{"id":3122,"date":"2018-11-13T15:43:19","date_gmt":"2018-11-13T15:43:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/?p=3122"},"modified":"2018-11-13T15:43:19","modified_gmt":"2018-11-13T15:43:19","slug":"jurgen-melzer-and-singles-players-who-care-about-doubles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/2018\/11\/13\/jurgen-melzer-and-singles-players-who-care-about-doubles\/","title":{"rendered":"J\u00fcrgen Melzer and Singles Players Who Care About Doubles"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

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

Three weeks ago, J\u00fcrgen Melzer<\/a> played his last singles tournament on home turf at the Erste Bank Open<\/a> in Vienna. His low singles ranking, caused by injury setbacks and a mediocre comeback campaign, required him to enter into the tournament as a wild card. Melzer drew Milos Raonic<\/a> in the first round; bookmakers and fans alike predicted that this would be Melzer’s last singles match.<\/p>\n

However, things went differently. In front of a packed arena (at least by tournament-Monday standards) Melzer squeezed out a two set win to face Kevin Anderson<\/a> in the round of 16. That match never happened, though, after a suddenly occurring gastritis forced him to withdraw. As weird as it sounds, this means that Melzer did not lose the last match of his singles career, a feat only a few players can put on their CV.<\/p>\n

Another unique thing about Melzer is that he is one of the last players to reach an elite level in singles as well as in doubles. To underline this characteristic let’s start by looking at singles (ChS) and doubles (ChD) career high rankings of\u00a0 recently-retired1<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0top ten singles players. The following table shows each player’s peak singles and doubles rankings, sorted by the date at which each player recorded their best singles ranking:<\/p>\n

Player\t\t\tChS\tChS Date  ChD\tChD Date\nParadorn Srichaphan\t9\t2003-05\t  79\t2003-09\nJuan Carlos Ferrero\t1\t2003-09\t  198\t2003-02\nAndy Roddick\t\t1\t2003-11\t  50\t2010-01\nRainer Schuettler\t5\t2004-04\t  40\t2005-07\nGuillermo Coria\t\t3\t2004-05\t  183\t2004-03\nNicolas Massu\t\t9\t2004-09\t  31\t2005-07\nJoachim Johansson\t9\t2005-02\t  108\t2005-09\nGaston Gaudio\t\t5\t2005-04\t  78\t2004-06\nGuillermo Canas\t\t8\t2005-06\t  47\t2002-07\nMariano Puerta\t\t9\t2005-08\t  68\t1999-08\nDavid Nalbandian\t3\t2006-03\t  105\t2009-10\nIvan Ljubicic\t\t3\t2006-05\t  70\t2005-05\nMario Ancic\t\t7\t2006-07\t  47\t2004-06\nRadek Stepanek\t\t8\t2006-07\t  4\t2012-11\nNikolay Davydenko\t3\t2006-11\t  31\t2005-06\nJames Blake\t\t4\t2006-11\t  31\t2003-03\nFernando Gonzalez\t5\t2007-01\t  25\t2005-07\nRobin Soderling\t\t4\t2010-11\t  109\t2009-05\nJ\u00fcrgen Melzer           8       2011-04   6     2010-10\nNicolas Almagro\t\t9\t2011-05\t  48\t2011-03\nMardy Fish\t\t7\t2011-08\t  14\t2009-07\nJanko Tipsarevic\t8\t2012-04\t  46\t2011-04\nJuan Monaco\t\t10\t2012-07\t  41\t2009-01\n<\/pre>\n
The data shows that top ten singles players rarely climb up to the very top in doubles. Of course, there can be several reasons for this: scheduling (playing a full singles schedule can be exhausting) or skill (being a good singles player doesn’t necessarily mean that you are also a good doubles player), among others. The fact that the best doubles career high ranking by the Big Four is Roger Federer<\/a>\u2019s rank of 24 reached in 2003 further underlines that top singles players have better things to do than practicing their volleying skills.<\/p>\n
So, as the table above already suggests, Melzer is one of the last of the breed of players that–ranking-wise–made it until the very top in both singles and doubles. The following table shows players who reached a top-ten career high in both rankings, sorted by when they achieved their high in doubles back until 1990.<\/p>\n
Player\t\t    ChS\tChS Date   ChD\tChD Date\nPetr Korda\t    2\t1998-02\t   10\t1990-06\nMichael Stich\t    2\t1993-11\t   9\t1991-03\nMarc Rosset\t    9\t1995-09\t   8\t1992-11\nYevgeny Kafelnikov  1\t1999-05\t   4\t1998-03\nPatrick Rafter\t    1\t1999-07\t   6\t1999-02\nWayne Ferreira\t    6\t1995-05\t   9\t2001-03\nJiri Novak\t    5\t2002-10\t   6\t2001-07\nJonas Bj\u00f6rkman\t    4\t1997-11\t   1\t2001-07\nArnaud Clement\t    10\t2001-04\t   8\t2008-01\nJ\u00fcrgen Melzer\t    8\t2011-04\t   6\t2010-10\nRadek Stepanek\t    8\t2006-07\t   4\t2012-11\nFernando Verdasco*  7\t2009-04\t   8\t2013-11\nJack Sock*\t    8\t2017-11\t   2\t2018-09<\/pre>\n
* Active singles player<\/em><\/p>\n
Since 1990 there have only been 13 players who reached a doubles and singles career high inside the top ten. The last number one with a top ten doubles ranking was Patrick Rafter<\/a>. Currently there are only two active singles players part of this group. As has already been mentioned on this blog several<\/a> times<\/a>, Jack Sock<\/a>\u2019s doubles prowess is an exception no matter how you look at it. And the time between Fernando Verdasco<\/a>\u2019s singles high and doubles high shows that he reached them at two completely different stages of his career, which brings us to the final measure: Which players held a top ten spot in both rankings at the same time? The following table shows players, weeks spent in the singles top ten (weeksS), weeks spent in the doubles top ten (weeksD) and weeks spent in both singles and doubles top ten at the same time (weeksS+D) sorted by the date the doubles career high was reached.<\/p>\n
Player\t\tweeksS\tweeksD\tweeksS+D Chd Date\nJohn Mcenroe\t208\t96\t74\t 1983-01\nPat Cash\t89\t14\t5\t 1984-08\nAnders Jarryd\t82\t379\t78\t 1985-08\nMats Wilander\t227\t72\t72\t 1985-10\nStefan Edberg\t452\t122\t117\t 1986-06\nGuy Forget\t79\t119\t5\t 1986-08\nYannick Noah\t157\t87\t84\t 1986-08\nAndres Gomez\t143\t62\t31\t 1986-09\nBoris Becker\t530\t21\t21\t 1986-09\nJoakim Nystrom\t72\t57\t33\t 1986-11\nMiloslav Mecir\t109\t19\t19\t 1988-03\nEmilio Sanchez\t57\t138\t44\t 1989-04\nJakob Hlasek\t37\t132\t10\t 1989-11\nYevgeny Kafeln.\t388\t157\t148\t 1998-03\nPatrick Rafter\t156\t33\t26\t 1999-02\nJonas Bj\u00f6rkman\t43\t462\t29\t 2001-07\nJ\u00fcrgen Melzer\t14\t50\t14\t 2010-09\n<\/pre>\n
With Melzer’s retirement, there is no active player who held a top ten ranking in singles and doubles at the same week. In other words, he is the last player who held simultaneous top ten rankings in singles and doubles. With Jonas Bj\u00f6rkman<\/a> this makes him one of only two players in this group for the past 18 years! Even in the nineties\u00a0there were only two players–Rafter and\u00a0Yevgeny Kafelnikov<\/a>–reaching this feat, whereas in the eighties there were many others.<\/p>\n
Even if this stream of trivia does not tell us much analytically, we can see that players peaking with and without partners on their side of the court are becoming a rare species. The times when they have done so\u00a0simultaneously are long gone.<\/p>\n
Footnotes<\/strong><\/p>\n
1.<\/span> We look at retired players, because their career high rankings are not subject to change anymore.<\/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. Italian translation at settesei.it Three weeks ago, J\u00fcrgen Melzer played his last singles tournament on home turf at the Erste Bank Open in Vienna. His low singles ranking, caused by injury setbacks and a mediocre comeback campaign, required him to enter into the tournament as a wild … Continue reading J\u00fcrgen Melzer and Singles Players Who Care About Doubles<\/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":[31,47,117],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-doubles","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\/3122","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=3122"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3122\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}