Category: Around the Net

Around the Net, Issue 8

Around the Net is my attempt to provide a clearinghouse for tennis analytics on the web. Each week, you’ll find a summary of recent articles, podcasts, papers, and data sources, as well as trivia and the occasional bit of interesting non-tennis content. If you would like to suggest something for a future issue, drop me a line.

Articles

Multimedia

Data

Trivia

  • At the ITF Sunderland event, Tara Moore came back to win from a 0-6, 0-5, 30-40 deficit.
  • Amazingly, there’s an even longer-shot comeback in the WTA history books. In 1983 US Open qualifying, Barbie Bramblett was down 0-6, 0-5, 0-40 and stared down 18 match points before coming back to beat Ann Hulbert.
  • Compared to Moore’s comeback, most WTA oddities barely register, but here’s another: In Charleston, Kaia Kanepi came back from a 0-6 first set against Elise Mertens to win, 0-6 6-0 7-5, the first time since 2000 that any match (including ITFs) has been decided by that score.

Beyond the net

Thanks to Peter for help with this week’s issue.

Around the Net, Issue 7

Around the Net is my attempt to provide a clearinghouse for tennis analytics on the web. Each week, you’ll find a summary of recent articles, podcasts, papers, and data sources, as well as trivia and the occasional bit of interesting non-tennis content. If you would like to suggest something for a future issue, drop me a line.

Articles

Multimedia

Data

Trivia

  • Roger Federer could finally become the first ATP player to win multiple titles this season, but the WTA remains a tour of unique winners. In Miami, Ashleigh Barty became the 14th champion in 14 tour-level events.
  • To reach the final, Federer needed to beat someone more than 15 years his junior. In fact, both Miami semi-finals involved age gaps of at least one and a half decades. That hasn’t happened at an ATP event since 1979. The closest since then was in Dubai last month, when Fed-Coric and Monfils-Tsitsipas were both at least 11.9 year gaps.
  • Speaking of unusual semi-finals… The Bryans beat Kubot/Melo by a score of 7-6(7) 6-7(8) [14‑12], just about as long as a match can be within the constraints of the modern doubles format of no-ad with a third-set super-tiebreak. It lasted 187 points. While match stats are hard to come by for doubles, I do have a reasonably complete set for tour-level doubles since 2017. In that span, 187 points is the longest match under these rules. There was one other 187-pointer in 2018 and a 186-point marathon in 2017.
  • Thanks in part to his run in Miami, Felix Auger Aliassime won his first five career matches against top 20 players, something that’s never been done before. Mario Ancic won his first three; Felix is the only guy with more. After the semi-final loss to Isner, FAA falls to 5-1, but still has a chance to set more records. No one has won more than 7 of their first 10 matches against the top 20, a feat accomplished by Gustavo Kuerten and Andrei Medvedev.

Beyond the net

Thanks to Peter for help with this week’s issue.

Around the Net, Issue 6

Around the Net is my attempt to provide a clearinghouse for tennis analytics on the web. Each week, you’ll find a summary of recent articles, podcasts, papers, and data sources, as well as trivia and the occasional bit of interesting non-tennis content. If you would like to suggest something for a future issue, drop me a line.

Articles

Multimedia

Data

Trivia

  • We’re still waiting for our first multiple-title winner of the 2019 season. On the ATP side, that’s 19 champions in 19 events, a new record.
  • The player to break that streak will not be Dominic Thiem, who lost his first match in Miami against Hubert Hurkacz. Thiem is the first Indian Wells titlist to fail to win a Miami match since 2010, when Ivan Ljubicic lost to Benjamin Becker. It’s not bad company for Thiem, though, as the other three IW champions to lose their first match in Miami are Novak Djokovic, Lleyton Hewitt, and Alex Corretja.
  • Conceivably, the man who breaks the unique-titlist streak could be Reilly Opelka, who beat Diego Schwartzman despite being out-aced by El Pique in the first set. Opelka didn’t record a single ace in the first set, and it was only his second tour-level match in which less than 10% of his service points went for aces. (The other was his 2017 first-round encounter with Tommy Haas in Houston, and his career rate is 22.3%.)
  • Kei Nishikori is king of deciding sets no more. After dropping a third set to Dusan Lajovic in his first outing in Miami, he loses the top spot on the deciding-set winning percentage leaderboard, to Djokovic.
  • Yesterday, Naomi Osaka won the first set against Su-Wei Hsieh, but Hsieh came back to win the match. It’s the first time since 2016 that Osaka failed to convert a one-set advantage, a streak I wrote about a couple of months ago. She fell only 156 matches short of Chris Evert’s record.

Beyond the net

Thanks to Peter for help with this week’s issue.

Around the Net, Issue 5

Around the Net is my attempt to provide a clearinghouse for tennis analytics on the web. Each week, you’ll find a summary of recent articles, podcasts, papers, and data sources, as well as trivia and the occasional bit of interesting non-tennis content. If you would like to suggest something for a future issue, drop me a line.

Articles

Multimedia

Data

  • Match Charting Project: The dataset has grown by 70 matches in the last week, from 5,256 to 5,326. We’ve added a slew of men’s and women’s matches from Indian Wells, several more 90’s Wimbledon semi-finals, and best of all, three long-sought Roland Garros women’s finals. We have now charted all men’s and women’s French Open finals back to 1980.

Trivia

  • Belinda Bencic continues to rack up top-ten wins, and despite her semi-final loss to Angelique Kerber on Friday, her record against the top ten is above .500, at 19-16. That’s something that few of her peers can claim, even many players we consider to be elites.
  • Sara Errani hit a whopping 57 double faults in her last four matches, including 22 in the Guadalajara first round against Irina Camelia Begu. And she won! 57 double faults is more than she hit in the entire 2017 or 2018 seasons.
  • The next generation of WTA teens is coming fast: 16-year-old Clara Tauson won this week’s ITF Shenzhen $60K title, and 15-year-old Dasha Lopatetskaya won her fifth pro title. At least two more teens won ITF titles this week, with three more playing finals today.
  • With his defeat of Novak Djokovic, Philipp Kohlschreiber became the 4th-oldest player to beat an ATP No. 1.
  • Ivo Karlovic turned 40 three weeks ago, and celebrated by winning three matches at Indian Wells, the first time since 2011 (also at Indian Wells) that he won three or more matches at a Masters event.

Thanks to Peter for help with this week’s issue.

Around the Net, Issue 4

Around the Net is my attempt to provide a clearinghouse for tennis analytics on the web. Each week, you’ll find a summary of recent articles, podcasts, papers, and data sources, as well as trivia and the occasional bit of interesting non-tennis content. If you would like to suggest something for a future issue, drop me a line.

Articles

Multimedia

Data

  • Match Charting Project: The dataset has grown by more than 60 matches in the last week, from 5,194 to 5,256. We completed a run of Indian Wells women’s finals back to 2004, along with 1999 and 2000. We also added all of last week’s finals, Kyrgios’s last four matches in Acapulco, and another handful of Pete Sampras’s grand slam semi-finals.
  • MCP Most Wanted Video: We’re really close to completing some noteworthy subsets, but we’re missing video for several key matches. Please help!

Trivia

Beyond the Net

Dating a Kardashian had a statistically significant (at the 10% level) negative effect on athletic performance.

Thanks to Peter for help with this week’s issue.

Around the Net, Issue 3

Around the Net is my attempt to provide a clearinghouse for tennis analytics on the web. Each week, you’ll find a summary of recent articles, podcasts, papers, and data sources, as well as trivia and the occasional bit of interesting non-tennis content. If you would like to suggest something for a future issue, drop me a line.

Articles

Multimedia

Data

  • Match Charting Project: The dataset has grown by more than 50 matches in the last week, from 5,143 to 5,194. Highlights include the 100th charted Elina Svitolina match, all of last week’s tour-level finals, and several classic Pete Sampras Wimbledon matches, which round out our complete set of his semi-finals and finals at the All-England Club.

Trivia

  • Nick Kyrgios beat Rafael Nadal in Acapulco, but he didn’t exactly play better than the Spaniard. Nadal’s dominance ratio (DR) in the match was 1.36, higher than in any loss of his career. (Usually a DR larger than 1.0 corresponds with a win.)
  • The Acapulco upset means that Kyrgios improved his record in completed matches against the Big Three to 6-6. Only three other players (plus Djokovic and Nadal) have won at least half of their matches against the famous trio, minimum five matches. Kyrgios joins Alex Corretja, Yevgeny Kafelnikov, and Dominik Hrbaty.
  • Nadal wasn’t the only unlucky loser this week. Henri Kontinen and John Peers lost their first round doubles match in Dubai to Raja/Nedunchezhiyan despite winning 59% of total points–20 more than their opponents.
  • Gael Monfils discovered that a well-timed exclamation can give his forehead a bit of extra juice.
  • Last week in Bergamo, 17-year-old Jannik Sinner won his first Challenger title, becoming the youngest ever champion from Italy, the first born in 2001, and youngest since Alexander Zverev won his first challenger at Braunschweig in 2014.
  • Felix Auger-Aliassime is a bit older, but by reaching the final in Rio de Janeiro, he became the first 2000-born player to crack the ATP top 100.

Beyond the Net

Thanks to Peter for help with this week’s issue.

Around the Net, Issue 2

Around the Net is my attempt to provide a clearinghouse for tennis analytics on the web. Each week, you’ll find a summary of recent articles, podcasts, papers, and data sources, as well as trivia and the occasional bit of interesting non-tennis content. If you would like to suggest something for a future issue, drop me a line.

Articles and Papers

Multimedia

Data

  • Match Charting Project: The dataset has grown by 60 matches in the last week, from 5,083 to 5,143. Highlights include the 100th charted Petra Kvitova match, making her the 7th woman to become so well represented. We’ve also continued filling out the historical record of grand slam semi-finals, including a 1981 clash between Jimmy Connors and Bjorn Borg.

Trivia

  • Last week’s New York semi-final between John Isner and Reilly Opelka set plenty of records, the number of which is probably limited only by our imaginations. First, their 59 tiebreak points tied a best-of-three record. Unsurprisingly, Isner (and Jeremy Chardy) held the previous record as well.
  • The Isner-Opelka tilt also set the record for most aces (81) in a best-of-three match–breaking another of Isner’s marks–and was also the first best-of-three match in which both players hit at least 37 aces.
  • Marco Cecchinato has somehow won three tour-level titles (and reached a Roland Garros semi-final!) with only 33 tour-level match wins. By contrast, Julien Benneteau won 273 tour-level matches but nary a title.
  • Since 2008, Fabio Fognini has played at least part of the South American golden swing every year but one. But 2019 was the first time he suffered three straight first-round exits, despite entering each event as a top-two seed.

Beyond the net

Thanks to Peter, Jeff, and Carl for help with this week’s issue.

Around the Net, Issue 1

Around the Net is my attempt to provide a clearinghouse for tennis analytics on the web. Each week, you’ll find a summary of recent articles, podcasts, papers, and data sources, as well as trivia and the occasional bit of interesting non-tennis content. If you would like to suggest something for a future issue, drop me a line.

Articles

Podcasts

Data

Trivia

Miscellaneous

Thanks to Peter, Jeff, and Carl for help with this week’s issue.