{"id":914,"date":"2012-10-17T12:58:59","date_gmt":"2012-10-17T16:58:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/heavytopspin.com\/?p=914"},"modified":"2012-10-17T12:58:59","modified_gmt":"2012-10-17T16:58:59","slug":"more-tiebreaks-than-expected","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/2012\/10\/17\/more-tiebreaks-than-expected\/","title":{"rendered":"Who Actually Excels in Tiebreaks?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

I’ve never understood the fixation that some fans and commentators seem to have with tiebreak winning percentage. \u00a0Sure, winning tiebreaks is nice, but it seems obvious that the main cause of exemplary tiebreak performance is\u00a0being good at tennis<\/em>. \u00a0Though some players may in fact be better than others at this facet of the game, a big part of what tiebreak winning percentage tells us is about general tennis skill.<\/p>\n

In other words, Roger Federer<\/a> is very good at tiebreaks because he is very good at serving and returning, the same skills that get him so many wins, regardless of whether any of the sets go to tiebreaks.<\/p>\n

If we ignore tiebreak winning percentage, what are we left with? \u00a0It’s still tempting to wonder whether some players have a kind of special skill–calm under pressure, a particularly consistent serve–that leads them to outperform expectations in breakers.<\/p>\n

The key word there is “expectations.” \u00a0Given Federer’s general ability on the tennis court, we should expect him to win most tiebreaks–for example, two of the last three breakers he’s played came against Stanislas Wawrinka<\/a>, who he should beat regardless of the format. \u00a0But our intuition will fail us if we look at Federer’s match record and try to estimate how many tiebreaks he should have won, then compare the “should” to the “did.”<\/p>\n

Expected tiebreaks<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sounds like something computers do better than humans. \u00a0Given a player’s percentage of service and return points won in a certain match, we can estimate<\/a> how likely he was to win a tiebreak–on the assumption that his performance level stayed the same throughout the match.<\/p>\n

If two players are equally matched, each one would be “expected” to win 0.5 tiebreaks. \u00a0That’s nonsensical for a single match, but over the course of this season, we see that of John Isner<\/a>‘s 53 tiebreaks, the algorithm would expect him to win 29. \u00a0In fact, he has won 38, exceeding expectations (in raw terms, anyway) more than anyone else on tour this year.<\/p>\n

This gives us two stats that offer more insight into a player’s tiebreak performance than “tiebreaks won” and “tiebreak winning percentage.” \u00a0The raw number, the difference between actual tiebreaks won and expected tiebreaks won, tells us how many additional sets a player has taken because of his tiebreak performance. \u00a0Call it TBOE: TieBreaks Over Expectations. \u00a0A similar rate stat is derived by dividing TBOE by the number of tiebreaks, allowing us to compare players regardless of how many tiebreaks they played. \u00a0Call that one TBOR: TieBreak Outperformance Rate.<\/p>\n

As we’ve seen, Isner is the 2012 king of TBOE, performing well in tiebreaks and playing far more of them than anyone else on tour. \u00a0Yet three players–Steve Darcis<\/a>, Andy Murray<\/a>, and Jurgen Melzer<\/a>–have done better by TBOR, exceeding expectations at a greater rate than Isner has. \u00a0Darcis is particularly remarkable, winning 16 of his 19 tiebreaks through last week, despite his serve and return rates in those matches suggesting he should have won only 10 of them.<\/p>\n

(And in Vienna on Monday, he won another one, extending his already untouchable lead over the pack.)<\/p>\n

I’ll have more to say about this tomorrow, including a look at just how much meaning we can extract from TBOE and TBOR. \u00a0In the meantime, \u00a0look after the jump for the current 2012 leaderboard–through Shanghai, sorted by TBOR, minimum 15 tiebreaks.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Player                  TBs  TBWon  ExpW  TBOE   TBOR  \nSteve Darcis             19     16   9.8   6.2   0.33  \nJurgen Melzer            17     12   8.3   3.7   0.22  \nAndy Murray              24     17  12.1   4.9   0.20  \nJohn Isner               53     38  28.5   9.5   0.18  \nTommy Haas               16     11   8.4   2.6   0.16  \nKevin Anderson           32     19  15.3   3.7   0.12  \nJanko Tipsarevic         32     21  17.4   3.6   0.11  \nDavid Ferrer             30     20  17.1   2.9   0.10  \nPablo Andujar            18     11   9.3   1.7   0.10  \nJulien Benneteau         20     12  10.3   1.7   0.08  \nRadek Stepanek           18     11   9.7   1.3   0.07  \nSam Querrey              28     16  14.2   1.8   0.06  \nAndy Roddick             21     12  10.7   1.3   0.06  \nJarkko Nieminen          20     11   9.8   1.2   0.06  \nPaul Henri Mathieu       15      8   7.2   0.8   0.06  \nAndreas Seppi            23     13  11.8   1.2   0.05  \nJeremy Chardy            17      9   8.1   0.9   0.05  \nPhilipp Kohlschreiber    38     22  20.6   1.4   0.04  \nDenis Istomin            28     15  14.1   0.9   0.03  \nMilos Raonic             45     26  24.6   1.4   0.03  \nRoger Federer            28     18  17.3   0.7   0.03  \nJo Wilfried Tsonga       31     18  17.3   0.7   0.02  \nMarcos Baghdatis         22     12  11.5   0.5   0.02  \nGilles Muller            28     14  13.4   0.6   0.02  \nYen Hsun Lu              16      8   7.7   0.3   0.02  \nOlivier Rochus           17      7   6.7   0.3   0.02  \nIvo Karlovic             28     14  13.6   0.4   0.01  \nNicolas Mahut            17      9   8.8   0.2   0.01  \nRyan Harrison            19      9   8.8   0.2   0.01  \nJuan Monaco              18     10  10.2  -0.2  -0.01  \nJuan Martin Del Potro    35     20  20.5  -0.5  -0.01  \nLukasz Kubot             18      8   8.4  -0.4  -0.02  \nViktor Troicki           18      9   9.5  -0.5  -0.03  \nTomas Berdych            28     15  15.7  -0.7  -0.03  \nFernando Verdasco        21     10  10.6  -0.6  -0.03  \nBernard Tomic            15      7   7.5  -0.5  -0.03  \nThomaz Bellucci          17      8   8.7  -0.7  -0.04  \nXavier Malisse           19      9   9.7  -0.7  -0.04  \nBenoit Paire             24     11  12.2  -1.2  -0.05  \nMikhail Youzhny          20     10  11.0  -1.0  -0.05  \nKei Nishikori            16      8   8.8  -0.8  -0.05  \nGrigor Dimitrov          18      9  10.0  -1.0  -0.06  \nAlexandr Dolgopolov      22     10  11.4  -1.4  -0.06  \nSergiy Stakhovsky        28     12  13.8  -1.8  -0.07  \nAlejandro Falla          15      6   7.1  -1.1  -0.07  \nMarin Cilic              25     11  12.9  -1.9  -0.08  \nAlbert Ramos             28     11  13.1  -2.1  -0.08  \nEdouard Roger Vasselin   15      6   7.3  -1.3  -0.09  \nNovak Djokovic           25     14  16.3  -2.3  -0.09  \nNicolas Almagro          35     16  19.4  -3.4  -0.10  \nIgor Andreev             19      8  10.0  -2.0  -0.10  \nMardy Fish               16      8   9.8  -1.8  -0.11  \nLukas Rosol              17      5   7.1  -2.1  -0.12  \nGilles Simon             21      8  10.8  -2.8  -0.13  \nFeliciano Lopez          34     13  17.6  -4.6  -0.13  \nRichard Gasquet          18      8  10.5  -2.5  -0.14  \nStanislas Wawrinka       27     10  14.0  -4.0  -0.15<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Italian translation at settesei.it I’ve never understood the fixation that some fans and commentators seem to have with tiebreak winning percentage. \u00a0Sure, winning tiebreaks is nice, but it seems obvious that the main cause of exemplary tiebreak performance is\u00a0being good at tennis. \u00a0Though some players may in fact be better than others at this facet … Continue reading Who Actually Excels in Tiebreaks?<\/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":[114],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-914","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tiebreaks"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/914","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=914"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/914\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}