jsackmann – Page 110 – Heavy Topspin

The Speed of Every Surface, Redux

One of the most popular posts on this blog has been this one, which quantified the speed of every ATP tournament’s surface. At the very least, it’s time to provide some updated numbers. Beyond that, we can improve on the methodology and say more about how much we can learn from the numbers.

I was prompted to improve the methodology when I ran an update this week to see how fast the courts are at the O2 Arena in London. The algorithm, which compares the number of aces (or service points won, or first service points won) to the number we’d expect from those players based on their season average, told me that London is much slower than average–almost 20% below average, on par with Roland Garros and the pre-blue clay Madrid Masters.

Counterintuitive conclusions are fun, but that’s just wrong.

Here’s the problem: Service stats aren’t only affected by servers. Sure, when Milos Raonic is serving, there will be more aces than when Mikhail Youzhny is serving. But how many aces Raonic hits is also influenced by the returning skills of the man on the other side of the net. It’s clear why the algorithm got London so wrong: The eight or nine best players in the world got to where they are (in part, anyway) by getting more balls back. No matter how fast the court, Mardy Fish wasn’t going to hit as many aces past Jo Wilfried Tsonga or Rafael Nadal in London as he did against Bernard Tomic in Shanghai or Tokyo.

I’ll be more succinct. The goal is to compare the number of aces on a particular surface to the number of aces we’d expect on a neutral surface. The number of Expected aces depends on more than just the man serving; it also depends on the man receiving.

(In my article last year, I used three different stats (ace rate, first serve winning percentage, and overall winning percentage on serve) to measure surface speed. They track each other fairly closely, so there’s not a lot of additional value gained by using more than one. From here on out, I’m measuring surface speed only by relative ace rate.)

Incorporating more data

To factor in the additional variable, we need each player’s ace rate for the season along with his ace against rate. With those two numbers, together with the overall ATP average, we can apply the odds ratio method to get a better idea of each match’s expected aces.

For each server in each match, we compare his actual aces to his expected aces, and then take the average of all of those ratios. The tournament-wide average gives us an estimate of how fast the courts played at that event.

The improved algorithm still insists that aces were 3% lower than on a neutral surface at the 2011 Tour Finals, but counters that with the conclusion that aces were 18% and 8% more than on a neutral surface in 2009 and 2010, respectively. A weighted average of those three seasons (more on that in a bit) estimates that the O2 Arena gives us 4% more aces than a neutral surface.

The variance from year to year–in some cases, like that of London, suggesting that a surface is faster than average one year, slower than average the next–is a bit worrisome. At the very least, we can’t simply take a one-year calculation for a single tournament and treat it as the final word, especially when the event only includes 15 matches.

Multi-year averages and (extremely mild) projections

If we want to know exactly what happened in one edition of a tournament, the single-year number is instructive. Perhaps the weather, or the lighting, was very bad or very good, causing an unusually high or low number of aces. Just because a tournament’s number for 2012 doesn’t match its numbers for any of the previous three years doesn’t mean it’s wrong.

However, the variety of effects that give us this year-to-year variance do warn us that last year’s number will not accurately predict this year’s number.

The year-to-year correlation of relative ace rate (as I’ve described it above), is not very strong (r = .35). One way to modestly improve it is to use a three-year weighted average. A 3/2/1 weighted average of 2011, 2010, and 2009 numbers gives us a better forecast of how the surface will play in the following year (r = .5).

Another way of looking at these more reliable forecasts is that they get closer to isolating the effect of the surface. As I noted in last year’s article, the weather effects of Hurricane Irene dampened the ace rate at last year’s US Open. By my new algorithm, the ace rate last year was 7% lower than a neutral surface, while this year it was 5% higher than a neutral surface. The three-year weighted average would have been able to look past Irene; using data from 2009-11, it estimated that courts in Flushing were exactly neutral. That not only turned out to be a better projection for 2012 than the -7% of 2011, it also probably better described the influence of the court surface, as separate from the weather conditions.

Below the jump, find the complete list of all tour-level events that have been played in 2011 and/or 2012. The first four numerical columns show the relative ace rate for each year from 2009 to 2012. For instance, in Costa Do Sauipe this year, there were a staggering 61% more aces than expected. The final two columns show the weighted averages for 2011 and 2012. Each event’s “2012 Wgt” is my best estimate of the current state of the surface and how it will play next year.

I’ve also created a prettier, sortable version of the same table.

Continue reading The Speed of Every Surface, Redux

The Influence of a First-Set Tiebreak

Italian translation at settesei.it

In the first two rounds of last week’s Paris Masters, 12 matches began with a first-set tiebreak. Of those dozen matches, nine of them finished as straight-set wins, with the second set more decisive than the first. Polish qualifier Jerzy Janowicz won both of his first two matches according to this pattern.

This isn’t exactly what we’d expect. A tiebreak isn’t purely random, but it’s close. And if two players have reached a tiebreak, the available evidence suggests that they are playing at about the same level. Thus, the winner of the first set is more likely to win the match–and perhaps a bit more likely to win the second set–but not so highly likely to find it easier going in the following set.

Anecdotally, this seems like a familiar pattern. Tough fight in the first set, then the tiebreak winner cruises in the second–perhaps due to his own momentum, perhaps because the first-set loser stops trying so hard.

And it is fairly common. Since 2000, about 9% of tour-level best-of-threes are straight set wins in which a tiebreak is followed by a more decisive set. When the first set is decided by a tiebreak, by far the most frequent outcome (roughly half of these matches) is a straight set victory where the second set is more decisive than the first.

Evidence or forecast?

So what does it mean? Does winning a first-set tiebreak actually give a player the boost he needs to run away with the second? Or are first-set tiebreaks evidence that the tiebreak winner was the better player all along, suggesting that we could have forecast the ensuing 6-3 or 6-4 set before the match even started?

We won’t arrive at a clear answer to this question, but we can try to get closer.

To give us some context, let’s start by comparing matches with first-set tiebreaks to the overall pool of best-of-three contests since 2000:

In best-of-threes, the first-set winner wins in straight sets 66.1% of the time. If the first set is decided by a tiebreak, the first-set winner takes the match in straights 60.5% of the time.
In all best-of-threes, the first-set winner wins the second set by at least one break (that is, without needing to play a breaker) 57.1% of the time. If the first set was a tiebreak, the first-set winner wins the second set by at least one break 50.0% of the time.
The first set winner loses a best-of-three match 18.0% of the time. If the first set is decided by a tiebreak, he loses 22.3% of the time.

Clearly, first-set tiebreaks indicate closer matches than average. (You probably didn’t need me to crunch the numbers to tell you that.) It’s still far from clear whether the first-set tiebreak gives the winning player a boost, or it simply reflects the balance between the two competitors.

Factoring favorite status

To isolate the effect of player skill, let’s look at matches with first-set tiebreaks, divided into four categories determined by how much the first-set winner was favored:

             Straights  Easy 2nd   Loss  
Underdogs        48.5%     39.3%  33.8%  
Even(ish)        61.2%     51.4%  19.2%  
Favorite         69.4%     57.3%  14.1%  
Extreme Fav      74.1%     62.0%   9.2%

No surprises here. The more the first-set tiebreak winner is favored, the more likely he is to win the match in straight sets, the more likely he is to win the second set by at least one break, and the less likely he is to lose the match.

More importantly, a bit more crunching of these numbers shows that almost all–at least 80%–of the variation in these three percentages is determined by the relative skill levels of the two players. It’s possible that a bit of the remainder can be ascribed to the lingering effects of a tight first-set triumph, but only possible, and only a bit.

A story for every sequence

I suggested at the outset that this pattern–7-6, 6-something–seems like a familiar one. And of course it is, because there are only so many score permutations in best-of-three matches.

When we watch such a match, it’s easy to come up with a narrative that seems universal. “Federer won the last three points of the tiebreak, leaving Isner looking overmatched. No one was surprised when Isner got broken for the first time in the following game.” The simple story accurately reflects at least part of the match, explains the scoreline, and it’s tempting to theorize that (a) Isner’s break was due to his loss of the first-set tiebreak, and (b) players generally suffer an early break in the second set after losing a tiebreak.

Fine. Except often (just as often?), we have reason to construct another narrative: “Murray won the last three points of the tiebreak, leaving Tsonga looking overmatched. No one was surprised, though, when Murray came out a bit stale in the second set and got broken for the first time in the following game.”

Some stories reflect actual trends, and that’s why so many of my posts on this site investigate the most popular stories. But for any given story, it’s more likely than not that it has been constructed simply to give a bit more meaning to underlying randomness.

Janko Tipsarevic and the Masters of Retirement

When Janko Tipsarevic retired six points away from defeat against Jerzy Janowicz on Friday, many tennis fans were … unsurprised. The Serb has quite the record when it comes to quitting early, having retired from matches at all four Grand Slams, the Olympics, and nearly half of the Masters 1000 events. He has retired on every surface and in every round.

It’s hardly a record to be proud of. Tipsarevic’s departure on Friday was his 17th career tour-level retirement–about 1 in every 25 matches over his 434-match career. His “retirement rate” of 3.9% is the highest among active players with at least 400 matches. It’s more than double the tour average of about 1.5%.

But that “at least 400” hides some context. Expand the field to a still-respectable minimum of 200 tour-level matches and we have the following leaders in career retirement rate:

Player              Matches  Ret Rate  
Sergiy Stakhovsky       209      4.8%  
Michael Llodra          370      4.6%  
Yen Hsun Lu             222      4.5%  
Janko Tipsarevic        434      3.9%  
Denis Istomin           211      3.8%  
Paul Henri Mathieu      456      3.7%  
Filippo Volandri        367      3.5%  
Potito Starace          347      3.5%  
Xavier Malisse          531      3.0%  
Viktor Troicki          300      3.0%

Tipsy is still a standout, yet not an egregious one. Both Paul Henri Mathieu and Xavier Malisse have retired in three of the four slams. Michael Llodra has dropped out of Wimbledon three times, and the US Open twice. (Not to mention retiring against Jo Wilfried Tsonga three times, and perhaps more remarkably, against both Tipsarevic and Mathieu.)

For a fuller view of the state of ATP retirement–including the 22 members of the top 100 who have never done so–click here for a sortable table with more fun stats. (A few numbers are different than above, because my full database doesn’t yet include 2012 Bercy.) Janko may quit early, but that doesn’t mean you have to.

The 2012 World Tour Finals Forecast

With Jo Wilfried Tsonga‘s win last night over Nicolas Almagro, the field is set for the tour finals. Novak Djokovic and Roger Federer will each head one of the two round robin groups, and will be joined by Andy Murray, David Ferrer, Tomas Berdych, Juan Martin Del Potro, Tsonga, and Janko Tipsarevic.

Despite Federer’s dominance on indoor hard courts last year, he is hardly the same unstoppable force this season. Not only did he lose in last week’s final to Del Potro, but my rating algorithm, Jrank, views him as a slightly inferior hard-court player to Murray. Though it will certainly be close, my forecast favors both the Serb and the Brit over the soon-to-be world #2:

Player         SF      F      W  
Djokovic    77.7%  47.7%  28.8%  
Murray      70.0%  41.9%  23.3%  
Federer     72.6%  40.4%  22.3%  
Del Potro   45.9%  20.2%   8.3%  
Ferrer      45.4%  17.7%   6.5%  
Berdych     38.8%  15.2%   5.5%  
Tsonga      30.4%  11.3%   3.8%  
Tipsarevic  19.2%   5.5%   1.5%

As always, there are as many reasons to question these numbers as there are to put one’s faith in them. Djokovic’s loss to Sam Querrey this week seriously questions his current ability to play his best tennis. Murray’s loss to rising star Jerzy Janowicz isn’t quite so troubling, but it also fails to fit the profile of a dominant player.

In the bottom half of the pack, one or two of these guys are likely to play in the Paris final, meaning they’ll be relatively tired upon arrival in London. It’s one thing to play the first round of a tournament on weak legs; it’s another when that event is the Tour Finals and your first opponent is a fellow top-tenner.

[UPDATE, 3 Nov]

The draw is set. Federer is joined in Group B with Ferrer, Del Potro, and Tipsarevic, leaving Djokovic with Murray, Berdych, and Tsonga. This is a dream setup for Federer, and even dreamier for Delpo.

Federer’s career H2H against the three men in his group is 31-3. His career H2H against Novak’s opponents is 27-18. He might prefer not to face Del Potro again so soon, but historically, the Argentine hasn’t been any more dangerous for Roger than any of the three men Djokovic will have to face.

As noted, it’s the absolute perfect draw for Delpo, too. Statistically, Federer is weaker than Djokovic. My numbers might overstate Ferrer’s competitiveness in London (and they still aren’t very high), and Tipsarevic is essentially a non-factor. In the pre-draw simulation above, Del Potro has a 45.9% chance of reaching the semis and a 8.3% chance of winning it all. Post-draw, 54.4% and 9.2%. It’s an uphill battle no matter what the draw, but avoiding the Murray group is a huge help.

Here are the projections, now reflecting the draw:

Player         SF      F      W  
Djokovic    74.0%  47.2%  28.2%  
Federer     76.7%  41.2%  23.0%  
Murray      68.5%  41.6%  22.6%  
Del Potro   54.4%  22.4%   9.2%  
Ferrer      46.9%  17.9%   6.8%  
Berdych     31.2%  13.5%   5.0%  
Tsonga      26.3%  10.4%   3.6%  
Tipsarevic  22.1%   5.8%   1.6%

Thanks to his relatively weak round-robin group, Federer has the best shot at reaching the semis, but only the third best chance of reaching the final, since he’s likely to face either Djokovic or Murray in his semi. Despite the tougher draw, Djokovic remains the favorite to win the event and put an exclamation point on his season-ending #1 ranking.

(A quick programming note for regular readers: I won’t be able to update these predictions throughout the tournament on TennisAbstract.com, and due to an uncooperative travel schedule, the next TA.com update (including Bercy results) may not occur until Tuesday or Wednesday.)

Bouncing Back From a Bagel

Yesterday, Sam Querrey posted an unusual achievement and did so in an unusual way. He beat soon-to-be-#1 Novak Djokovic–a career milestone no matter how it happened. And he did it after losing the first set 6-0.

This was only the fifth time in his ATP-level career that Querrey lost a set 6-0 (though it was the second time in two weeks), and it was the first time he was bageled in the first set. Big servers like Sam aren’t generally found on either end of a bagel, since their style of play tends to ensure that both players win a service game or two. Querrey has only bageled other players five times on tour. Oddly enough, three of those have been in Los Angeles.

However rare 6-0 sets are, the shocking thing here is that he bounced back. Not just in the sense that he recovered from the mental blow of winning a mere 10 of 35 first-set points, but that he won two sets from a player who seemed to be so vastly superior to him on court.

As you might imagine, that doesn’t happen very often. Of about 2100 best-of-three matches this year through the end of last week, 58 began with a bagel. The first-set loser only came back to win three of those 58 times. And of course, the losers in those three-setters were hardly of Djokovic’s caliber: Peter Polansky, Maximo Gonzalez, and Jarkko Nieminen. (It wasn’t the first time for the Finn–he lost a match 6-0, 6-7, 6-7 in 2009.)

A bit of context

2012 has been a tough year for the victims of first-set bagels. When we expand our focus to the entire 21st century, it turns out that first-set bagels have been occurring at a typical rate this year–about 2.5%, or 1 in 40 matches–but that players are finding it tougher to bounce back.

In best-of-three matches over the last thirteen seasons, there have been 753 first-set bagels. The winner closed it out in straight sets 568, or 75.3%, of those times. The rate this year has been almost identical, with straight-set wins finishing off 43 of the 58 matches with first-set bagels.

In the remaining matches, the underdogs have historically found easier going. Over the last thirteen years, the player who lost the first set 0-6 managed to come back and win the match 75 times–about once every ten matches. This year, Querrey was only the fourth (of 59, now) to do so.

What’s most interesting about the historical total of 75 is that is not much less than the number of matches that the first-set winner wins in three sets.

Let me put that another way. Since 2000, the player who was bageled in the first set has come back to win the second set 185 times. Since the vast majority of those second set scores are 7-6, 7-5, and 6-4, the first-set winner almost always had a more dominant run than the second set winner. But that once-dominant first-set win only wins three-setters 40% of the time.

As we’ve seen, Querrey was only the fourth player to complete the comeback this year, though he was the 13th to reach a third set. Based on the previous rate, we should have seen another couple of recoveries from an 0-6 start.

Winning the second set, as Querrey did today, doesn’t exactly put the comebacker on equal footing, but recent history shows that we can’t put too much weight on that outlier of a first set. Perhaps 6-0s are simply too extreme to carry much weight. Or perhaps winning the second set–even if it’s a much tighter margin than the first–provides a boost that carries over into the third set.

In any event, players should take heart in the knowledge that after dropping the first set 6-0, all is not lost. But Querrey, who has now been bageled more in the last two weeks than he had been in the previous four years combined, probably shouldn’t hinge his hopes on many more fights like the one he posted yesterday.

After the jump, find the complete list of tour-level 0-6 comebacks since 2000.

Continue reading Bouncing Back From a Bagel

The Most Familiar Faces

In last week’s Basel final, Roger Federer and Juan Martin Del Potro faced off for the seventh time this year, and the 16th time overall. Seven times in one year is an awful lot, about 10% of Delpo’s matches. It’s even more remarkable because only two of those contests have been finals — in order to meet so many times, the draws of several tournaments had to complement their consistently strong play.

Making matters even more extreme is that there is a better-than-50% chance that Federer and Del Potro will meet in London next week, bringing the total to 8. And there’s a slim chance–if they are drawn in the same group, then play again in the final–that the sum will reach 9.

So, what’s the record? Seven is already pretty good, right?

Single year head-to-heads

In fact, as with so many other records, Federer is #1 in the last 30 years. He holds the record with Jo Wilfried Tsonga, against whom he played eight times last year. (In the entire professional era, the mark belongs to Ilie Nastase and Tom Gorman, who played at least nine times in 1972. I’ve excluded years before 1980 because a variety of factors caused the top players to meet much more frequently than they do these days.)

As long as Fed and Delpo are at seven, they will be tied with four other pairs: John McEnroe and Ivan Lendl in 1984, Jim Courier and Michael Chang in 1995, Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal in 2007, and Novak/Rafa again in 2009. Another 11 pairs met six times in a single year, including Nadal and Djokovic in 2008 and 2011. (Along with, weirdly, Rajeev Ram and Donald Young in 2007. Must be the wild cards.)

All-time head-to-heads

Since Djokovic and Nadal show up at the top of the single-year list no more than four times, it stands to reason that they must be near the top of the all-time list, as well. Indeed, they are.

In fact, assuming Nadal returns to health in anywhere near his historical form, this current pair of stars will almost undoubtedly take over the all-time lead next year. They could hold it for a very long time.

Player 1       Player 2        H2Hs    W-L  
Ivan Lendl     John McEnroe      35  20-15  
Ivan Lendl     Jimmy Connors     34  22-12  
Pete Sampras   Andre Agassi      34  20-14  
John McEnroe   Jimmy Connors     34  20-14  
Rafael Nadal   Novak Djokovic    33  19-14  
Boris Becker   Stefan Edberg     32  22-10  
Roger Federer  Novak Djokovic    28  16-12  
Rafael Nadal   Roger Federer     28  18-10  
Stefan Edberg  Ivan Lendl        26  14-12  
Roger Federer  Lleyton Hewitt    26   18-8

This is one record that, for all of his dominance, Federer will probably never co-hold. To find yourself on this list, you not only need to rank among the all-time greats, you need a very-near-contemporary who ranks just as high.

(If you’re interested in head-to-head records, I hope you’re already using the Head-to-Head Matrix on TennisAbstract.com. It’s updated every week, and shows the career H2H records of every matchup within the current top 15. Each H2H record is linked directly to a listing of the relevant matches.)

The Structural Biases of Tiebreaks

There is more to tiebreaks than meets the eye. As we’ve learned recently, big servers don’t seem to have an advantage in tiebreaks over more balanced players, and very few professionals win more tiebreaks than we would expect them to.

In one of those discussions, commenter Håkon Mørk raised a related issue. Is the format of the tiebreak itself biased toward certain types of players? That is: Who benefits by playing tiebreak sets instead of “deuce” sets in which one player must win by a margin of two games?

When we put the question this way, it is straightforward. The primary beneficiaries of the tiebreak format are underdogs.

Think of it this way. The better player is likely to win, regardless of the format. The bigger the margin of victory required, the more likely the better player is to win. If Kenny De Schepper were to play a single tiebreak against Roger Federer, he’d have a decent chance of winning. But in a full-length set, that chance would be much lower. In a best of three match, lower still. Best of five: even lower. Best of five with no tiebreak in the final set: lowest of all.

Any change in the format of a tennis match that causes the match to hinge on fewer points gives the underdog a greater chance of lucking his way into victory.

On average, the underdog’s benefit from tiebreak sets isn’t much, compared to a hypothetical world in which the ATP played only deuce sets. For an individual set in the average tour-level 2012 match, the underdog’s chance of winning was 1.3% higher in a tiebreak set than they would have been in a deuce set.

But there’s more to the story. First of all, matches that are very close (in which both players win about 50% of points) drag down the average, since when the players are evenly matched, the format doesn’t matter — 50% is 50%. Second, matches that are very lopsided also drag down the average–if one player dominates, he has a very high percentage chance of winning a set regardless of the format.

Thus, in a somewhat closely (but not too closely) contested match, the underdog gains quite a bit more from the tiebreak format.

Structural biases

In some of these matches, the gain is much more than in others.

In fact, in six matches this year, the difference between the winner’s chance of winning a deuce set would have been more than ten percent greater than his chance of winning a tiebreak set.

(All of the chances I’m referring to are derived by calculating the winner’s winning percentages on serve and retun points, then running those through my set probability python code, which now provides an option for the probability of winning deuce sets.)

Two of the three most extreme such matches this year (and five of the top 14) were won by–could it be anyone else?–John Isner.

The most extreme case is Isner’s match against Janko Tipsarevic in the London Olympics. Isner won 84.7% of service points and 23.3% of return points, ultimately taking the match 7-5, 7-6(14). Those percentages translate to a 71.1% chance of winning a tiebreak set or an 84.1% chance of winning a deuce set.

If you were Isner, which would you prefer?

Compare that to a match between Jo Wilfried Tsonga and Xavier Malisse at the Miami Masters, which Jo won 7-5 7-5. This match went very differently than Isner-Janko. Tsonga won 68.1% of service points and 43.1% of return points. Those would give the Frenchman an 84.1% chance of winning a deuce set (sound familiar?) or an 82.7% of winning a tiebreak set.

This is just another illustration that fewer pivotal points gives the underdog a better chance. To win a tiebreak against Isner, you need to win one point against his serve (as long as you hold your own). To break an Isner service game, you need to win at least four.

Thus, an extreme big server like Isner appears to suffer from the tiebreak format. If the ATP went back to playing every set as a deuce set, he would have a much better chance of avoiding the lucky upset when he posts stats like those of the Janko match.

The big-serving underdog

There’s still more to this story. As we’ve seen, underdogs benefit from the tiebreak format: A structure with fewer points is more susceptible to luck. And big servers seem to be hurt by the tiebreak format.

What about when big servers are underdogs?

The tiebreak format isn’t biased against big servers, it’s biased against big servers who are better than their opponents. In matches already decided by a small number of points (like a couple of break points or minibreaks in an Isner-Federer match), the underdog benefits from playing tiebreaks.

And when one player has the big-serve/weak-return package, he effectively turns the other player into a bigger server and weaker retuner. We don’t usually think of Philipp Kohlschreiber as a big server, but when he played the serve-and-volleying Dustin Brown in Halle this year, he won 82.1% of service points and only 29.9% of return points. That type of match hinges on a very small number of points, and as such, gives the underdog a greater chance to pounce.

More mathematically speaking, the degree of the advantage given to the underdog by playing tiebreak sets is positively correlated with the overall percentage of service points won.

This presents something a conundrum for the big server. His style of play is beneficial in tiebreak sets while he is the underdog, but it becomes a hindrance once he is the favorite. When so many matches are decided by a single break or even a couple of minibreaks, a big-serving, weak-returning favorite will lose more than his share of matches he “should have” won, simply because of the way he plays.

One solution for such players is to win more tiebreaks than the numbers would suggest they should, as Isner does. Another tactic, of couse, is to hit better returns.

How Much Do Wild Cards Matter?

Last week, I presented a lot of data that demonstrated how American (and to a lesser extent, French, Australian, and British) players receive the bulk of ATP wild cards, mostly because there are so many tournaments in these countries. That leaves nationals of other countries to fight their way up through the rankings more slowly, earning less money and facing tougher odds.

How bad is it? Does it really help to get a handful of free entries, especially if most wild cards are doomed to lose in the first round or two?

To get a sense of the effect, let’s take a look at Jack Sock, the most gifted recipient of wild cards in 2012. He entered seven tour-level events this year, all on free passes. (He was also wildcarded into another three challengers and the Cincinnati Masters qualifying draw.) If you take away the wild cards, he would’ve played a couple of challengers, some qualifying draws for US 250s, leaving him to fill most of his calendar with futures.

As it is, Sock has boosted his ranking from 381 to 164 in a single year, earning $137,000 along the way. About half of that comes from his third-round showing at the US Open, which required him to beat Florian Mayer (who retired) and Flavio Cipolla, not a particularly tall order (as it were). Another $27,000 came entirely from first-round losses–tournaments that he didn’t earn his way into, and where he failed to win a match.

I don’t mean to pick on Sock. Kudos to him for winning as many matches as he has this year and establishing himself as one of the better prospects in the game. But if he weren’t from a Grand Slam-hosting country, he would have been lucky to get a single wild card, perhaps benefiting from two or three freebies at the challenger level. He would have spent most of 2012 on the futures circuit, hoping to pick up the occasional $1,300 winner’s check.

What would have happened then? A handy test case is Diego Sebastian Schwartzman, a young Argentine about one month older than Sock. At the end of last year, Schwartzman was ranked 371 to Sock’s 381. Schwartzman doesn’t exactly constitute a scientific control group, but as a point of reference, we couldn’t ask for much more.

In terms of on-court performance, Schwartzman may well have had a better 2012 than Sock did. The Argentine won six Futures events on the South American clay, and he added another four doubles titles at that level. He wasn’t nearly as successful at the next level, going 5-10 in Challenger and ATP qualifiying matches. Perhaps he was a bit worn down from his 49 Futures singles matches this year.

It’s an open question whether Sock or Schwartzman had the more impressive year. Some might prefer the American’s challenger title and handful of top-100 scalps; others would prefer Schwartzman’s 30-match winning streak at the Futures level.

But here’s the kicker: While Sock made $137,000 and raised his ranking to #164, Schwartzman made $17,000 and is currently ranked #245. By showing up at the Indian Wells Masters and losing in the first round, Sock made about as much money as Schwartzman did by winning six tournaments.

The rankings differential isn’t as striking, but it is just as important for both players in the near future. Sock was able to earn direct entry in the Tiburon Challenger earlier this month. A ranking inside the top 200 is good enough to get into almost all Challengers and a substantial number of ATP qualifiers. 245 will get you into many of the Challenger events with lower stakes (read: less money, fewer points on offer) and a much smaller number of ATP qualifiers.

Thus, the favors handed to the American–and never considered for the Argentine–will effect the trajectory of both players’ careers for some time to come.

Andrea Collarini, perhaps you’d like to reconsider?

Which Tournaments Award Competitive Wild Cards?

Italian translation at settesei.it

For the last two days, we’ve looked at tour-level wild cards from various angles. Many top players never received any; others have gotten plenty but never taken much advantage. Still others have managed to prop up their rankings with occasional wild cards despite not having the game to take themselves to the next level.

Wild cards are perhaps most interesting from a structural perspective. Every tournament gets to give away between three and eight free spots in the main draw, and what they do with them is fascinating. Events must pick from among several priorities: Bring in the best possible players to build a competitive field? Award places to big names, even if they are unlikely to win more than a single match? Support national objectives (and perhaps invest in future fan interest) by handing the places to the best rising stars the home country has to offer?

Obviously, these priorities conflict. The Canada Masters events give out most of their wild cards to Canadians–56 of the last 59. But those local favorites have failed to win even one quarter of their matches, the second worst record for home-country wild cards among the current Masters events. Wimbledon is the least home-friendly of the Grand Slams, but perhaps it is still too friendly, as British wild cards have won barely one in five matches over the last 15 years. Lately, it has been even worse.

The dilemma is most pronounced for tournaments in countries without a strong tennis presence. These events generally hand out most of their wild cards to non-locals, saving a few for the best the homeland has to offer. Dubai, for instance, has only awarded 10 of its last 42 wild cards to Emiratis. Unfortunately, those guys have gone 0-10. The story is similar in Doha and Kuala Lumpur.

A different approach is evident in Tokyo, the only remaining tournament in Japan. These days, the 32-player draw only gives the event three wild cards to work with. The tournament isn’t wasting spots on outsiders: Every wild card since 1992 has gone to a Japanese player. The local wild cards have done better than we might guess, winning almost 30% of their matches, good for 45th among the 65 tournaments I looked at.

In fact, there is not a strong correlation between home-country favoritism and poor wild-card performance. Of long-running tournaments, Newport has seen their wild cards have the most success, winning more than half their matches. Next on the list is Halle, also a bit better than half. But the two tournaments take drastically different approaches to local players. Newport only awards 63% of its WCs to Americans–second-lowest among tourneys in the USA. Halle, on the other hand, gives nearly all of its free spots to Germans.

When discussing the structural biases of the wild card system, it’s easy to pick on the USA. America hosts far more tournaments than any other country, and thus US events have the most wild cards at their discretion. Many of those decisions are made by a single organization, the USTA. But US tournaments are far from consistent in their approach.

The US Open is by far the most nationalistic of the Grand Slams, having awarded about 85% of its WCs in the last 15 years to US players. The French comes next at 78%, then the Australian at 69%, followed by Wimbledon at 67%. But even that understates the case. Take out the French reciprocal wild cards since 2008 and the Australian reciprocals since 2005, and 100 of the last 105 wild cards in Flushing have represented the home nation.

Yet as we’ve seen, Newport shows less home-country favoritism than almost any other ATP event, and the Miami Masters is even more extreme, living up to its billing as the “South American Slam” by giving barely half of its wild cards to US players. Even the most biased US tournament (aside from the Open) is the clay court event in Houston, which isn’t even in the top third of all events, handing out “only” 86% of wild cards to Americans.

The problem isn’t the behavior of US tournament officials–if anything, they are more international in their thinking than their colleagues in other countries. Instead, their priorities–put home-country players on the court; amass a competitive field–combined with the sheer number of US events, result in one wild card after another for a small group of Americans and no equivalent advantages for players from countries that do not host tour-level events.

After the jump, find a table with many of the numbers I’ve referred to throughout this post. All tour-level events that took place in 2011 or 2012 are included, and data goes back to 1998. homeWC% is percentage of WCs that went to home- country players, WCW% is the winning percentage of all wild cards, and hWCW% is win% of all wild cards from the home country. I’ve excluded wild cards who were seeded, since those are usually just late entries, and don’t reflect tournament priorities in the same way that other WCs do. For a sortable table with even more data, click here.

Continue reading Which Tournaments Award Competitive Wild Cards?

Who Takes Advantage of Wild Cards?

Yesterday, we saw that ATP tour-level wild cards are the privilege of just a small subset of top pros. If you play for a Grand Slam-hosting country, or you are a major junior prospect, you’ll get plenty. If you fit neither of those categories, you’re on your own. Donald Young gets 27 wild cards while better players work for years to earn their way into as many as 27 ATP main draws.

This discrepancy raises plenty of questions, not least the issue of whether the wild card status quo is good for tennis.

The title of this post raises another: Who used those wild cards to rocket to the top? Andy Roddick is one, having amassed a 20-9 record, including two titles and one Masters-level quarterfinal, from 11 wild cards spots in 2000 and 2001. On the flip side is Nicolas Mahut, who received 9 tour-level wild cards before his 25th birthday, winning only one match–and that one by retirement.

When players do take advantage of their wild cards and string a few wins together, what are we to make of them? Roddick was clearly on his way to the top. After winning Atlanta and Houston in back-to-back weeks in 2001, he never needed a wild card again. But other highly-touted Americans, such as Jesse Levine and Ryan Sweeting, never manage to get their ranking fully out of wild card territory. They’ll both probably receive more, taking opportunities to win a tour-level match or two that gives their rankings a boost.

The ranking effect of a tour-level win or two compounds the effects that keep down players like Grega Zemlja. First, someone like Levine or Frank Dancevic receives a substantial number of wild cards, consistent opportunities to play in a main draw that other, similarly-ranked players don’t get. Then, unless they really aren’t that good, or they get a slew of unlucky draws, they win a match or two. A mere appearance in a Grand Slam main draw is worth 10 ranking points; a single win gets you another 35. In some challenger events, you need to reach the final to earn that many points.

More ranking points, of course, lead to a higher ranking. A higher ranking leads to more direct entries into tournaments. And then, somehow, you have Donald Young in the top 50.

Thus, “taking advantage” of wild cards has strong positive and negative connotations. Guys like Roddick and Federer were ready to compete at the highest level before their rankings said they were, so they took advantage of their opportunities to the fullest. But when a player gets 10 wild cards and wins four matches, he’s made the best of his situation in a manner that exploits the inequities of the ATP tour.

After the jump, find a table that shows everyone currently in the top 200 who received at least four tour-level wild cards before their 25th birthday. (I’m using that age as a cutoff to avoid counting wild cards handed to players on the comeback trail or a retirement tour.) It’s sorted by number of wild cards received pre-25. For a sortable table, click here.

Continue reading Who Takes Advantage of Wild Cards?