New Functionality (and a little more data) on TennisAbstract.com

Since meta-sizing the TennisAbstract.com database, I’ve focused on making each player page more useful and functional.  Here are the highlights:

• “Show Career” link.  By default, most pages show a player’s matches for the last 52 weeks.  When you start applying filters, the number of matches shrinks heavily.  In many cases, what you really want is that set of filters applied to the player’s whole career. Now, there’s a “show career” link at the bottom of every list of matches.  (Unless, of course, the table is already displaying the full career!)
• Apply filters to a new player.  A few days ago, a reader sent me this link, carefully constructed from four different filters, with four selections in one of the filters.  Once you’ve done all that work, what if you want to see the same filters applied to a different player?  Now, instead of repeating the process, enter the player into the search box below the match list, and voila! the filters are applied to another player.
• Ctrl-Click for multiple selections. I’ve never liked the behavior of the menus for multiple selections.  By default, if you clicked on a second selection, the page assumed you wanted both.  For instance, to change from “hard” to “clay,” for instance, you had to click on “clay,” then click on “hard” again to deselect “hard.”  Now, these selections behave more intuitively.  If you want multiple selections, hold down the control key while clicking on a filter.
• More filters for best-of-five matches.  If you haven’t looked recently, check out the menus for “Results” and “Sets.”  Now you can search for five-setters where a player lost the first two sets, or best-of-fives that went exactly four sets, and so on.  By splitting these into two menus, there are more possible queries than ever.
• Exclude players from results.  How impressive are Juan Martin del Potro’s results this year if you exclude his losses to Roger Federer?  The “Exclude Opp” menu makes it easy to answer questions like these.
• More Davis Cup coverage.  I’ve added World Group Playoffs (or Challenge Rounds, or Qualifying Rounds, or whatever they called them from one year to the next) from 1981 to 2002.  Now World Group results are complete back to 1981, along with Group 1 and Group 2 back to 1993.  Still more to come.

Many of these came directly from reader suggestions.  I do appreciate every comment even though I can’t act on them all.  Many suggestions aren’t yet reflected on the site, but are moving their way up the to-do list.   Let me know what would make the site more valuable to you.