. Monteiro, 18, is the third-ranked 18-year-old in the world.

Both players have monster games, with big serves and crushing groundstrokes. Monteiro, in particular, is capable of doing violence to the ball on his first offering. And in fact, frequently Monteiro looked like the superior player, comfortably running around forehands to hit winners on tight angles. But in this match, Clezar was the wily veteran, somehow breaking twice for the 6-4 6-4 win.

For all of Monteiro’s potential, he was erratic. His low service toss led to a few patches of missed first serves. He lost his temper and earned a ball abuse violation when failing to run down a drop shot on an unimportant point early in the second set.

By comparison, Clezar played the part of the wily veteran. The ball didn’t make quite as much noise off of his racquet, but he still hits awfully hard. While Monteiro is a pure hard-courter, Clezar comes closer to the mold I mentioned above, using hard-court weapons in an occasionally clay-court manner.

Clezar’s groundstrokes were surprisingly varied, often dropping two or three forehands in a row within inches of the baseball, then hitting a heavier topspin shot that dropped short. For all of his capabilities, though, he missed a lot of opportunities to follow up a strong serve with an equally aggressive second or third shot. In this match, it didn’t stop him; against better players, it’s a major area for improvement.

Clezar’s impressive ranking (for a just-turned 20-year-old) is no mirage–he has the highest ceiling of any player I saw yesterday. He has the raw tools for a Nicolas Almagro type of game; the next few years will show us whether he can be that good.

Diego Sebastian Schwartzman (ARG) vs Marcelo Demoliner (BRA)

The 20-year-old Schwartzman had an epic season at the futures level last year, and finally made any impact at higher levels in winning the Buenos Aires Challenger late last year. Seeing him on a hard court, it’s tough to imagine him stringing those wins together.

The Argentine is short–5’6″ on the high side. And while he does a lot with the limited tools he’s been given, he has a long way to go to get to the level of a once-in-a-generation talent like Olivier Rochus. Schwartzman has the weakest serve I’ve ever seen in professional tennis, not putting much on first serves, but still frequently missing them. He doesn’t even use a great deal of spin.

Demoliner, a big Brazilian who looks a bit like Juan Martin Del Potro, is hardly a top talent, but he didn’t have any trouble putting Schwartzman away. To his credit, as the match progressed, he took a bit of gas off the serve and went for angles and spin, often leaving the Argentine to swing (and occasionally miss) at balls above his head.

The best comp for Schwartzman is probably Juan Ignacio Chela … with the caveat that Chela is tall. Given the opportunity, I would imagine DSS sits back as far as he can go and outlasts his opponents. It was clear yesterday that he’s very steady on the ground and is mentally strong for a 20-year-old, staying relatively focused under an attack he’s wasn’t going to overcome. On slow clay, that’s a recipe for success, at least in challengers. On any hard court, it’s barely worth showing up. Indeed, it was only his fourth career pro match on hard, moving his record to 0-4.

Despite winning this match, Demoliner didn’t do much to impress. As noted, he served intelligently, and often looked good coming forward, but he needed to be dragged to the net. Again, we see a Brazilian with a big game who is reluctant to use it.

Martin Alund (ARG) vs Fabiano De Paula (BRA)

In pushing his ranking up to a career-high 119 last year, Alund played only two matches off of clay–first-round losses Wimbledon and US Open qualies. For all that, he seemed surprisingly comfortable on hard courts.

That isn’t to say he was any more aggressive than the battalion of Brazilians I’ve commented on so far. He has some of the tools for it, especially a big serve that he is able to effortlessly place in the wide corner. His biggest advantage yesterday, though, was an opponent even less well-suited for the surface than he was.

De Paula occasionally looked great, stepping inside the baseline to hit one-handed backhand winners, and mixing in some impressive serving of his own. More typically, you could see him four feet behind the baseline wondering what to do next. Despite Alund’s passivity, De Paula proved he could play even more conservative tennis, squandering opportunities and trying to win 15-shot rallies that tended to end with an error on the 7th shot.

Alund, at 27, is unlikely to advance much further in the rankings, though he could easily hang around his current ranking by continuing his success in South American challengers. De Paula has yet to break into the top 200, and he will need a new game plan if he’s going to help out his ranking with his hard-court performance.

Pedro Sousa (POR) vs Marco Trungelliti (ARG)

After watching so many players squander their firepower with poor tactics on Sao Paulo’s fast courts, it was refreshing to watch Trungelliti, a classic dirtballer who seemed happily unaware that he wasn’t playing on dirt. Ultimately, he fell to Sousa in three sets, but by simply playing his game–unsuitable as it was–he looked more assured on the surface than the majority of others in the draw.

Sousa wasn’t comfortable at all. He hit great shots, especially forehand winners from every position in every direction. In trying, he sent balls sailing in every direction outside of the lines, as well. He gave every evidence of mental instability as well, incessantly chattering at himself, and once standing at the net for 30 seconds trying to hit a ball to a ballboy with the grip of his racquet.

Both players, but especially Sousa, looked great when hitting groundstrokes in their strike zone; in less natural contact points, the results were less predictable. Sousa’s forehand and Trungelliti’s two-hander could be particularly impressive.

Austin Krajicek (USA) vs Patricio Heras (ARG)

One final note, on a qualifying match that kicked off the day. Three and a half years ago, I saw Krajicek in his first professional match, at US Open qualifying. I left with a negative impression of an immature teenager with nothing like the game it would take to compete professionally, but then again, he was 18.

After a few years at Texas A&M, Krajicek is more mature, and has a few weapons that make him competitive at the challenger level. But his game still seems awfully small for contemporary pro tennis. Some first serves were strong, yet every second serve was weakly spun in. He crushed some forehands, but almost every backhand was a defensive slice. In a first-set tiebreak, he came to the net four times … only once behind a sufficiently good approach.

At 22, Krajicek has more time to develop, but for now, he’s far down the list of young Americans to watch.

Known Unknowns for Rafael Nadal

When Rafael Nadal returns to the tour–very soon, we hope–he will be entering uncharted territory. Plenty of players miss time to injury, but it is rare for a top player to miss anywhere near this much time.

In fact, only three top 10-ranked players have ever left the tour and returned after a layoff of six months or longer.

Only one of those three–Juan Martin del Potro, in 2010–was forced to rest due to injury. John McEnroe twice left the tour for stretches of several months, and Tommy Haas took time off in 2002 to take care of his family. Haas’s layoff turned into something a bit more relevant, as his sabbatical was extended by a shoulder injury he suffered in preparation for a comeback.

While del Potro’s future is still unclear, the precedent for Nadal is concerning. None of those players ever returned to their pre-layoff rankings.

Del Potro’s story, in fact, is the most encouraging. When he suffered his shoulder injury, he had recently won the US Open and reached the final of the World Tour Finals, reaching a career-high ranking of #5. With the exception of a brief return in October of 2010, he missed almost exactly one year. While he didn’t return to the top 10 for another year, he won two small tournaments early on and reached the semifinals of Indian Wells barely two months into his comeback. Two years later, his ranking is up to #7, still short of his pre-injury peak.

When Haas left the tour at the end of 2002, he had just recently fallen from his career-high ranking of #2. When he returned more than a year later, he had early success similar to Del Potro’s, reaching the 4th round at Indian Wells and winning two events in his first six months. Yet he didn’t return to the top 10 for nearly three years.

McEnroe is the enigma of this bunch. Ranked #2 in the world at the beginning of 1986, he needed a break from the tour. Seven months later, he began a comeback at Stratton Mountain, where he reached the semis and lost to Boris Becker. After a clunker of a first-round loss at the US Open, he reeled off 18 consecutive wins, including three over top-10 players. That put him back in the top 10, but it was two years into the comeback that he regained a position in the top 5–in part due to another six-month layoff beginning in September 1987.

Aging patterns

What the recaps of Haas’s and McEnroe’s layoffs hide is that, while they weren’t playing, they were headed into an age range where most pros start declining. At the time of their returns, McEnroe was 26, Haas 25–a typical player’s peak age, at least before today’s new era of indestructible 30-somethings.

While McEnroe has shown astonishing longevity, his years as a contender for world #1 were probably about over when he took his sabbaticals. And Haas missed the year in which he might have played his very best tennis.

Neither player is a clear precedent for a clay court genius with knee problems, but the age factor is tough to ignore. Nadal turned 26 in June, putting him right in between Haas and McEnroe at the times of their departures from the tour.

Assuming Rafa is healthy, there’s little doubt he’ll maintain his position in the top 10. I’d be surprised if he didn’t win at least a couple of clay court events this year, even if he maintains a much-reduced schedule. But if history is any indication, he has seen the last of the top two.

A Quarter of Missing Challengers

The ATP Challenger calendar (PDF) has been released for the first quarter of 2013, and it looks mighty thin.

In the next three months, we can expect 21 challenger events, compared to 30 in Q1 2012 and 33 in Q1 2011. (Thanks to Foot Soldiers of Tennis for raising the issue.) For those challenger fans among us, that’s clearly bad news. Less competitive tennis always is. It could also hurt many up-and-coming players, which means it should concern all fans of men’s tennis.

For the last twenty years, challenger tennis has generally been on the rise, with 147 tournaments at that level last year compared to only 88 in 1992. The number peaked in 2007 and 2008 with 173 and 175 challenger events, respectively.

However, while the challenger circuit has grown in size and importance, the ATP tour has shrunk. Most of that movement occurred more than a decade ago. The tour has remained steady with between 65 and 67 events each year since 2002. As recently as 1994, though, there were 90 ATP events, which offered 36% more main draw places than did 2012’s 65 tournaments.

In other words, the growth of the challenger tour hasn’t substantially expanded opportunities for players outside the sport’s elite, it has simply filled the gap left by all those missing ATP events. The number of challengers increased by 35% from 1992 to 2002, but the number of main draw places in ATP and challenger tourneys combined rose by only 6%. Account for the reduction of tour-level qualifying events, and you probably have a net loss in point- and money-earning opportunities for tour pros.

The following five years brought the explosion of challengers noted above, but the pullback to 2012’s level of 65 ATP and 147 challenger events has reduced the field to only 7432 total main draw places, a 9.5% increase over ten years earlier.

A 10% jump over the course of a decade may be enough to keep pace with the global spread of tennis, but it won’t be if the current downward trend persists.

That’s the reason for concern. 21 first-quarter challengers represents a 30% decrease from 2012. Drop 30% of the challenger events from the entire 2012 calendar, and you have only 103 events, the lowest number since 1996, where there were 97 challengers but a whopping 84 tour-level tournaments.

The ripple effect

So, when the size of the top-tier tennis world shrinks, who suffers?

Small as these paydays are, when the number of challenger-tour paydays drops, some fringe-level players earn fewer of them. The relevant “fringe” here is the ranking range between 200 and 300, the guys who often make the main draw cut of a challenger when there were two or three in one week, but are relegated to a futures or (unpaid) qualifying draw when there is only one.

Less obvious is that even the top-ranked challenger-level contenders suffer. Fewer tournaments generally means more travel–that is, greater travel expenses. For Roger Federer, that’s just a different balance on his NetJets account. For Diego Schwartzman, it means more weeks where he loses money playing competitive tennis, and fewer upper-level events that are feasible opportunities for him.

Needless to say, there are far more Schwartzmans than there are Federers.

And that brings us to the groups that really get hurt when the tennis calendar shrinks: Those who pay many of their own costs and those who don’t live in hotbeds of tennis.

Players who are heavily supported by the USTA might object to additional flight time, but they don’t feel the pain of travel expenses. Someone who can easily reach the plethora of challenger events in Western Europe will find it easy to reach plenty of playing opportunities. An up-and-comer in the the US and Australia will get just as many wild cards as he would have five or ten years ago.

But competitors from much of South America, the Balkans, and the former USSR often do not have any of those things going for them. With every loss of a net-profitable playing opportunity, those guys are a little less likely to stick with professional tennis. If Gregoire Burquier decided to pack it in, most tennis fans wouldn’t notice. But what about the next Radek Stepanek, who ten years ago was within a whisker of running out of money and hanging up the racquet?

Let’s hope the decrease in challengers early in 2013 is a blip, not a trend. It isn’t something anyone will talk about in the next big debate about prize money, but the quality of tennis and all professional levels depends on it.

If Rafa Only Plays on Clay

Since suffering the injury that would lead him to miss the second half of 2012, Rafael Nadal has said that he may have to cut back his tournament schedule so that he plays fewer matches on hard courts.

For someone who wants to remain at the top of the game, that’s a tough ask. The majority of ATP ranking points come from hard-court tournaments. If Rafa stuck to the clay, he would only be able to contest one of the four majors.

Becoming a full-time clay courter would almost certainly knock Nadal out of the running for world #1. (As well as give him plenty of R&R in Mallorca.) But how bad is it? Let’s consider the possibility that in some future season, he only plays on clay.

Here is a possible 2013 schedule for a clay-only player, along with each event’s ranking points. Three 250s are on this schedule, placed to provide warm-ups after each multi-week layoff:

20-Feb  Buenos Aires   250   
27-Feb  Acapulco       500   
09-Apr  Casablanca     250   
16-Apr  Monte Carlo    1000  
23-Apr  Barcelona      500   
07-May  Madrid         1000  
14-May  Rome           1000  
28-May  Roland Garros  2000  
09-Jul  Stuttgart      250   
16-Jul  Hamburg        500

If Rafa ran the table and won all of those events, that’s 7000 ranking points (only two of the 250s would count). Unless the rest of the field becomes much more level, that won’t be good enough for the #1 ranking. But it is a greater point total than Rafa has right now, and it would keep him in the top four. Even averaging finalist points for these 10 events would allow him to remain in the top eight.

(Getting credit for those tournament wins would be a little trickier. Players are required to show up for at least 4 500-level events, including one after the US Open. If you only play on clay, there are no options. To avoid the dreaded “zero-pointer” for not playing, Rafa might have to contest, say, Valencia. However, points from those events no longer automatically count as one of a player’s top 18 events, so as long as the requirement was met, Rafa’s six non-slam, non-required-Masters events could be Monte Carlo, Acapulco, Barcelona, Hamburg, and two 250s.)

In practice, it’s tough to imagine that Rafa (or anyone else, short of Alessio Di Mauro) would avoid hard-court events entirely. Much more likely is a scenario in which he plays all the clay court events possible and competes in hard-court events only when he feels sufficiently healthy. That might mean an occasional semifinal run; it probably also means more second-round exits.

As unlikely and unusual as it would be, the all-clay schedule may be Nadal’s best route to setting more records. With fewer injuries and much more rest, it’s easy to imagine him racking up another four or five French Open titles, along with perhaps ten more Masters crowns. It would be an unusual career trajectory, to be sure, but it would also generate more fodder for the next ten years of GOAT debates.