{"id":2504,"date":"2018-02-20T15:08:25","date_gmt":"2018-02-20T15:08:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/?p=2504"},"modified":"2018-02-20T15:08:25","modified_gmt":"2018-02-20T15:08:25","slug":"roger-federers-20th-easiest-grand-slam-title","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/2018\/02\/20\/roger-federers-20th-easiest-grand-slam-title\/","title":{"rendered":"Roger Federer’s 20th, Easiest Grand Slam Title"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

After Rafael Nadal<\/a>\u2019s US Open title last fall, I wrote a piece for the Economist that attempted to measure each Grand Slam title by difficulty. If you’re interested in the methodology, you can review it there<\/a>. The conclusion was intriguing: Nadal’s opponents en route to his 16 major titles were considerably more difficult than the routes Roger Federer<\/a> took to his first 19. By “difficulty-adjusted” Slam titles, Rafa led by a whisker, 18.8 to 18.7.<\/p>\n

Since then, Federer won the 2018 Australian Open, incrementing his major tally by one. Even though he faced rather weak competition, surely the additional title nudged his difficulty-adjusted total above Rafa’s, right?<\/p>\n

It did, but not by much. Adjusted for difficulty, Roger’s seven wins in Melbourne were worth only 0.42 majors. By comparison, his previous low was the 2006 Australian, worth 0.61, and Rafa’s lowest was last year’s US Open, at 0.62. Federer’s previous average was 0.98, Nadal’s was 1.18, and Rafa’s route to the 2013 French Open was worth a whopping 1.65.<\/p>\n

Fed’s draw was historically weak. Only a handful of majors in the professional era were easier for their champion, and they all came before 1985–most of them in Melbourne, which didn’t yet attract the best talent in the world. This year’s Australian Open path to the title was even weaker when put in the context of the current decade: The average major title from 2010-17 was worth 1.23, largely because the Big Four usually needed to overcome each other.<\/p>\n

According to surface-specific Elo, the toughest challenge Federer faced last month was Tomas Berdych<\/a>, closely followed by Marin Cilic<\/a>. Even after deep runs in Australia, neither player even ranks in the current\u00a0Elo top ten<\/a>. The algorithm that adjusts slam titles considers how the average major champion would fare against a particular set of competition; against Berdych and Cilic, that hypothetical average champ is expected to win 88% and 89% of the time, respectively. Even Nadal had to get past Juan Martin<\/a> del Potro<\/a> in New York last year.<\/p>\n

Still, Federer can claim the top spot on yet another list, as his 19.1 difficulty-adjusted Grand Slam titles exceed Rafa’s 18.8 as well as the 15.3 of Novak Djokovic<\/a>. It doesn’t have quite the same ring that “20 majors” does, and it’s in considerably more immediate danger. If Nadal stays healthy and wins the French Open, he is virtually guaranteed to reclaim the difficulty-adjusted crown, and by a wider margin than Roger currently holds. Roland Garros has traditionally been tough: With the exception of 2010, all of Rafa’s trophies in Paris have been tougher than average. Unlike the traditional Grand Slam tally, the difficulty-adjusted ranking could yo-yo between the two rivals for as long as they remain competitive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Italian translation at settesei.it After Rafael Nadal\u2019s US Open title last fall, I wrote a piece for the Economist that attempted to measure each Grand Slam title by difficulty. If you’re interested in the methodology, you can review it there. The conclusion was intriguing: Nadal’s opponents en route to his 16 major titles were considerably … Continue reading Roger Federer’s 20th, Easiest Grand Slam Title<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"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":[32,45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-elo-ratings","category-grand-slams"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2504","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=2504"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2504\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}