{"id":1409,"date":"2013-11-12T17:15:24","date_gmt":"2013-11-12T22:15:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/heavytopspin.com\/?p=1409"},"modified":"2013-11-12T17:15:24","modified_gmt":"2013-11-12T22:15:24","slug":"rafael-nadal-top-twosomes-and-the-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/2013\/11\/12\/rafael-nadal-top-twosomes-and-the-future\/","title":{"rendered":"Rafael Nadal, Top Twosomes, and the Future"},"content":{"rendered":"

The only match that either Rafael Nadal<\/a> or Novak Djokovic<\/a> lost in London was the final, when Nadal fell to Djokovic. \u00a0It was a good summary of the season as a whole. \u00a0The top two weren’t undefeated for the entire season, but they might as well have been.<\/p>\n

Between them, Rafa and Novak lost only 16 matches this year, six of them to each other. \u00a0Fittingly, they split those six matches. \u00a0No single player poses a serious threat to their dominance. \u00a0Only Juan Martin del Potro<\/a> defeated both this year, and he lost his five other encounters with the top-ranked duo. \u00a0The injured Andy Murray<\/a> remains only a wildcard, having split Grand Slam finals with Djokovic this year but without having played Nadal since 2011.<\/p>\n

Barring a huge upset loss in Davis Cup, Djokovic will end the season with the best-ever winning percentage for a #2-ranked player. \u00a0His 88.9% just edges out the 88.7% posted by Nadal in 2005, when he finished second to Roger Federer<\/a>. \u00a0In the last thirty years, only five other #2’s won at least 85% of their matches.<\/p>\n

Taking these six prior pairs as the best single-year twosomes the ATP has recently produced, it’s surprising to see what happened to them the following year. \u00a0In three of those seasons, neither of the ultra-dominant duos finished the\u00a0next<\/em> season at #1. \u00a0A third player overcame them both.<\/p>\n

Here is the list of the seven most dominant twosomes of the last thirty years, along with their year-end rankings 12 months after the end of their notable seasons (Nx):<\/p>\n

Yr  #1              W-L    Nx  #2              W-L    Nx  \n83  John McEnroe    62-9    1  Mats Wilander   74-11   4  \n85  Ivan Lendl      83-7    1  John McEnroe    72-10  14  \n87  Ivan Lendl      70-7    2  Stefan Edberg   76-12   5  \n89  Ivan Lendl      80-7    3  Boris Becker    58-8    2  \n05  Roger Federer   81-4    1  Rafael Nadal    79-10   2  \n12  Novak Djokovic  75-12   2  Roger Federer   74-13   6  \n13  Rafael Nadal    76-7    ?  Novak Djokovic  72-9    ?<\/pre>\n
In 1988, Mats Wilander<\/a> overcame both Ivan Lendl<\/a> and Stefan Edberg<\/a> to claim the #1 position. \u00a0In 1990, it was Edberg who leapfrogged Lendl and Boris Becker<\/a>. \u00a0This year, of course, Nadal reclaimed the top spot from last year’s top two of Djokovic and Federer.<\/p>\n
Those of us who watched the Tour Finals for the last week might find it hard to imagine that anyone–certainly not any of the other six men in London–would outperform either Rafa or Novak over the course of a season. \u00a0But injuries strike, slumps take hold, and–unlikely as it may seem in 2013–young players emerge and dominate.\u00a0For all of the radical changes in the game since the late 80s, these precedents serve as an important reminder of the unpredictability of tennis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The only match that either Rafael Nadal or Novak Djokovic lost in London was the final, when Nadal fell to Djokovic. \u00a0It was a good summary of the season as a whole. \u00a0The top two weren’t undefeated for the entire season, but they might as well have been. Between them, Rafa and Novak lost only … Continue reading Rafael Nadal, Top Twosomes, and the Future<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[40,91],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forecasting","category-rankings"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1409"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1409\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}