I’ve been working quite a bit lately on TennisAbstract.com, and I hope you’ve noticed.
First and foremost, player pages are updating mid-tournament. Usually within an hour or two of the end of each match. For instance, check out Olivier Rochus, who qualified in Miami and has now reached the second round. While stats such as ace rate aren’t yet available for current-week matches, most filters do consider them. You know, just in case you’re wondering about Rochus’s career record against the Japanese.
Next, TennisAbstract.com now works in all major browsers, including Internet Explorer. Since the beginning of the site, I developed it only for Google Chrome. It mostly worked in Firefox until, several week ago, it suddenly didn’t. (The site depends on a few thousand lines of Javascript, and every browser interprets Javascript a little differently, except for IE, which reads it much differently.) The site is now functioning normally in Firefox. While it now works in IE, applying filters is painfully slow. I don’t know exactly why. I hope that you are using Firefox or Chrome at home, and if you have to use IE at work, your employer changes their ways soon.
I’ve also added a few rankings reports. First is the Country Rankings page for both men and women, which shows you the top three players for each country. It’s particularly interesting to see who the best national #2’s and #3’s are, along with the countries that have just one or two top-flight players. Second, there’s a “lefties only” ranking list for both men and women. Also, I’ve filled out the history of WTA Rankings by Age–you can now see year-end age-group rankings for any of the last 30 years. Here’s 2000.
Finally, ATP entry lists are now available, updated several times per day. For example, here’s the list for next week’s Le Gosier challenger. These lists show who is scheduled to play every event in the next six weeks or so, along with alternates and withdrawals.
Many thanks, Jeff. You are a hive of industry!
Now here’s a question that I haven’t been able to find the answer to: Delpo has come in for some harsh criticism because he obviously ran out of gas in the final at Indian Wells. Has anyone ever had to play Murray, Djokovic and Nadal on successive days before?
Thank you, Tom.
AFAICT, no, Delpo was the first. Oddly, my ‘streak finder’ code turned up Gael Monfils in May of 06, in which he played Nadal and Murray in three consecutive matches. Lost to Nadal in Rome SF, to Murray in Hamburg SF, then beat Murray in RG R128.
When I broadened the search a bit, I found 64 instances where someone faced top-5 players for three or more consecutive matches, though of course they needn’t be in the same event, and even if they are, they might not be consecutive days. Most notable is Canada 2009 — Del Potro played Nadal, Roddick, Murray in QF/SF/F, so presumably consecutive days, and lost to Murray.
Of interest, though less relevant, is that Nalbandian is the one player to have *five* straight results against top-5s. (There are a few streaks of four.) Lots of asterisks here, since it started in Basel SF (d Roddick), then he withdrew against Coria in the final. Then Masters Cup, where he played three top-fivers in RR, losing two.
And a bit more:
I narrowed the search to top-4 instead of top-5. Djokovic did it at 2007 Canada, beating Roddick (seeded 5, though I have him as ranked 3 that week), Nadal (2) and Fed (1) back to back.
And not consecutive days, but Berdych played Fed/Djokovic/Rafa in the last three rounds of 2010 Wimbledon.
Thanks very much, Jeff. I didn’t really dare to hope anyone could find out those facts without an exhaustive/exhausting amount of work.
My main interest is in factors that could lead to a (slightly) unexpected result. At Indian Wells, I expected Murray to trounce Delpo – probably by outlasting him. Then I expected Djokovic to do the same (but more confidently). After Delpo had beaten both of them – moreover, after losing the first set in each case – I was quite hopeful he could beat Nadal. Of course, when he was a set and a break up my confidence had grown. Then the match swung right round, and people who saw the play said that Delpo “ran out of gas” quite obviously.
Actually, the same thing happened in Canada 2009. Delpo beat Nadal, beat Roddick, exchanged tie-breaks with Murray – and then, quite abruptly, coughed, lost power, and coasted to a halt.
So I was thinking about the scheduling in those tournaments. Typically, the first rounds are well spaced, but after the fourth round it’s every day (or nearly so). That was well and good when tennis was a less physical sport, but I question whether anyone on earth could play Murray, Djokovic and Nadal on consecutive days and not get tired enough to spoil the sporting contest.
That’s a good point. It raises the question of whether players should be rewarded for coasting through earlier rounds–I always think of the epic Nadal-Djokovic semi in Madrid, when Nadal came out flat the next day and lost to Fed. The loss was surely due to the long match the day before … is that “fair”?
As far as predictions go, that’s something I’d like to investigate. Players all get tired and their performance level decreases, but not at the same rate, and the length of their previous matches is different. So maybe one could devise a metric that would say that Nadal came in at 90% (due to the previous two matches; can’t speak to his nagging injuries) while Delpo came in at 70%.
While the finals are the most glaring instances of that inequality, it’s even more marked with the quick qualifying rounds at many tournaments (the Dallas challenger last week was extreme, with three rounds in two days, followed by R32 the next day for qualifiers), and byes for seeds in some R1s. In those cases–and especially where they are combined–you have a player who is guaranteed to be fresh playing someone who is virtually guaranteed not to be.
Of course the classic example in recent years must be the Olympic Games. The marathon match between Federer and Del Potro left Federer so flat that he was easy meat for Murray. (Of course Murray might have won anyway, but I rather doubt it). Whoever won the semi-final, it seems inevitable he would have lost the final.
Jeff,
I find tennisabstract.com incredibly useful when gathering info for my posts. Thanks for keeping it up. It is vastly superior to getting info from ATP and WTA sites.
Rick Devereux
Can you please add epts(100) for ATP tournaments (that is the expectancy of points for the 100th best player).
That would be really interesting comparing them to challengers tournaments that week.
Thanks,
Amir
Your updates to tennisabstract.com have proven to be quite useful over the past few weeks. To be honest, I’m considering applying some custom CSS via plugin and making it my home page, hahaha. 🙂 I speak on behalf of all of us when I say thank you very much for your time and effort, Jeff.