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
- Boys Grand Slam Winners Developing as Pros, or “Geoffrey Blancaneaux, You’re On the Clock” (hiddengameoftennis.com)
- Putting ELO on Your Radar (hiddengameoftennis.com)
- What Can Match Stats Tell Us About Playing Styles? (on-the-t.com)
- More Exploration on Using Match Stats to Classify Playing Styles (on-the-t.com)
- Forecasting Future Felix With ATP Aging Patterns (tennisabstract.com/blog)
- The Most Predictable Woman in Tennis (tennisabstract.com/blog)
Multimedia
- Tennis Abstract Podcast Episode 55: Miami Titles for Barty and Federer
- Tennis Abstract Podcast Episode 56: Gender Differences in Surface Differences
Data
- Match Charting Project: The dataset has grown by more than 75 matches in the last two weeks, from 5,439 to 5,517. We’ve added several more men’s and women’s major semi-finals from the 1990s, some vintage WTA Hilton Head and Berlin finals, along with the usual grab bag of recent matches.
- Spinrate analysis from the Miami Masters (twitter.com/Vestige_du_jour)
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
- How Good Are FiveThirtyEight Forecasts? (fivethirtyeight.com)
- The marathon has vanquished other long-distance running events (economist.com/gametheory)
- Why the NHL’s best team in decades is unlikely to win the Stanley Cup (economist.com/gametheory)
Thanks to Peter for help with this week’s issue.