{"id":2257,"date":"2017-05-14T16:14:57","date_gmt":"2017-05-14T16:14:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/?p=2257"},"modified":"2017-05-14T16:14:57","modified_gmt":"2017-05-14T16:14:57","slug":"dominic-thiem-played-davis-cup-in-barcelona-sort-of","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/2017\/05\/14\/dominic-thiem-played-davis-cup-in-barcelona-sort-of\/","title":{"rendered":"Dominic Thiem played Davis Cup in Barcelona. Sort of…"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is a guest post by Peter Wetz.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Last week Dominic Thiem<\/a> fought his way into the finals of the Barcelona Open<\/a> by winning against Kyle Edmund<\/a>, Daniel Evans<\/a>, Yuichi Sugita<\/a>, and Andy Murray<\/a>. Three of these four players play for the same flag and Thiem won against each of them. Thiem is not exactly a champion of the current Davis Cup format–he has opted out of\u00a0playing for Austria several times and has a rather poor record of 2-3<\/a> when he does compete–but in Barcelona he has, at least, shown that he can beat several players from the same country over a short amount of time. And that’s what Davis Cup is about, right?<\/p>\n

In this\u00a0post my goal is to\u00a0put\u00a0this statistical hiccup into some context. It is not the first time the Austrian defeated three players of the same nationality at one event:\u00a0In 2016 at Buenos Aires Thiem already beat three players from Spain<\/a>. However, given that Spanish players appear much more frequently in draws than Britons do, I will take a closer look.<\/p>\n

Since 1990, there have only been three tournaments where a single player faced three players from Great Britain. And only one of these players who faced three Britons won each encounter. The following table shows the three tournaments and each of the matches where a player from Great Britain was faced by the same player. Wally Masur<\/a> is the only player since 1990 who defeated three players from Great Britain in a single tournament. Thiem remains the only player who achieved this in a tournament outside of the island.<\/p>\n

Tournament     Round Winner        Loser           Score\n'93 Manchester R32   Wally Masur<\/strong>   Ross Matheson   6-4 6-4\n'93 Manchester R16   Wally Masur<\/strong>   Chris Wilkinson 6-3 6-7(4) 6-3\n'93 Manchester QF    Wally Masur<\/strong>   Jeremy Bates    6-4 6-3\n\n'97 Nottingham R32   Karol Kucera<\/strong>  Martin Lee      6-1 6-1\n'97 Nottingham SF    Karol Kucera<\/strong>  Tim Henman      6-4 2-6 6-4\n'97 Nottingham F     Greg Rusedski Karol Kucera<\/strong>    6-4 7-5\n\n'01 Nottingham R32   Martin Lee<\/strong>    Lee Childs      6-4 5-7 6-0\n'01 Nottingham R16   Martin Lee<\/strong>    Arvind Parmar   6-4 6-3\n'01 Nottingham QF    Greg Rusedski Martin Lee<\/strong>      6-3 6-2\n<\/pre>\n
Obviously, there are not many chances to face three Britons in a single tournament. And when one of those opponents is likely to be Andy Murray, a player’s chances of beating all three are even slimmer.<\/p>\n
Let’s broaden the perspective a bit and take a look at how often a player defeated three (or more) players from the same country without looking only at Great Britain. The following table displays the results of this analysis. The first column contains the country, the second column (3W<\/em>) shows how often a player defeated three players of this country, the third column (3WL<\/em>) shows how often a player defeated two players of this country and then lost to a player of the same country, and so on.<\/p>\n
Country  3W  3WL  4W  4WL  5W  5WL\nUSA      119 179  19  30   1<\/strong>   4\nESP      98  157  17  18   3<\/strong>   2\nFRA      28  45   5   2    1<\/strong>   0\nARG      22  26   5   3    0   0\nGER      15  18   1   1    0   0\nAUS      13  9    0   0    0   0\nSWE      9   16   1   0    0   0\nCZE      4   5    0   0    0   0\nNED      4   4    0   0    0   0\nRUS      4   3    0   0    0   0\nITA      2   3    1   0    0   0\nBRA      1   3    1   0    0   0\nGBR      1   2    0   0    0   0\nCHI      1   1    0   0    0   0\nSUI      1   1    0   0    0   0\n<\/pre>\n
As we could have imagined, USA, ESP, and FRA come out on top here, simply, because for years they have had the highest density of players in the rankings. These are also the only countries of which a player was faced five times at a single tournament. Facing a player of the same country six or more times never happened according to the data at hand. The following table shows the most recent occasions of the entries printed in bold in the above table (5W<\/em>).<\/p>\n
Tournament    Round Winner        Loser             Score\n'91 Charlotte R32   Jaime Yzaga   Chris Garner      7-6 6-3\n'91 Charlotte R16   Jaime Yzaga   Jimmy Brown       6-4 6-4\n'91 Charlotte QF    Jaime Yzaga   Michael Chang     7-6 6-1\n'91 Charlotte SF    Jaime Yzaga   M. Washington     7-5 6-2\n'91 Charlotte F     Jaime Yzaga   Jimmy Arias       6-3 7-5\n                                                 \n'07 Lyon      R32   Sebastien Gr. Rodolphe Cadart   6-3 6-2\n'07 Lyon      R16   Sebastien Gr. Fabrice Santoro   4-6 6-1 6-2\n'07 Lyon      QF    Sebastien Gr. Julien Benneteau  6-7 6-2 7-6\n'07 Lyon      SF    Sebastien Gr. Jo Tsonga         6-1 6-2\n'07 Lyon      F     Sebastien Gr. Marc Gicquel      7-6 6-4\n                                                  \n'08 Valencia  R32   David Ferrer  Ivan Navarro      6-3 6-4\n'08 Valencia  R16   David Ferrer  Pablo Andujar     6-3 6-4\n'08 Valencia  QF    David Ferrer  Fernando Verdasco 6-3 1-6 7-5\n'08 Valencia  SF    David Ferrer  Tommy Robredo     2-6 6-2 6-3\n'08 Valencia  F     David Ferrer  Nicolas Almagro   4-6 6-2 7-6\n<\/pre>\n
Finally, we take a look at the big four. Did they ever eliminate three or more players from the same country in a single tournament? Yes, they did. In 2014 Roger Federer<\/a> beat three Czech players<\/a> in Dubai. In 2005, 2008, and 2013 he beat three German players<\/a> in Halle. In 2009 Andy Murray beat three Spanish players<\/a> in Valencia. In 2007 Novak Djokovic beat three Spanish players<\/a> in Estoril. In 2013 Rafael Nadal beat three Argentinian players<\/a> both in Acapulco and Sao Paolo. In 2015 he even beat four Argentinian players<\/a> in Buenos Aires. And there are many other examples where Rafa beat three of his countrymen at the same tournament.<\/p>\n
We can see that this happens fairly often, specifically for countries where the tournament is organized, because more players of this country appear in the draw due to wild cards and qualifications. If we exclude these cases, Federer’s streak in Dubai stands out, as does Thiem’s streak in Barcelona.<\/p>\n
—<\/p>\n
Peter Wetz<\/a>\u00a0is\u00a0a computer scientist interested in racket sports and data analytics based in Vienna, Austria.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This is a guest post by Peter Wetz. Last week Dominic Thiem fought his way into the finals of the Barcelona Open by winning against Kyle Edmund, Daniel Evans, Yuichi Sugita, and Andy Murray. Three of these four players play for the same flag and Thiem won against each of them. Thiem is not exactly … Continue reading Dominic Thiem played Davis Cup in Barcelona. Sort of…<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","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":[12,47,79,108],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-barcelona","category-guest-posts","category-oddities","category-streaks"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2257","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\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2257"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2257\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}