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
- Where Does Vegas Get Those Wonderful (Tennis Forecasting) Toys? (hiddengameoftennis.com)
- The Road to 110 (hiddengameoftennis.com)
- Women’s Title Predictions for Indian Wells (on-the-t.com)
- Men’s Title Predictions for Indian Wells (on-the-t.com)
- Nick Kyrgios is More Predictable Than We Think (tennisabstract.com/blog)
- Nick Kyrgios Really is Different Under Pressure (tennisabstract.com/blog)
- Nick Kyrgios is Being Analytically Stalked by Tennis Abstract (tennisabstractwatch.com)
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
- Laslo Djere is the 30th seed at this year’s BNP Paribas Open. This is only the second time ever that a wild card is also seeded at a mandatory ATP Masters tournament since the introduction of mandatory ATP Masters tournaments at around 2000. Djere has never won a match at Masters level, and has won only four tour-level hard-court matches.
- Donald Young also got a wild card into the Indian Wells main draw, his 29th career tour-level main draw WC, and his fourth at this event. His first was 14 years ago.
- Yesterday, 104th-ranked Stefanie Voegele upset 4th-seeded Sloane Stephens. “Upset” is hardly the right word, since Voegele had won four of their previous five meetings, all but one since Stephens cracked the top 15.
- Roger Federer’s 100 titles in numbers: Where has he won most? Who has he beaten most? (bbc.com)
Beyond the Net
- Tennis Abstract readers and listeners are amazing: Luke Burrage built upon the sport of juggling combat and organized a tour, Fight Night Combat, with ranking and tour-structure concepts borrowed from tennis.
- An analytics revolution is sweeping through curling. Yes, curling. (washingtonpost.com) (and yes, Washington Post, we saw that you said “sweeping”)
- Introducing Elo To College Curling (harvardsportsanalysis.org)
- The Increasing Complexity of Analytics (statsbomb.com)
- Does Dating A Celebrity Affect Athletic Performance? A Closer Look At The “Kardashian Effect” (harvardsportsanalysis.org)
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.