Episode 37 of the Tennis Abstract Podcast, with Carl Bialik of the Thirty Love podcast, opens with a discussion of Borna Coric’s future, along with the difficulty of forecasting 21 year olds in an era when men don’t peak until much later. We touch on Roger Federer’s unusually weak performance in the Shanghai semi-final, as well as Novak Djokovic’s dominant return of serve and his growing pile of Masters trophies.
We also look ahead to the year-end championship fields in London and Singapore, and consider Simona Halep’s place in history, now that she has sealed the year-end number one ranking for the second consecutive season.
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(Note: this week’s episode is about 62 minutes long; in some browsers the audio player may display a different length. Sorry about that!)
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Update: Episode index with links, thanks to FBITennis:
| Forecasting young players | 1:07 |
| Assessing Roger Federer after Shanghai | 8:53 |
| How good is Djokovic’s return game? | 16:16 |
| Adjusting titles for strength of opponent | 24:10 |
| Do the Masters’ surfaces suppress Fed’s achievements? | 30:20 |
| Who is the favorite for the ATP Tour Finals (London)? | 36:18 |
| Who is the favorite for the WTA Finals (Singapore)? | 41:30 |
| Is Halep an all-time Top 10 WTA player? | 49:58 |
| ELO as a leading indicator of (next) year-end ranking | 58:50 |