{"id":2664,"date":"2018-06-07T18:54:17","date_gmt":"2018-06-07T18:54:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/?p=2664"},"modified":"2018-06-07T18:54:17","modified_gmt":"2018-06-07T18:54:17","slug":"everything-you-always-wanted-to-know-about-marco-cecchinatos-run-to-the-roland-garros-semifinal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/2018\/06\/07\/everything-you-always-wanted-to-know-about-marco-cecchinatos-run-to-the-roland-garros-semifinal\/","title":{"rendered":"Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Marco Cecchinato&#8217;s Run to the Roland Garros Semifinal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>This is a guest post by Peter Wetz.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>When a 25 year old Italian tennis player named <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/cgi-bin\/player.cgi?p=MarcoCecchinato\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Marco Cecchinato<\/a> defeated <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/cgi-bin\/player.cgi?p=MariusCopil\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Marius Copil<\/a> in the first round of this year&#8217;s edition of Roland Garros, some people may have noticed that it was one of the longer first round matches. With a duration of 3 hours and 41 minutes the match was the fifth longest of the 64 opening round matches. However, I am confident that no one suspected the winner of this encounter would go much farther in the draw. Little did we know.<\/p>\n<p>After his unexpected four set win in the quarterfinal against a hard-fighting <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/cgi-bin\/player.cgi?p=NovakDjokovic\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Novak Djokovic<\/a>&#8211;bookmakers were giving him about an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.oddsportal.com\/tennis\/france\/atp-french-open\/cecchinato-marco-djokovic-novak-nT0T6k0G\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">11 percent chance<\/a> of winning&#8211;many tweets emphasized the uniqueness of this achievement. Since it is difficult to provide more context in a tweet, I was interested in just how often something like this happened in the past. So I looked into the data and came up with more complete lists of the tweeted facts which are presented in the remainder of this post.<\/p>\n<p>The first and obvious question is, when was the last time that a player ranked as high as Cecchinato reached a Grand Slam semifinal?<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Last players ranked outside <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/Atp?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#Atp<\/a> Top-70 qualified for a <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/Slam?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#Slam<\/a> SF were Safin (75) and Schuettler (94) in Wimbledon 2008, but both were Top-10 before.<br \/>Last player in <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/RolandGarros?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#RolandGarros<\/a> was Andrey <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/Medvedev?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#Medvedev<\/a> in 1999 (also a previous Top10). <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/Cecchinato?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#Cecchinato<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Luca Brancher (@LucaBeck) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/LucaBeck\/status\/1004051340471857152?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">June 5, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>The following table shows players ranked outside of the top-70 that reached a Grand Slam semifinal. Rows denoting achievements at Roland Garros are bold.<\/p>\n<pre>Tourney Player\t\t       Rank\tRound\n<strong>RG 18\tMarco Cecchinato\t 72\tSF<\/strong>\nW  08\tRainer Schuettler\t 94\tSF\nW  08\tMarat Safin\t\t 75\tSF\nAO 04\tMarat Safin\t\t 86\tF\nW  01\tGoran Ivanisevic\t125\tW\nW  00\tVladimir Voltchkov\t237\tSF\n<strong>RG 99\tAndrei Medvedev\t\t100\tF\n<\/strong>AO 99\tNicolas Lapentti\t 91\tSF\nAO 98\tNicolas Escude\t\t 81\tSF\nW  97\tMichael Stich\t\t 88\tSF\n<strong>RG 97\tFilip Dewulf\t\t122\tSF\nRG 92\tHenri Leconte\t\t200\tSF<\/strong>\nUO 91\tJimmy Connors\t\t174\tSF\nAO 91\tPatrick Mcenroe\t\t114\tSF\n<\/pre>\n<p>As the tweet points out the most recent comparable runs by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/cgi-bin\/player.cgi?p=RainerSchuettler\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Rainer Schuettler<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/cgi-bin\/player.cgi?p=MaratSafin\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Marat Safin<\/a> happened after the players have reached top-10 rankings. Hence, the most recent really comparable run where the player has not reached his career high ranking at the time of the tournament, is by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/cgi-bin\/player.cgi?p=VladimirVoltchkov\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Vladimir Voltchkov<\/a>, who reached the semifinal at Wimbledon 2000.*<\/p>\n<p>Another unique thing about Cecchinato&#8217;s run is that until last week he did not win a single match at a Grand Slam event.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Last player to win his first <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/Slam?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#Slam<\/a> match in the same tournament in which he reached at least the Semifinal was Martin Verkerk, <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/RolandGarros?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#RolandGarros<\/a> 2003, <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/Cecchinato?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#Cecchinato<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Luca Brancher (@LucaBeck) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/LucaBeck\/status\/1004065221206560769?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">June 5, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>The following table shows players that won their first match at a Grand Slam event and went on to win more matches. To prevent showing an extremely short table, I relaxed the condition on how far the player should have gone when winning his first Grand Slam match to reaching the quarterfinal. The last column <em>Attempts<\/em> denotes the number of main draw appearances until his first main draw win.<\/p>\n<pre>Tourney   Player\t   Rank    Reached Attempts\n<strong>RG 18\t  Marco Cecchinato   72\t   SF\t   6<\/strong>\nAO 18     Tennys Sandgren    97\t   QF\t   3\n<strong>RG 03\t  Martin Verkerk     46\t   F\t   3\n<\/strong>W  00     Alexander Popp    114\t   QF\t   2\nW  97\t  Nicolas Kiefer     98\t   QF\t   3\n<strong>RG 97\t  Galo Blanco\t    111\t   QF\t   4\n<\/strong>W  96\t  Alex Radulescu     91\t   QF\t   1\n<strong>RG 95\t  Albert Costa\t     36\t   QF\t   4\nRG 94     Hendrik Dreekmann  89\t   QF\t   2\n<\/strong>AO 93\t  Brett Steven\t     71\t   QF\t   1\n<\/pre>\n<p>As the table shows, rarely has a player gotten past the quarterfinal after recording his debut win at a Grand Slam, with the notable exception of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/cgi-bin\/player.cgi?p=MartinVerkerk\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Martin Verkerk<\/a>, who reached the final 15 years ago at his third attempt. Still&#8211;especially in the 1990s&#8211;there were a few players who won four consecutive matches. Not included in the table, but not less impressive, is the run by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/cgi-bin\/player.cgi?p=MikaelPernfors\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Mikael Pernfors<\/a>. Interestingly, he had not won a single Grand Slam match, but he had built himself a ranking of 26, when he reached the final round of Roland Garros 1986, where he also won his first main draw match.<\/p>\n<p>When looking at male Grand Slam competitors from Italy, not many names besides <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/cgi-bin\/player.cgi?p=FabioFognini\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Fabio Fognini<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/cgi-bin\/player.cgi?p=AndreasSeppi\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Andreas Seppi<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/cgi-bin\/player.cgi?p=SimoneBolelli\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Simone Bolelli<\/a>, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/cgi-bin\/player.cgi?p=PaoloLorenzi\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Paolo Lorenzi<\/a> spring to mind. With 150 main draw appearances, the quartet shares a mere ten appearances in the round of 16 and one quarterfinal appearance (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/cgi-bin\/player.cgi?p=FabioFognini&amp;f=A2011qqDRoland_Garrosqq\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Fabio Fognini at Roland Garros 2011<\/a>). Marco Cecchinato is the first Italian player in the semifinal of a Grand Slam in 40 years.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Marco Cecchinato is one set from becoming:<\/p>\n<p>First Italian man in GS semifinal in 40 years<\/p>\n<p>Lowest-ranked GS men\u2019s semifinalist since 2008 Wimbledon (Safin\/Sch\u00fcttler)<\/p>\n<p>First man to make GS semifinal without a win at a previous GS since Martin Verkerk at 2003 French Open<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Nick Zaccardi (@nzaccardi) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/nzaccardi\/status\/1004023840568168449?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">June 5, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>The following table shows all appearances of Italian players past the round of 16.<\/p>\n<pre>Tourney   Player\t    \tReached\n<strong>RG 18\t  Marco Cecchinato  \tSF<\/strong>\n<strong>RG 11\t  Fabio Fognini\t\tQF<\/strong>\nW  98\t  Davide Sanguinetti \tQF\n<strong>RG 95\t  Renzo Furlan\t     \tQF<\/strong>\nAO 91\t  Cristiano Caratti  \tQF\n<strong>RG 80\t  Corrado Barazzutti \tQF<\/strong>\nW  79     Adriano Panatta\tQF\n<strong>RG 78\t  Corrado Barazzutti\tSF<\/strong>\nUO 77\t  Corrado Barazzutti\tSF\n<strong>RG 77\t  Adriano Panatta\tQF\nRG 76\t  Adriano Panatta\tW\nRG 75\t  Adriano Panatta\tSF\nRG 73\t  Paolo Bertolucci\tQF\nRG 73\t  Adriano Panatta\tSF\nRG 72\t  Adriano Panatta\tQF<\/strong>\n<\/pre>\n<p>Despite the fact that male Italian players seem strongest on the dirt, since 1978 no one reached the semifinal of a Grand Slam. Even Fabio Fognini&#8217;s quarterfinal appearance at Roland Garros 2011 was the first in 13 years. Marco Cecchinato is one win away of being the first Italian Grand Slam finalist since 1976.<\/p>\n<p>Marco Cecchinato was not seeded. If we look at Grand Slam semifinals comprised of unseeded players an interesting pattern appears.<\/p>\n<pre>Tourney Player  \t    \tReached\n<strong>RG 18\tMarco Cecchinato  \tSF<\/strong>\nAO 18\tHyeon Chung\t\tSF\nAO 18\tKyle Edmund\t\tSF\nW  08\tRainer Schuettler\tSF\nW  08\tMarat Safin\t\tSF\n<strong>RG 08\tGael Monfils\t\tSF\n<\/strong>AO 08\tJo Wilfried Tsonga\tF\nUO 06\tMikhail Youzhny\t\tSF\nW  06\tJonas Bjorkman\t\tSF\nAO 06\tMarcos Baghdatis\tF\nUO 05\tRobby Ginepri\t\tSF\n<strong>RG 05\tMariano Puerta\t\tF\n<\/strong>W  04\tMario Ancic\t\tSF\n<strong>RG 04\tGaston Gaudio\t\tW\n<\/strong>AO 04\tMarat Safin\t\tF\nW  03\tMark Philippoussis\tF\n<strong>RG 03\tMartin Verkerk\t\tF\n<\/strong>AO 03\tWayne Ferreira\t\tSF\nW  01\tGoran Ivanisevic\tW\nUO 00\tTodd Martin\t\tSF\nW  00\tVladimir Voltchkov\tSF\n<strong>RG 00\tFranco Squillari\tSF\n<\/strong><\/pre>\n<p>Since 2008 this is only the third time that an unseeded player reached the semifinal. All three occurrences happended this year. It appears that we can again get used to see new faces deep into the second week of a Grand Slam tournament.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, let&#8217;s take a look at Grand Slam semifinals between players using a one-handed backhand. The decreasing popularity of the one-hander has already been discussed <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/2013\/04\/10\/the-state-of-the-one-handed-backhand\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">here<\/a> and with this in mind it seems even more unique that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/cgi-bin\/player.cgi?p=DominicThiem\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Dominic Thiem<\/a>&#8211;the player who Marco Cecchinato will face tomorrow in the semifinal&#8211;inititally played a two-hander, but then changed to a one-hander.<\/p>\n<pre>Tourney Player 1\t    \tPlayer 2\n<strong>RG 18\tMarco Cecchinato  \tDominic Thiem<\/strong>\nAO 17\tRoger Federer\t\tStanislas Wawrinka\nUO 15\tRoger Federer\t\tStanislas Wawrinka\nW  09\tRoger Federer\t\tTommy Haas\nW  07\tRoger Federer\t\tRichard Gasquet\nAO 07\tFernando Gonzalez\tTommy Haas\nUO 04\tRoger Federer\t\tTim Henman\nUO 02\tPete Sampras\t\tSjeng Schalken\n<strong>RG 02\tAlbert Costa\t\tAlex Corretja\n<\/strong>W  99\tPete Sampras\t\tTim Henman\nUO 98\tPatrick Rafter\t\tPete Sampras\nW  98\tPete Sampras\t\tTim Henman<\/pre>\n<p>If we ignore <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/cgi-bin\/player.cgi?p=RogerFederer\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Roger Federer<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/cgi-bin\/player.cgi?p=StanislasWawrinka\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Stanislas Wawrinka<\/a>, two players who brought the one-handed backhand back into discussion, the last Grand Slam semifinal between two one-handers was played between <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/cgi-bin\/player.cgi?p=FernandoGonzalez\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Fernando Gonzalez<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/cgi-bin\/player.cgi?p=TommyHaas\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Tommy Haas<\/a> at the Australian Open 2007. Before that,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/cgi-bin\/player.cgi?p=PeteSampras\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Pete Sampras<\/a> was involved in four of six such encounters. Without Roger and Pete the world of one-handed Grand Slam semifinals would look really thin.<\/p>\n<p>Whatever the result of the semifinal between Marco Cecchinato and Dominic Thiem will be, we know already that Marco achieved what only few players have done before him, especially in recent years. Whether he will be able to repeat this feat at Wimbledon, where he will be seeded despite having never won a match on a grass court, is arguable. Still, <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/BenRothenberg\/status\/1004421800468664320\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">placing a bet on his own first round loss<\/a>\u00a0probably won&#8217;t be a good idea&#8211;at the very least, a lot more fans will be watching his opening match than ever before.<\/p>\n<p>* A previous version of this article wrongly stated that the Wimbledon 2001 championship run by Goran Ivanisevic is more similar to Marco Cecchinato&#8217;s run. However, in 2001 Ivanisevic had already achieved his career high ranking, which is not the case for Cecchinato. Thanks for <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/rtwkr\/status\/1004806854810038272\">@rtwkr<\/a> at Twitter for pointing this out.<\/p>\n<p>&#8212;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"mailto:wetz.peter@gmail.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Peter Wetz<\/a>\u00a0is\u00a0a computer scientist interested in racket sports and data analytics based in Vienna, Austria.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is a guest post by Peter Wetz. When a 25 year old Italian tennis player named Marco Cecchinato defeated Marius Copil in the first round of this year&#8217;s edition of Roland Garros, some people may have noticed that it was one of the longer first round matches. With a duration of 3 hours and &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/2018\/06\/07\/everything-you-always-wanted-to-know-about-marco-cecchinatos-run-to-the-roland-garros-semifinal\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Marco Cecchinato&#8217;s Run to the Roland Garros Semifinal<\/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":[41,45,47,117],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-french-open","category-grand-slams","category-guest-posts","category-trivia"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2664","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=2664"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2664\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}