Italian translation at settesei.it
Ivo Karlovic is on track to accomplish something that no player has ever done before. Over the course of his career, Karlovic, along with John Isner, has set a new standard for one-dimensional tennis playing. The big men win so many service points that they are almost impossible to break, making their own service-return limitations manageable. With a player on court who maximizes the likelihood of service holds, tiebreaks seem inevitable.
This season, Karlovic has taken tiebreak-playing to a new level. Through last night’s semi-final at the Calgary Challenger (final score: 7-6, 7-6), the 6-11 Croatian has played 42 matches, including 115 sets and 61 tiebreaks. In percentage terms, that’s a tiebreak in 53% of all sets. Among player-seasons with at least 30 matches across the ATP, ATP qualifying, and ATP Challenger levels since 1990, no one has ever before topped 50%.
Even approaching the 50% threshold marks someone as very unusual. Less than 20% of tour-level sets reach 6-6, and it’s rare for any single player to top 30%. This year, only Isner and Nick Kyrgios have joined Karlovic in the 30%-plus club. Even Reilly Opelka, the seven-foot American prospect, has tallied only 31 tiebreaks in 109 sets this season, good for a more modest rate of 28.4%.
Karlovic is in truly uncharted territory. Isner came very close in his breakthrough 2007 season on the Challenger tour, playing 51 tiebreaks in 102 sets. The rest of the all-time top ten list starts to get a little repetitive:
Rank Year Player Sets TBs TB% 1 2018 Ivo Karlovic 115 61 53.0% 2 2007 John Isner 102 51 50.0% 3 2005 Ivo Karlovic 118 56 47.5% 4 2016 Ivo Karlovic 146 68 46.6% 5 2017 Ivo Karlovic 91 42 46.2% 6 2006 Ivo Karlovic 106 48 45.3% 7 2015 Ivo Karlovic 168 76 45.2% 8 2018 John Isner 149 65 43.6% 9 2001 Ivo Karlovic 78 34 43.6% 10 2004 Ivo Karlovic 140 61 43.6%
* Karlovic’s and Isner’s 2018 totals are through matches of October 20th.
For more variety, here are the 15 different players with the highest single-season tiebreak rates:
Rank Year Player Sets TBs TB% 1 2018 Ivo Karlovic 115 61 53.0% 2 2007 John Isner 102 51 50.0% 3 2004 Amer Delic 95 37 38.9% 4 2008 Michael Llodra 117 45 38.5% 5 2008 Chris Guccione 173 65 37.6% 6 2002 Alexander Waske 109 40 36.7% 7 1993 Greg Rusedski 99 35 35.4% 8 2017 Reilly Opelka 115 40 34.8% 9 2005 Wayne Arthurs 95 33 34.7% 10 2004 Dick Norman 97 33 34.0% 11 2001 Ivan Ljubicic 148 50 33.8% 12 2004 Max Mirnyi 137 46 33.6% 13 2014 Samuel Groth 172 57 33.1% 14 2005 Gregory Carraz 98 32 32.7% 15 2007 Fritz Wolmarans 80 26 32.5%
Karlovic is truly in a class by himself. He’ll turn 40 next February, but age has had little impact on the effectiveness of his serve. While he reached his career peak ranking of No. 14 back in 2008, it was more recently that his serve was at its best. In 2015, he won more than three-quarters of his service points and held 95.5% of his serve games. Both of those marks were career highs. His recent serve stats have remained among his career bests, winning 73.5% of service points in 2018, though as his ranking has tumbled, these feats have come against weaker competition, in ATP qualifying and Challenger matches.
Age has taken its toll, however, and Ivo’s return game is the victim. From 2008-12, he broke serve in more than one out of ten chances, while in 2016-18, it has fallen below 8%. Neither mark is particularly impressive–Isner and Kyrgios are the only tour regulars to break in less than 17% of games this season–but the difference, from a peak of 12.0% in 2011 to a low of 7.1% this year, helps explain why the Croatian is playing more tiebreaks than ever.
Karlovic has long been one of the most unique players on tour, thanks to his height, his extreme statistical profile, and his willingness (or maybe his need) to approach the net. As he gets older and his game becomes even more one-dimensional, it’s only fitting that he breaks some of his own records, continuing past the age when most of his peers retire in order to hit even more aces and play even more tiebreaks.