This is a guest post by Peter Wetz.
Italian translation at settesei.it
Three weeks ago, Jürgen Melzer played his last singles tournament on home turf at the Erste Bank Open in Vienna. His low singles ranking, caused by injury setbacks and a mediocre comeback campaign, required him to enter into the tournament as a wild card. Melzer drew Milos Raonic in the first round; bookmakers and fans alike predicted that this would be Melzer’s last singles match.
However, things went differently. In front of a packed arena (at least by tournament-Monday standards) Melzer squeezed out a two set win to face Kevin Anderson in the round of 16. That match never happened, though, after a suddenly occurring gastritis forced him to withdraw. As weird as it sounds, this means that Melzer did not lose the last match of his singles career, a feat only a few players can put on their CV.
Another unique thing about Melzer is that he is one of the last players to reach an elite level in singles as well as in doubles. To underline this characteristic let’s start by looking at singles (ChS) and doubles (ChD) career high rankings of recently-retired1 top ten singles players. The following table shows each player’s peak singles and doubles rankings, sorted by the date at which each player recorded their best singles ranking:
Player ChS ChS Date ChD ChD Date Paradorn Srichaphan 9 2003-05 79 2003-09 Juan Carlos Ferrero 1 2003-09 198 2003-02 Andy Roddick 1 2003-11 50 2010-01 Rainer Schuettler 5 2004-04 40 2005-07 Guillermo Coria 3 2004-05 183 2004-03 Nicolas Massu 9 2004-09 31 2005-07 Joachim Johansson 9 2005-02 108 2005-09 Gaston Gaudio 5 2005-04 78 2004-06 Guillermo Canas 8 2005-06 47 2002-07 Mariano Puerta 9 2005-08 68 1999-08 David Nalbandian 3 2006-03 105 2009-10 Ivan Ljubicic 3 2006-05 70 2005-05 Mario Ancic 7 2006-07 47 2004-06 Radek Stepanek 8 2006-07 4 2012-11 Nikolay Davydenko 3 2006-11 31 2005-06 James Blake 4 2006-11 31 2003-03 Fernando Gonzalez 5 2007-01 25 2005-07 Robin Soderling 4 2010-11 109 2009-05 Jürgen Melzer 8 2011-04 6 2010-10 Nicolas Almagro 9 2011-05 48 2011-03 Mardy Fish 7 2011-08 14 2009-07 Janko Tipsarevic 8 2012-04 46 2011-04 Juan Monaco 10 2012-07 41 2009-01
The data shows that top ten singles players rarely climb up to the very top in doubles. Of course, there can be several reasons for this: scheduling (playing a full singles schedule can be exhausting) or skill (being a good singles player doesn’t necessarily mean that you are also a good doubles player), among others. The fact that the best doubles career high ranking by the Big Four is Roger Federer’s rank of 24 reached in 2003 further underlines that top singles players have better things to do than practicing their volleying skills.
So, as the table above already suggests, Melzer is one of the last of the breed of players that–ranking-wise–made it until the very top in both singles and doubles. The following table shows players who reached a top-ten career high in both rankings, sorted by when they achieved their high in doubles back until 1990.
Player ChS ChS Date ChD ChD Date Petr Korda 2 1998-02 10 1990-06 Michael Stich 2 1993-11 9 1991-03 Marc Rosset 9 1995-09 8 1992-11 Yevgeny Kafelnikov 1 1999-05 4 1998-03 Patrick Rafter 1 1999-07 6 1999-02 Wayne Ferreira 6 1995-05 9 2001-03 Jiri Novak 5 2002-10 6 2001-07 Jonas Björkman 4 1997-11 1 2001-07 Arnaud Clement 10 2001-04 8 2008-01 Jürgen Melzer 8 2011-04 6 2010-10 Radek Stepanek 8 2006-07 4 2012-11 Fernando Verdasco* 7 2009-04 8 2013-11 Jack Sock* 8 2017-11 2 2018-09
* Active singles player
Since 1990 there have only been 13 players who reached a doubles and singles career high inside the top ten. The last number one with a top ten doubles ranking was Patrick Rafter. Currently there are only two active singles players part of this group. As has already been mentioned on this blog several times, Jack Sock’s doubles prowess is an exception no matter how you look at it. And the time between Fernando Verdasco’s singles high and doubles high shows that he reached them at two completely different stages of his career, which brings us to the final measure: Which players held a top ten spot in both rankings at the same time? The following table shows players, weeks spent in the singles top ten (weeksS), weeks spent in the doubles top ten (weeksD) and weeks spent in both singles and doubles top ten at the same time (weeksS+D) sorted by the date the doubles career high was reached.
Player weeksS weeksD weeksS+D Chd Date John Mcenroe 208 96 74 1983-01 Pat Cash 89 14 5 1984-08 Anders Jarryd 82 379 78 1985-08 Mats Wilander 227 72 72 1985-10 Stefan Edberg 452 122 117 1986-06 Guy Forget 79 119 5 1986-08 Yannick Noah 157 87 84 1986-08 Andres Gomez 143 62 31 1986-09 Boris Becker 530 21 21 1986-09 Joakim Nystrom 72 57 33 1986-11 Miloslav Mecir 109 19 19 1988-03 Emilio Sanchez 57 138 44 1989-04 Jakob Hlasek 37 132 10 1989-11 Yevgeny Kafeln. 388 157 148 1998-03 Patrick Rafter 156 33 26 1999-02 Jonas Björkman 43 462 29 2001-07 Jürgen Melzer 14 50 14 2010-09
With Melzer’s retirement, there is no active player who held a top ten ranking in singles and doubles at the same week. In other words, he is the last player who held simultaneous top ten rankings in singles and doubles. With Jonas Björkman this makes him one of only two players in this group for the past 18 years! Even in the nineties there were only two players–Rafter and Yevgeny Kafelnikov–reaching this feat, whereas in the eighties there were many others.
Even if this stream of trivia does not tell us much analytically, we can see that players peaking with and without partners on their side of the court are becoming a rare species. The times when they have done so simultaneously are long gone.
Footnotes
1. We look at retired players, because their career high rankings are not subject to change anymore.
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Peter Wetz is a computer scientist interested in racket sports and data analytics based in Vienna, Austria.