Head on over to the tennis page at ESPN.com to see my first article for them: Clay-court Power Rankings.
The rankings haven’t changed much, but I did submit it last week, so it doesn’t reflect Rome results. As I pointed out the other day, the Rome final gave Djokovic the #1 ranking in my system, and it also moved a few other players around–notably, Gasquet into the top 10 and Verdasco out.
Last week, I wrote up a piece for ESPN.com that is supposed to run today. I’ll post a link as soon as it’s up. The article uses my ranking system to order the top players on clay, and of course, between last week’s deadline and this week’s publication, the ranking changed.
Here are some gainers and losers in my system heading into the French:
Yesterday we looked at players who broke into the top 100 when they were teenagers. As expected, those guys generally went on to great success–17 of the last 25 eventually reached the top 10, and at least two more may still do so.
We can gain a broader perspective by analyzing more than just teenagers. If a 19-year-old entering the top 100 is likely to become a top-10 player, what chances do 22-year-olds or 26-year-olds have? By examining a few decades of the ATP ranking system, we can begin to answer these questions.
I used a sample of 590 players–everyone who entered the top 100 between 1980 and 2005. (It’s possible that a few recent players will continue to improve, but the vast majority of players get close to their peak within five years, so 2005 seems like a reasonable cutoff date.) A bit less than half of those 590 broke into the top 100 between the ages of 20 and 22, about a third were older, and the remainder were teenagers.
As you can see in the table below, there is a clear correlation between breaking into the top 100 at an early age and reaching the higher echelons of the pro game. In the last 30 years, only one #1-ranked player (Pat Rafter) hadn’t reached the top 100 as a teenager, and he made it into the top 100 when he was 20. Almost every eventual top-10 player had broken into the top 100 by age 21.
Age Players Top50 Top20 Top10 Top5 Top1 16 4 100% 100% 100% 75% 50% 17 16 100% 88% 69% 56% 38% 18 38 87% 76% 61% 34% 11% 19 61 89% 48% 41% 20% 8% 20 88 86% 48% 25% 13% 1% 21 99 63% 22% 12% 7% 0% 22 83 47% 8% 5% 2% 0% 23 61 44% 16% 3% 0% 0% 24 62 31% 3% 0% 0% 0% 25 32 25% 0% 0% 0% 0% 26 10 60% 10% 0% 0% 0% 27 16 31% 0% 0% 0% 0% 28 10 20% 0% 0% 0% 0% 29+ 10 0% 0% 0% 0% 0%
It’s not entirely clear that these trends are consistent from decade to decade–yesterday, I noted that fewer teenagers had reached the top 100 in the last ten years or so. It’s possible that as the quality of the game improves and a larger amount of training is necessary to prepare for the pro tour, there will be fewer prodigies like Nadal, who broke in at age 16, and Richard Gasquet, who arrived as a 17-year-old.
But even if the ages shift by a year or two, the overall conclusions should hold. The older you are when you arrive in the top 100, the less likely it is that you will advance considerably further.
One obvious application of this data is to make predictions regarding players as they enter the top 100. The last two men to break in are Benoit Paire (age 22) and Matthias Bachinger (age 24). Paire is still young enough to have an outside shot at the top 10; Bachinger will have a hard time doing much better than #50. Another recent newbie is Go Soeda, a 26-year-old. To find someone who made a top-20 success out of so late a breakthrough, you have to go back to Steve Denton in the mid-80s.
Another way to use this information is to find top prospects among current players. Among active tour pros, the four men who broke in at the youngest ages are Nadal, Gasquet, Juan Martin del Potro, and Novak Djokovic. The next two might surprise you: Kei Nishikori and Donald Young. Nishikori has only now recovered from battles with injury–perhaps he will start to make good on his promise. Young may be a unique case–were it not for his many, many wildcards, he would not have reached the top 100 so early.
Another surprise is the active player with the 10th-youngest age-of-reaching-100: Evgeny Korolev. The Russian has also struggled with injury, but he did crack the top 50 last year.
The more oft-mentioned “prospects” are a little further down the list. Grigor Dimitrov broke in at 19.7 years of age, while Milos Raonic appeared just after his 20th birthday–a few days older than the first appearance of Mischa Zverev. Alexander Dolgopolov is further down than you might expect, having broken in at age 21.3, while Ryan Sweeting didn’t get there until 23.5.
Of course, “age of first appearance in the top 100” is just one metric, and it doesn’t tell the whole story. Perhaps players who spend several years in college account for that blip in the table at age 23–John Isner, for instance, didn’t reach the top 100 until he was nearly 23, and he has already hit a peak ranking of #18. The metric might also underrate the chances of those who suffer prolonged injury at an early age–perhaps if Nishikori had lost his two years to injury one season sooner, he would have only recently reached the top 100 with the same skills and potential.
Warts and all, this angle is a good reminder of why we should keep a close eye on youngsters in the futures and challenger tours–the latest, greatest 23-year-old is almost guaranteed not to be the future of the sport.
If Ryan Harrison qualifies for the French Open and reaches the second round, he’ll probably break into the top 100. I wouldn’t bet on that degree of success at Roland Garros, but the relevant point is that the young American is close–if he falters in Paris, a couple of deep runs at challenger events will do the trick.
Harrison just turned 19, and he is the youngest player in the top 150. When Grigor Dimitrov turns 20 next Monday, Harrison will the be the top-ranked 19-year-old in the world. There is a widespread sense that reaching the top 100 is one measure of “making it,” and an equally popular notion that if a player hits that benchmark at such a young age, he is probably destined for success.
Indeed, hitting the top 100 as a teenager is rare, and it’s getting even less common. Of the 940 players who have spent time in the top 100 in the history of the ATP ranking computer, fewer than 150 (16%) broke in when they were teenagers. Since the beginning of 2001, 209 players have broken in, including only 25 teenagers (12%).
As you might expect, those 25 have generally gone on to very successful careers. 20 have reached the top 20, and 17 have climbed into the top 10. It’s even better than that, since in time, Dimitrov and Kei Nishikori seem likely to make those numbers 22 and 19 out of 25.
If Harrison breaks into the top 100 by the end of July, he’ll become the 20th youngest player to do so since the beginning of 2001. If we want to get technical and limit the span to exactly 10 years, he’ll become the 16th youngest player since mid-2001. (Early 2001 was a good time for teenagers, with Jose Acasuso, Andy Roddick, Mikhail Youhzny, and Tommy Robredo all reaching the top 100 in the span of three months.)
Incidentally, Bernard Tomic has a chance to make an even more impressive mark, as he is five and a half months younger than Harrison. However, he’s 50 spots and 130 points lower on the ranking computer, so his appearance in the top 100 as a teenager seems far less assured.
After the jump, see the full list of teenagers who reached the top 100 since 2001.
It’s tricky to do these at the beginning of tournaments this time of year — the first round is underway before the final of the previous event is over, and before the qualifying event is completed. But the schedule does tighten up later in the week, so it makes sense to run projections before the round of 16, all of those matches are set and none have been played.
I would make my usual comment about my system underrating Nadal’s dominance, but Rafa did lose a set today to Paolo Lorenzi. I don’t think Rafa will lose before the final, but it does put things in perspective a bit.
Player QF SF F W (1)Rafael Nadal 83.3% 69.2% 47.9% 31.1% Feliciano Lopez 16.7% 7.8% 2.4% 0.7% (11)Mardy Fish 47.9% 11.0% 3.6% 1.1% Marin Cilic 52.1% 12.1% 4.0% 1.1% (3)Roger Federer 80.6% 60.8% 31.1% 17.3% (16)Richard Gasquet 19.4% 8.9% 2.1% 0.5% (LL)Jarkko Nieminen 22.5% 2.8% 0.3% 0.0% (7)Tomas Berdych 77.5% 27.6% 8.5% 3.0% Player QF SF F W Florian Mayer 70.4% 21.6% 4.5% 0.9% Juan Ignacio Chela 29.6% 4.8% 0.5% 0.1% Potito Starace 11.4% 3.9% 0.4% 0.0% (4)Andy Murray 88.6% 69.8% 29.4% 11.9% (5)Robin Soderling 62.7% 23.6% 13.6% 5.3% (9)Nicolas Almagro 37.3% 9.2% 4.1% 1.1% (14)Stanislas Wawrinka 18.5% 7.7% 3.4% 0.9% (2)Novak Djokovic 81.5% 59.4% 44.0% 25.0%
Haven’t done one of these in a while. Last week, Ryan Harrison turned 19, which moved Bernard Tomic up to #1 on the 18-and-under list. Milos Raonic keeps climbing the charts, and may well be #1 on the 22-and-under list the next time I publish this.
18 AND UNDER 174 Bernard Tomic AUS 10/21/92 308 Facundo Arguello ARG 8/4/92 369 Diego Schwartzman ARG 8/16/92 394 Tiago Fernandes BRA 1/29/93 395 Yuki Bhambri IND 7/4/92 428 Benjamin Mitchell AUS 11/30/92 440 Denis Kudla USA 8/17/92 471 Alexander Rumyantsev RUS 8/16/92 477 Agustin Velotti ARG 5/24/92 481 Roberto Carballes-Baena ESP 3/23/93 561 Carlos Boluda ESP 1/22/93 563 Guilherme Clezar BRA 12/31/92 575 Jack Sock USA 9/24/92 597 Jason Kubler AUS 5/19/93 640 Victor Baluda RUS 9/30/92 654 Suk-Young Jeong KOR 4/12/93 671 Micke Kontinen FIN 12/18/92 673 Jozef Kovalik SVK 11/4/92 692 Robert Rumler CZE 12/1/93 693 Sami Reinwein GER 5/29/92 20 AND UNDER 26 Milos Raonic CAN 12/27/90 64 Grigor Dimitrov BUL 5/16/91 81 Richard Berankis LTU 6/21/90 121 Ryan Harrison USA 5/7/92 166 Jerzy Janowicz POL 11/13/90 167 Vladimir Ignatik BLR 7/14/90 174 Bernard Tomic AUS 10/21/92 192 Federico del Bonis ARG 10/5/90 198 Andrey Kuznetsov RUS 2/22/91 204 Marius Copil ROU 10/17/90 214 Cedrik-Marcel Stebe GER 10/9/90 216 David Goffin BEL 7/12/90 239 Jonathan Eysseric FRA 5/27/90 245 Javier Marti ESP 1/11/92 252 Guillaume Rufin FRA 5/26/90 257 Vasek Pospisil CAN 6/23/90 259 Alexander Lobkov RUS 10/7/90 279 Daniel Cox GBR 9/28/90 282 Pablo Carreno ESP 7/12/91 284 Gastao Elias POR 11/24/90 22 AND UNDER 20 Alexander Dolgopolov UKR 11/7/88 23 Marin Cilic CRO 9/28/88 26 Milos Raonic CAN 12/27/90 31 Juan Martin del Potro ARG 9/23/88 53 Kei Nishikori JPN 12/29/89 54 Adrian Mannarino FRA 6/29/88 63 Ernests Gulbis LAT 8/30/88 64 Grigor Dimitrov BUL 5/16/91 74 Thiemo de Bakker NED 9/19/88 81 Richard Berankis LTU 6/21/90 94 Donald Young USA 7/23/89 98 Benoit Paire FRA 5/8/89 111 Thomas Schoorel NED 4/8/89 121 Ryan Harrison USA 5/7/92 130 Tatsuma Ito JPN 5/18/88 146 Joao Souza BRA 5/27/88 154 Martin Klizan SVK 7/11/89 166 Jerzy Janowicz POL 11/13/90 167 Vladimir Ignatik BLR 7/14/90 174 Bernard Tomic AUS 10/21/92
Lopez threatens: In one of the best matches of the season so far, Roger Federer snuck past Feliciano Lopez 7-6(13), 6-7(1), 7-6(7). It’s a shame there had to be a loser: given Lopez’s form right now, he’s no doubt better than many of the 16 players who remain in the draw.
The last time Federer played a three-tiebreak match was in November against Gael Monfils; he lost that one. To find the last such match he won, we have to go back to Halle in 2006, when he beat Olivier Rochus after dropping a first-set breaker. Whatever the weaknesses in Roger’s game, it’s tough to bet against him in a tiebreak, especially against another player with a serve-focused game. He’s now 8-2 in tiebreaks this year, a percentage second only to Stanislas Wawrinka (really!) among guys who have played that many breakers.
Ending the madness: The Federer-Lopez was unusual yesterday; there were only two tiebreaks in all the other men’s singles matches combined. With the exception of Jurgen Melzer, the other seeds coasted through, with both Tomas Berdych and Juan Martin del Potro (a seed in all but name and favorable draw) dropping a bagel on their opponent.
Melzer wasn’t so lucky, losing in straight sets to Daniel Gimeno-Traver. DGT has been the surprise of the event, coming in with a 2-12 record this year in ATP main draw matches. He qualified by beating a credible opponent in Ruben Ramirez Hidalgo, then bumped Richard Gasquet in the first round. He needed only two sets to beat Melzer, returning so well that the Austrian failed to win even half of his service points.
On the basis of his showing this week, Gimeno-Traver should rise to a new career high of at least #52, and he might not be done yet. Later today, he faces Michael Llodra for a spot in the quarterfinals and a probable match against Rafael Nadal.
Today: On the Madrid schedule, we have the entire round of 16. For the first time in the clay season, Nadal is not the most heavily favored player–the oddsmakers give him “only” an 85% chance of defeating del Potro. If the betting odds are to be believed, Federer, Novak Djokovic, and David Ferrer are have a 90% chance or better of reaching the quarterfinals.
In fact, only two of the eight matches qualify for potential blockbuster status. The first, of course, is Nadal-Delpo; the other is Robin Soderling vs. Jo-Wilfried Tsonga. It’s odd to see Tsonga without a seed next to his name; in the draw, he’s taken the place of Nicholas Almagro, the man he beat in the first round. He’s healthy, and while he’s appeared rusty the last couple of times I’ve seen him, the 6-1, 6-3 defeat of Almagro suggests the rust is coming off. Soderling has been far from unbeatable lately as well, so this one could go either way.
A few challenger notes: In Prague, Fernando Gonzalez has won the first set over Jeremy Chardy, a step toward what would be a solid win for the Chilean’s comeback. Also, Alex Bogomolov, the only American in the tournament, has reached the quarters after wins against Adam Kellner (last week’s finalist in Ostrava) and Jesse Huta Galung. That should give Bogie another career-high ranking of at least #89.
The rest of the Americans are in Savannah, where both Wayne Odesnik and Denis Kudla have scored first-round upsets this week. Odesnik, who qualified, knocked out sixth-seed Marinko Matosevic, while Kudla beat fifth-seed Izak van der Merwe. This swing of U.S. challengers makes a good opportunity for Odesnik to rocket in the rankings, as these events are played on clay. He might be the only man in the draw who prefers it that way.
Past his prime? It has been a dreadful year for Fernando Verdasco. He went to Australia ranked #9; now he’s #17. With the exception of a run to the finals in Estoril last week, he hasn’t won a single match on tour since San Jose in February. Even last week’s performance was unimpressive–one of his three wins was by retirement over Milos Raonic, and another required three sets over Kevin Anderson.
This year, he’s lost to the likes of Benjamin Becker, Pablo Andujar (on a hard court!), Sam Querrey, and yesterday, Yen-Hsun Lu, which suggests his free fall isn’t over yet. At least yesterday’s 7-6 7-5 loss was a close one.
Lower standards: I suppose it could be worse for Verdasco–he could be coming back from injury, playing a challenger somewhere. That’s what both James Blake and Fernando Gonzalez are doing this week. Blake is charging through the U.S. challenger circuit with two finals in as many weeks, and is into the second round in Savannah. His ranking this week rose to #109, so another strong effort will set him up to make the Wimbledon cut.
Gonzalez is playing in Prague, where he’ll start his tournament tomorrow against Jaroslav Pospisil. If he wins, he’ll face top seed Jeremy Chardy, which should be an interesting test of Freddy’s fitness at this stage of his comeback.
Tiebreak madness: A day after John Isner defeated Mardy Fish in a third-set tiebreak, the tables were turned. Sergiy Stakhovsky came up with a clutch performance to down Isner in yet another third-set breaker. The Ukrainian was just a little better in every category, winning 72% of service points and 32% of return points to Isner’s 68% and 28%.
Speaking of breakers, Rick Devereaux took a look at tiebreak winning percentage with a leaderboard. He hints at a question that may prove difficult to solve: Are great players successful because they can perform in the clutch and win tiebreaks, or do they win tiebreaks simply because they are better than their opponents?
Faceoffs: Despite the early losses of Verdasco, Nicholas Almagro, and Gael Monfils, the Madrid draw is set to generate some big-time matchups. An early highlight will be a round-of-16 contest between Rafael Nadal and Juan Martin del Potro, assuming both get that far. Delpo, for his part, must defeat Marin Cilic today.
A thriller could come even sooner in the other half of the draw, with a second-rounder on today’s schedule between Gilles Simon and Andy Murray. Simon won a squeaker against Ivan Ljubicic yesterday, and showed the skills to threaten Murray in Monte Carlo before suffering an injury.
Also interesting is the potential of the bottommost quarter. As I write, Novak Djokovic is working his way past Anderson; next he’ll push aside Guillermo Garcia-Lopez. But his projected quarterfinal opponent is a different story. David Ferrer has been the second-best player on clay this year, and that match should be an early test of whether Djokovic can be a major factor on clay this year.
Rankings report: It’s a fascinating time of the year in the rankings, as the French Open approaches and the value of a ranking in the top 32 (or 34 or 35, depending on injuries) rises. As I wrote in February, a seed increases a player’s chances of advancing further in the tournament. The benefit is most marked in the 30-35 range, where #32 won’t have to face another seed until the third round, while #35 could draw Rafael Nadal in the first round.
By winning in Estoril and Munich, respectively, both Juan Martin del Potro and Nikolay Davydenko bounced back into the top 32–Davydenko up 12 places to #28, and Delpo up 14 to #32. Florian Mayer, the other finalist in Munich, also moved up from #35 to #30 on last week’s result.
Another big gainer was James Blake, up 40 spots to #109 on the strength of his title in Sarasota. The losing finalist at that tournament, Alex Bogomolov, rose to #91, his career high. Also marking a career best is Benoit Paire, who reached the semifinal in Ostrava, good enough to get him to #99, his first time in the top 100.
Big losers include Fernando Verdasco, down yet another two spots to #17, and Ernests Gulbis, who fell a whopping 31 places down to #64. At the rate he’s going, he’ll have to qualify for Masters 1000 events this summer.
Pobrecitos: Every year, I go into the clay court season knowing it will be bad for Americans, yet every year, the top Americans manage to disappoint. Andy Roddick may have reached a new low, losing to qualifer Flavio Cipolla. I love Cipolla, but I root for him with full knowledge of his limitations, and those limitations should include an inability to beat Roddick. Yet the Italian came through a very tight match, breaking four times to Andy’s two.
In the second round, Cipolla will face Michael Llodra, who had a much easier time dispatching his American opponent, allowing Sam Querrey only five games. Querrey won only 51% of his service points, a disappointing number regardless of surface. The only American in the second round is John Isner, who served his way past Mardy Fish.
Matches to watch: The first round isn’t quite over, and the remaining matches include many blockbusters. On the card for tomorrow:
Oh-for-three: A couple of days ago, Dustin Brown blew open the bottom half of the Munich draw by upsetting Stanislas Wawrinka. Yesterday, three men’s matches were completed, and each one knocked out one of the remaining seven seeds.
Potito Starace was most impressive of the three underdogs, winning 58% of total points and landing 86% of his first serves. That was more than good enough to get past Sergiy Stakhovsky. Starace is putting together a very solid clay season, at least at the 250s, as he reached the final in Casablanca a few weeks ago.
Starace will next face Phillip Petzschner, who needed three sets to get past Mikhail Youzhny. That’s becoming a less-impressive feat–I’ve always been a big Youzhny fan, but he’s only had one solid tournament all year, and that was back in Marseilles, when he beat Gilles Simon and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in back-to-back rounds. The Russian mounted a fantastic comeback season last year, but if (when) he fails to defend his semifinalist points from the U.S. Open, it could well start a downhill slide that will knock him out of the top 20 for good.
Speaking of Tsonga: Perhaps beating Tsonga doesn’t count for as much as it used to, either. Though the Frenchman is healthy, he is struggling to get back into match form. The latest setback was yesterday’s loss in Estoril to Pablo Cuevas, in which he lost a second-set tiebreak at love. Never a good sign for someone like him to lose at least three of three service points in a tiebreak.
There’s still plenty of firepower left in the Estoril draw. As predicted, both Juan Martin del Potro and Robin Soderling advanced to the quarters, though Soderling needed three sets to defeat Jeremy Chardy. Delpo crushed Soderling only a month ago in Miami, and on clay, tomorrow’s result will depend even more on the Swede’s health. It’s only a quarterfinal, but the match could well determine the tournament champion.
Cakewalk: I’ve got a bold prediction for the Serbia Open: Novak Djokovic will beat Blaz Kavcic tomorrow (one oddsmaker has Kavcic as high as 44-1), then he’ll beat somebody else, and then he’ll beat somebody else. Making things a little more interesting–at least for the home crowd–is that those two “somebody else’s” could both be Serbian. Novak’s semifinal opponent could be Janko Tipsarevic, while the man seeded to face him in the final is designated whipping boy Viktor Troicki.
In the meantime, we can follow the rest of the contenders as they advance to slaughter. Feliciano Lopez quickly ended Fernando Gonzalez’s comeback, beating him yesterday in straight sets, and he’ll next face Albert Montanes. Sportsbooks have set that match dead even, while my system gives Feliciano a 58% chance of moving on.
Sarasota: Even the challenger fields are a bit uninteresting this week, partly because some of the guys who usually contend for those titles got into ATP-level draws, instead. The possible challenger highlight of the week is coming on in a few hours, as James Blake will have a chance for revenge against the distracted Donald Young. Oddsmakers give Blake about a a 57% chance, while my system favors Young, with his more recent success.