Another year, another new set of tiebreak masters.<\/p>\n
Despite the conventional wisdom, very few players demonstrate any kind of consistent tiebreak skill<\/a> over and above their regular, non-tiebreak tennis playing ability. \u00a0In other words, while someone like Novak Djokovic<\/a> is bound to win well over half of the tiebreaks he plays–after all, he’s better than almost everyone he faces–there’s no secret sauce that allows him to win any more than his usual skill level would suggest.<\/p>\n Nowhere is this more evident than in this year’s top tiebreak performers. \u00a0I calculated the likelihood of each player winning every tiebreak they played this year, given their typical rates of serve and return points won, giving us a ranked list of those players who most exceeded and most underperformed expectations. \u00a0At the top of the list, names like Roberto Bautista Agut<\/a>, Dmitry Tursunov<\/a>, Marin Cilic<\/a>, and Leonardo Mayer<\/a>.<\/p>\n Maybe Bautista Agut is a clutch monster just waiting for recognition, but it’s more likely he just had a few bounces go his way. \u00a0Cilic is an excellent example: While he won 54% more tiebreaks than expected this year, 2013 was only the second season of the last six in which the Croat exceeded expectations in tiebreaks. \u00a0Whether tiebreak performance is clutch skill or simply luck, the numbers show that it isn’t persistent.<\/p>\n However, as I’ve noted before, a very few players do consistently outperform tiebreak expectations. \u00a0They tend to be players who find themselves in tiebreaks often, and their success may be because they manage to maintain their serve at its usual level<\/a>.<\/p>\n John Isner<\/a> and Roger Federer<\/a> are the usual suspects. \u00a0Isner won 20% more tiebreaks this year than expected, in line with his numbers in 2011 and 2012. \u00a0(In 2009 and 2010, he was even better.) \u00a0Federer beat expectations by 10%, avoiding his first neutral-or-worse season since 2003<\/a> by winning a pair of breakers against tough opponents at the Tour Finals in London.<\/p>\n With another year’s worth of data in the books, we can safely add one more active player to this elite group. \u00a0Rafael Nadal<\/a> was fifth overall this year, winning 23% more tiebreaks than expected. \u00a0Nadal hovered around the neutral level until 2008, winning almost exactly as many breakers as his overall skill level would suggest. \u00a0But since then, he has had only good tiebreak seasons. \u00a0No other player besides Isner and Federer has posted more than four better-than-expected tiebreak seasons in the last six.<\/p>\n For the rest of the ATP, it’s best to look at these numbers as indexes of luck. \u00a0The men at the top will probably have to win more non-tiebreak sets next year to maintain their ranking, while the guys at the bottom can expect a modest boost with just a little less bad luck. \u00a0That is, unless they play too many tiebreaks against John Isner.<\/p>\n —<\/p>\n The complete list of 2013 tiebreak performance is below. \u00a0‘TBOE’ is “Tiebreaks Over Expectations,” the difference between the number of tiebreaks my algorithm expects a player to win and the number he actually won. \u00a0‘TBOR’ is a rate version of the same stat, calculated by dividing TBOE by the total number of tiebreaks played. \u00a0TBOE rewards players like Isner who play lots of tiebreaks and play them well, while TBOR identifies those who have been particularly lucky in whatever number of tiebreaks they contested.<\/p>\n Another year, another new set of tiebreak masters. Despite the conventional wisdom, very few players demonstrate any kind of consistent tiebreak skill over and above their regular, non-tiebreak tennis playing ability. \u00a0In other words, while someone like Novak Djokovic is bound to win well over half of the tiebreaks he plays–after all, he’s better than … Continue reading The Luck of the Tiebreak, 2013 Edition<\/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":[114],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1451","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tiebreaks"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1451","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=1451"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1451\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Player TB TBWon TBExp TBOE TBOR \nRoberto Bautista Agut 21 16 10.3 5.7 27.0% \nDmitry Tursunov 21 16 10.4 5.6 26.8% \nMarin Cilic 15 11 8.2 2.8 18.7% \nLeonardo Mayer 15 9 6.8 2.2 14.9% \nRafael Nadal 25 18 14.6 3.4 13.6% \nGilles Simon 25 16 12.7 3.3 13.0% \nIvo Karlovic 29 18 14.8 3.2 11.1% \nJohn Isner 53 36 30.1 5.9 11.1% \nAndy Murray 23 16 13.5 2.5 11.0% \nFabio Fognini 23 14 11.7 2.3 10.0% \nJuan Martin Del Potro 33 21 17.7 3.3 10.0% \nBenoit Paire 29 17 14.3 2.7 9.3% \nPhilipp Kohlschreiber 33 19 15.9 3.1 9.3% \nJerzy Janowicz 26 15 12.9 2.1 8.2% \nJarkko Nieminen 27 14 11.9 2.1 7.9% \nBernard Tomic 30 16 13.7 2.3 7.6% \nJulien Benneteau 24 14 12.4 1.6 6.9% \nAlexandr Dolgopolov 21 11 9.6 1.4 6.8% \nErnests Gulbis 23 13 11.5 1.5 6.4% \nTommy Haas 26 16 14.4 1.6 6.3% \nJeremy Chardy 21 12 10.7 1.3 6.0% \nRoger Federer 25 15 13.6 1.4 5.4% \nGrega Zemlja 19 10 9.0 1.0 5.3% \nFeliciano Lopez 24 14 12.9 1.1 4.4% \nJo Wilfried Tsonga 30 17 15.8 1.2 4.2% \nRyan Harrison 15 7 6.4 0.6 4.1% \nTommy Robredo 24 14 13.1 0.9 3.8% \nNovak Djokovic 28 19 17.9 1.1 3.8% \nLleyton Hewitt 16 9 8.4 0.6 3.5% \nDaniel Brands 19 10 9.4 0.6 3.4% \nFernando Verdasco 24 14 13.5 0.5 1.9% \nDavid Ferrer 21 12 11.8 0.2 1.0% \nKei Nishikori 16 9 8.9 0.1 0.9% \nMartin Klizan 15 7 6.9 0.1 0.9% \nKevin Anderson 35 19 19.1 -0.1 -0.2% \nMarinko Matosevic 16 9 9.1 -0.1 -0.4% \nMikhail Youzhny 23 11 11.4 -0.4 -1.8% \nMilos Raonic 36 19 19.7 -0.7 -1.9% \nSam Querrey 31 15 15.6 -0.6 -2.1% \nStanislas Wawrinka 32 17 17.7 -0.7 -2.3% \nFlorian Mayer 18 8 8.4 -0.4 -2.4% \nGael Monfils 27 13 13.7 -0.7 -2.5% \nIgor Sijsling 19 9 9.5 -0.5 -2.6% \nAndreas Seppi 19 9 9.5 -0.5 -2.8% \nDenis Istomin 24 11 11.8 -0.8 -3.2% \nRichard Gasquet 29 15 16.0 -1.0 -3.4% \nDaniel Gimeno Traver 18 7 7.6 -0.6 -3.5% \nVasek Pospisil 24 11 11.9 -0.9 -3.6% \nTomas Berdych 34 17 18.6 -1.6 -4.7% \nVictor Hanescu 24 10 11.2 -1.2 -5.2% \nIvan Dodig 27 12 13.5 -1.5 -5.7% \nRobin Haase 24 10 11.4 -1.4 -5.9% \nAlbert Ramos 16 7 7.9 -0.9 -5.9% \nBenjamin Becker 18 7 8.1 -1.1 -5.9% \nHoracio Zeballos 20 7 8.2 -1.2 -6.2% \nJurgen Melzer 19 8 9.4 -1.4 -7.4% \nNicolas Almagro 34 17 19.5 -2.5 -7.5% \nLukas Rosol 15 6 7.3 -1.3 -8.9% \nEvgeny Donskoy 17 6 7.7 -1.7 -10.2% \nAlejandro Falla 15 6 7.6 -1.6 -10.9% \nGrigor Dimitrov 22 9 11.5 -2.5 -11.4% \nMarcos Baghdatis 20 6 9.5 -3.5 -17.4% \nCarlos Berlocq 18 7 10.2 -3.2 -17.5% \nJuan Monaco 15 5 7.7 -2.7 -18.3% \nJanko Tipsarevic 19 5 8.7 -3.7 -19.5% \nEdouard Roger Vasselin 19 4 8.2 -4.2 -22.3%<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"