{"id":1847,"date":"2015-09-18T09:37:55","date_gmt":"2015-09-18T09:37:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/?p=1847"},"modified":"2015-09-18T09:37:55","modified_gmt":"2015-09-18T09:37:55","slug":"the-case-for-novak-djokovic-and-roger-federer-and-rafael-nadal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/2015\/09\/18\/the-case-for-novak-djokovic-and-roger-federer-and-rafael-nadal\/","title":{"rendered":"The Case for Novak Djokovic … and Roger Federer … and Rafael Nadal"},"content":{"rendered":"

Italian translation at settesei.it<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

By winning the US Open last weekend and increasing his career total to ten Grand Slams, Novak Djokovic<\/a> has pushed himself even further into conversations about the greatest of all time. At the very least, his 2015 season is shaping up to be one of the best in tennis history.<\/p>\n

A recent FiveThirtyEight article<\/a> introduced Elo ratings<\/a> into the debate, showing that Djokovic’s career peak–achieved earlier this year at the French Open–is the highest of anyone’s, just above 2007 Roger Federer<\/a> and 1980 Bjorn Borg<\/a>. In implementing my own Elo ratings, I’ve discovered just how close those peaks are.<\/p>\n

Here are my results for the top 15 peaks of all time [1]:<\/p>\n

Player                 Year   Elo  \nNovak Djokovic         2015  2525  \nRoger Federer          2007  2524  \nBjorn Borg             1980  2519  \nJohn McEnroe           1985  2496  \nRafael Nadal           2013  2489  \nIvan Lendl             1986  2458  \nAndy Murray            2009  2388  \nJimmy Connors          1979  2384  \nBoris Becker           1990  2383  \nPete Sampras           1994  2376  \nAndre Agassi           1995  2355  \nMats Wilander          1984  2355  \nJuan Martin del Potro  2009  2352  \nStefan Edberg          1988  2346  \nGuillermo Vilas        1978  2325<\/pre>\n
A one-point gap is effectively nothing: It means that peak Djokovic would have a 50.1% chance of beating peak Federer. The 35-point gap separating Novak from peak\u00a0Rafael Nadal<\/a> is considerably more meaningful, implying\u00a0that the better player has a 55% chance of winning.<\/p>\n
Surface-specific Elo<\/strong><\/p>\n
If we limit our scope to hard-court matches, Djokovic is still a very strong contender, but Fed’s 2007 peak is clearly the best of all time:<\/p>\n
Player          Year  Hard Ct Elo  \nRoger Federer   2007         2453  \nNovak Djokovic  2014         2418  \nIvan Lendl      1989         2370  \nPete Sampras    1997         2356  \nRafael Nadal    2014         2342  \nJohn McEnroe    1986         2332  \nAndy Murray     2009         2330  \nAndre Agassi    1995         2326  \nStefan Edberg   1987         2285  \nLleyton Hewitt  2002         2262<\/pre>\n
Ivan Lendl<\/a> and Pete Sampras<\/a> make much better showings on this list than on the overall ranking. Still, they are far behind Fed and Novak–the roughly 100-point difference between peak Fed and peak Pete is equivalent to a 64% probability that the higher-rated player would win.<\/p>\n
On clay, I’ll give you three guesses who tops the list–and your first two guesses don’t count. It isn’t even close:<\/p>\n
Player           Year  Clay Ct Elo  \nRafael Nadal     2009         2550  \nBjorn Borg       1982         2475  \nNovak Djokovic   2015         2421  \nIvan Lendl       1988         2408  \nMats Wilander    1984         2386  \nRoger Federer    2009         2343  \nJose Luis Clerc  1981         2318  \nGuillermo Vilas  1982         2316  \nThomas Muster    1996         2313  \nJimmy Connors    1980         2307<\/pre>\n
Borg was great, but Nadal is in another league entirely. Though Djokovic has pushed Nadal out of many greatest-of-all-time debates–at least for the time being–there’s little doubt that Rafa is the greatest clay court player of all time, and likely the most dominant player in tennis history on any single surface.<\/p>\n
Djokovic is well back of both Nadal and Borg, but in his favor, he’s the only player ranked in the top three for both major surfaces.<\/p>\n
The survivor<\/strong><\/p>\n
As the second graph in the 538 article shows, Federer stands out as the greatest player of all time at his age. Most players have retired long before their 34th birthday, and even those who stick around aren’t usually contesting Grand Slam finals. In fact, Federer’s Elo rating of 2393 after his US Open semifinal win against Stanislas Wawrinka<\/a>\u00a0last week would rank as the sixth-highest peak of all time<\/em>,\u00a0behind Lendl and just ahead of Andy Murray<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Here are the top ten Elo peaks for players over 34:<\/p>\n
Player         Age   34+ Elo  \nRoger Federer  34.1     2393  \nJimmy Connors  34.1     2234  \nAndre Agassi   35.3     2207  \nRod Laver      36.6     2207  \nKen Rosewall   37.4     2195  \nTommy Haas     35.3     2111  \nArthur Ashe    35.7     2107  \nIvan Lendl     34.1     2054  \nAndres Gimeno  35.0     2035  \nMark Cox       34.0     2014<\/pre>\n
The 160-point gap between Federer and Jimmy Connors<\/a> implies that 34-year-old Fed would win about 70% of the time against 34-year-old Connors. No one has ever sustained this level of play–or anything close to it–for this long.<\/p>\n
At the risk of belaboring the point, similar arguments can be made for 33-year-old Fed, all the way to 30-year-old Fed. At almost any stage in the last four years, Federer has been better than any player in history at that age [2]. \u00a0Djokovic has matched many of Roger’s career accomplishments so far, especially on clay, but it would be truly remarkable if he maintained a similar level of play through the end of the decade.<\/p>\n
Current Elo ratings<\/strong><\/p>\n
While it’s not really germane to today’s subject, I’ve got the numbers, so let’s take a look at the current ATP Elo ratings. Since Elo is new to most tennis fans, I’ve included columns\u00a0to indicate each player’s chances of beating Djokovic and of beating the current #10, Milos Raonic<\/a>, based on their rating. As a general rule, a 100-point gap translates to a 64% chance of winning for the favorite, a 200-point gap implies 76%, and a 500-point gap is equivalent to 95%.<\/p>\n
Rank  Player                  Elo  Vs #1  Vs #10  \n1     Novak Djokovic         2511      -     91%  \n2     Roger Federer          2386    33%     84%  \n3     Andy Murray            2332    26%     79%  \n4     Kei Nishikori          2256    19%     71%  \n5     Rafael Nadal           2256    19%     71%  \n6     Stan Wawrinka          2186    13%     62%  \n7     David Ferrer           2159    12%     58%  \n8     Tomas Berdych          2148    11%     56%  \n9     Richard Gasquet        2128    10%     54%  \n10    Milos Raonic           2103     9%       -  \n                                                  \nRank  Player                  Elo  Vs #1  Vs #10  \n11    Gael Monfils           2084     8%     47%  \n12    Jo-Wilfried Tsonga     2083     8%     47%  \n13    Marin Cilic            2081     8%     47%  \n14    Kevin Anderson         2074     7%     46%  \n15    John Isner             2035     6%     40%  \n16    David Goffin           2027     6%     39%  \n17    Grigor Dimitrov        2021     6%     38%  \n18    Gilles Simon           2005     5%     36%  \n19    Jack Sock              1994     5%     35%  \n20    Roberto Bautista Agut  1986     5%     34%  \n                                                  \nRank  Player                  Elo  Vs #1  Vs #10  \n21    Philipp Kohlschreiber  1982     5%     33%  \n22    Tommy Robredo          1963     4%     31%  \n23    Feliciano Lopez        1955     4%     30%  \n24    Nick Kyrgios           1951     4%     29%  \n25    Ivo Karlovic           1949     4%     29%  \n26    Jeremy Chardy          1940     4%     28%  \n27    Alexandr Dolgopolov    1940     4%     28%  \n28    Bernard Tomic          1936     4%     28%  \n29    Fernando Verdasco      1932     3%     27%  \n30    Fabio Fognini          1925     3%     26%<\/pre>\n
<\/p>\n
Notes:<\/p>\n
    \n
  1. These numbers don’t precisely agree with 538’s, or with either of two other<\/a> recent sets of ratings<\/a>. Some of the discrepancy seems to be due to including or excluding retirements and withdrawals–both 538 and I are excluding them, but when I included retirements (though not withdrawals), Federer and Djokovic swapped places at the top of the list.<\/li>\n
  2. 538’s graph shows Lendl ahead at age 30 and Connors with a slight edge briefly around age 32.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
    Italian translation at settesei.it By winning the US Open last weekend and increasing his career total to ten Grand Slams, Novak Djokovic has pushed himself even further into conversations about the greatest of all time. At the very least, his 2015 season is shaping up to be one of the best in tennis history. A … Continue reading The Case for Novak Djokovic … and Roger Federer … and Rafael Nadal<\/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":[5,32,53,91],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aging-trends","category-elo-ratings","category-history","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\/1847","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=1847"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1847\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}