Italian translation at settesei.it
The Indian Wells men’s draw looks a bit lopsided this year. The bottom quarter, anchored by No. 2 seed Novak Djokovic, also features Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Juan Martin del Potro, and Nick Kyrgios. It doesn’t take much analysis to see that the bracket makes life more difficult for Djokovic, and by extension, it cleared the way for Andy Murray. Alas, Murray lost his opening match against Vasek Pospisil on Saturday, making No. 3 seed Stan Wawrinka the luckiest man in the desert.
The draw sets up some very noteworthy potential matches: Federer and Nadal haven’t played before the quarterfinal since their first encounter back in 2004, and Fed hasn’t played Djokovic before the semis in more than 40 meetings, since 2007. Kyrgios, who has now beaten all three of the elites in his quarter, is likely to get another chance to prove his mettle against the best.
I haven’t done a piece on draw luck for awhile, and this seemed like a great time to revisit the subject. The principle is straightforward: By taking the tournament field and generating random draws, we can do a sort of “retro-forecast” of what each player’s chances looked like before the draw was conducted–back when Djokovic’s road wouldn’t necessarily be so rocky. By comparing the retro-forecast to a projection based on the actual draw, we can see how much the luck of the draw impacted each player’s odds of piling up ranking points or winning the title.
Here are the eight players most heavily favored by the pre-draw forecast, along with the their chances of winning the title, both before and after the draw was conducted:
Player Pre-Draw Post-Draw Novak Djokovic 26.08% 19.05% Andy Murray 19.30% 26.03% Roger Federer 10.24% 8.71% Rafael Nadal 5.46% 4.80% Stan Wawrinka 5.08% 7.14% Kei Nishikori 5.01% 5.67% Nick Kyrgios 4.05% 2.62% Juan Martin del Potro 4.00% 2.34%
These odds are based on my jrank rating system, which correlates closely with Elo. I use jrank here instead of Elo because it’s surface-specific. I’m also ignoring the first round of the main draw, which–since all 32 seeds get a first-round bye–is just a glorified qualifying round and has very little effect on the title chances of seeded players.
As you can see, the bottom quarter–the “group of death”–is in fact where title hopes go to die. Djokovic, who is still considered to be the best player in the game by both jrank and Elo, had a 26% pre-draw chance of defending his title, but it dropped to 19% once the names were placed in the bracket. Not coincidentally, Murray’s odds went in the opposite direction. Federer’s and Nadal’s title chances weren’t hit quite as hard, largely because they weren’t expected to get past Djokovic, no matter when they faced him.
The issue here isn’t just luck, it’s the limitation of the ATP ranking system. No one really thinks that del Potro entered the tournament as the 31st favorite, or that Kyrgios came in as the 15th. No set of rankings is perfect, but at the moment, the official rankings do a particularly poor job of reflecting the players with the best chances of winning hard court matches. The less reliable the rankings, the better chance of a lopsided draw like the one in Indian Wells.
For a more in-depth look at the effect of the draw on players with lesser chances of winning the title, we need to look at “expected ranking points.” Using the odds that a player reaches each round, we can calculate his expected points for the entire event. For someone like Kyle Edmund, who would have almost no chance of winning the title regardless of the draw, expected points tells a more detailed story of the power of draw luck. Here are the ten players who were punished most severely by the bracket:
Player Pre-Draw Pts Post-Draw Pts Effect Kyle Edmund 28.8 14.3 -50.2% Steve Johnson 65.7 36.5 -44.3% Vasek Pospisil 29.1 19.4 -33.2% Juan Martin del Potro 154.0 104.2 -32.3% Stephane Robert 20.3 14.2 -30.1% Federico Delbonis 20.0 14.5 -27.9% Novak Djokovic 429.3 325.4 -24.2% Nick Kyrgios 163.5 124.6 -23.8% Horacio Zeballos 17.6 14.1 -20.0% Alexander Zverev 113.6 91.5 -19.4%
At most tournaments, this list is dominated by players like Edmund and Pospisil: unseeded men with the misfortune of drawing an elite opponent in the first round. Much less common is to see so many seeds–particularly a top-two player–rating as the most unlucky. While Federer and Nadal don’t quite make the cut here, the numbers bear out our intuition: Fed’s draw knocked his expected points from 257 down to 227, and Nadal’s reduced his projected tally from 195 to 178.
The opposite list–those who enjoyed the best draw luck–features a lot of names from the top half, including both Murray and Wawrinka. Murray squandered his good fortune, putting Wawrinka in an even better position to take advantage of his own:
Player Pre-Draw Pts Post-Draw Pts Effect Malek Jaziri 21.9 31.6 44.4% Damir Dzumhur 29.1 39.0 33.9% Martin Klizan 27.6 36.4 32.1% Joao Sousa 24.7 31.1 25.9% Peter Gojowczyk 20.4 25.5 24.9% Tomas Berdych 93.6 116.6 24.6% Mischa Zverev 58.5 72.5 23.8% Yoshihito Nishioka 26.9 32.6 21.1% John Isner 80.2 97.0 21.0% Andy Murray 369.1 444.2 20.3% Stan Wawrinka 197.8 237.7 20.1%
Over the course of the season, quirks like these tend to even out. Djokovic, on the other hand, must be wondering how he angered the draw gods: Just to earn a quarter-final place against Roger or Rafa, he’ll need to face Kyrgios and Delpo for the second consecutive tournament.
If Federer, Kyrgios, and del Potro can bring their ATP rankings closer in line with their true talent, they are less likely to find themselves in such dangerous draw sections. For Djokovic, that would be excellent news.