{"id":705,"date":"2012-03-25T07:06:53","date_gmt":"2012-03-25T11:06:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/heavytopspin.com\/?p=705"},"modified":"2012-03-25T07:06:53","modified_gmt":"2012-03-25T11:06:53","slug":"seeds-firmly-planted","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/2012\/03\/25\/seeds-firmly-planted\/","title":{"rendered":"Seeds Firmly Planted"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Unless seeds withdraw at the last minute, every 2nd round match at Indian Wells and Miami is between a seed and a non-seed. \u00a0While byes are by no means limited to these two events, Indian Wells and Miami are the only ones that offer us 32 matches pittting a seeded favorite against an unseeded underdog.<\/p>\n

Of course, for a variety of reasons, from surface to health to lucky bounces, the favorites don’t always win. \u00a0But over the last two days at Crandon Park, it has felt like they do. \u00a0All 32 seeds showed up ready to play, and 29 of them advanced to the third round. \u00a0Only Juan Ignacio Chela, Feliciano Lopez, and Marcel Granollers lost.<\/p>\n

Cue the chorus:\u00a0That’s got to be some kind of record, right?<\/em><\/p>\n

Indeed it is, at least back to 1991, which is the current extent of my database. \u00a0Miami has had the 96-player draw with 32 seeds (and 32 byes) back to 1986, while Indian Wells got into the act in 2004. \u00a0That gives us 30 past tournaments in my database, including last week’s event at Indian Wells, for the 2012 Miami Masters to measure up against.<\/p>\n

On average, seeds win approximately two-thirds of their 2nd-round matches in these 96-player draws. \u00a0(At tour-level events in general, seeds win 70% of their matches against unseeded players.) \u00a0In a typical event, then, 21 or 22 seeds advance to the third round. \u00a0As it turns out, that’s what happened last week at Indian Wells–21 wins, 10 losses, one withdrawal.<\/p>\n

This week’s 29 seeded winners doesn’t just set a new record–it blows away the old mark. \u00a0Three years ago, 25 seeds advanced to the third round in Miami. \u00a0In 2008, the same number advanced in Indian Wells, and that’s the best the seeds have ever done. \u00a0Five other times (including last year at Indian Wells), 24 seeds advanced. \u00a0At the other extreme, the 1997 Miami event was a bloodbath, with only half of the seeds advancing.<\/p>\n

It’s remarkable enough that this many seeds won for the first time in 31 tournaments. \u00a0But the odds are far lower than that. \u00a0Using my projections for the second round<\/a>–which, of course, aren’t perfect, and may slightly underestimate the odds of the top few players advancing<\/a>–there was only a 0.37% chance that 29 or more seeds would win their first matches. \u00a0That’s roughly 1 in 270.<\/p>\n

So, if you were watching yesterday, you were witnessing history. \u00a0Rather boring history, but a rare event nonetheless.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Italian translation at settesei.it Unless seeds withdraw at the last minute, every 2nd round match at Indian Wells and Miami is between a seed and a non-seed. \u00a0While byes are by no means limited to these two events, Indian Wells and Miami are the only ones that offer us 32 matches pittting a seeded favorite … Continue reading Seeds Firmly Planted<\/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":[71,116],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miami","category-toy-stats"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705","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=705"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}