One of my favorite subsets of the Match Charting Project is the ongoing effort–in huge part thanks to Edo–to chart all Grand Slam finals, men’s and women’s, back to 1980. We’re getting really close, with a total of 261 Slam finals charted, including:
- every men’s Wimbledon and US Open final all the way back to 1980;
- every men’s Slam final since 1989 Wimbledon;
- every women’s Slam final back to 2001, with a single exception.
The Match Charting Project gathers and standardizes data that, for many of these matches, simply didn’t exist before. These recaps give us shot-by-shot breakdowns of historically important matches, allowing us to quantify how the game has changed–at least at the very highest level–over the last 35 years. A couple of months ago, I did one small project using this data to approximate surface speed changes–that’s just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what you can do with this data. (The dataset is also publicly available, so have fun!)
We’ve got about 30 Slam finals left to chart, and you might be able to help. As always, we are actively looking for new contributors to the project to chart matches (here’s how to get started, and why you should, and you don’t have to chart Slam finals!), but right now, I have a different request.
We’ve scoured the internet, from YouTube to Youku to torrent trackers, to find video for all of these matches. While I don’t expect any of you to have the 1980 Teacher-Warwick Australian Open final sitting around on your hard drive, I’ve got higher hopes for some of the more recent matches we’re missing.
If you have full (or nearly full) video for any of these matches, or you know of a (preferably free) source where we can find them, please–please, please!–drop me a line. Once we have the video, Edo or I will do the rest, and the project will become even more valuable.
- 2007 Wimbledon, Venus Williams vs Marion Bartoli
- 2000 US Open, Venus Williams vs Lindsay Davenport
- 1998 US Open, Lindsay Davenport vs Martina Hingis
- 1989 or 1995 Roland Garros, and 1994 US Open, Steffi Graf vs Arantxa Sanchez Vicario
- 1990 Wimbledon, Martina Navratilova vs Zina Garrison
- 1989 Roland Garros, Stefan Edberg vs Michael Chang
- 1987 Australian Open, Stefan Edberg vs Pat Cash
- 1985 or 1987 Roland Garros, Ivan Lendl vs Mats Wilander
There are several more finals from the 1980s that we’re still looking for. Here’s the complete list.
Thanks for your help!