This is a guest post by Peter Wetz.
When a 25 year old Italian tennis player named Marco Cecchinato defeated Marius Copil in the first round of this year’s edition of Roland Garros, some people may have noticed that it was one of the longer first round matches. With a duration of 3 hours and 41 minutes the match was the fifth longest of the 64 opening round matches. However, I am confident that no one suspected the winner of this encounter would go much farther in the draw. Little did we know.
After his unexpected four set win in the quarterfinal against a hard-fighting Novak Djokovic–bookmakers were giving him about an 11 percent chance of winning–many tweets emphasized the uniqueness of this achievement. Since it is difficult to provide more context in a tweet, I was interested in just how often something like this happened in the past. So I looked into the data and came up with more complete lists of the tweeted facts which are presented in the remainder of this post.
The first and obvious question is, when was the last time that a player ranked as high as Cecchinato reached a Grand Slam semifinal?
The following table shows players ranked outside of the top-70 that reached a Grand Slam semifinal. Rows denoting achievements at Roland Garros are bold.
Tourney Player Rank Round
RG 18 Marco Cecchinato 72 SF
W 08 Rainer Schuettler 94 SF
W 08 Marat Safin 75 SF
AO 04 Marat Safin 86 F
W 01 Goran Ivanisevic 125 W
W 00 Vladimir Voltchkov 237 SF
RG 99 Andrei Medvedev 100 F
AO 99 Nicolas Lapentti 91 SF
AO 98 Nicolas Escude 81 SF
W 97 Michael Stich 88 SF
RG 97 Filip Dewulf 122 SF
RG 92 Henri Leconte 200 SF
UO 91 Jimmy Connors 174 SF
AO 91 Patrick Mcenroe 114 SF
As the tweet points out the most recent comparable runs by Rainer Schuettler and Marat Safin happened after the players have reached top-10 rankings. Hence, the most recent really comparable run where the player has not reached his career high ranking at the time of the tournament, is by Vladimir Voltchkov, who reached the semifinal at Wimbledon 2000.*
Another unique thing about Cecchinato’s run is that until last week he did not win a single match at a Grand Slam event.
The following table shows players that won their first match at a Grand Slam event and went on to win more matches. To prevent showing an extremely short table, I relaxed the condition on how far the player should have gone when winning his first Grand Slam match to reaching the quarterfinal. The last column Attempts denotes the number of main draw appearances until his first main draw win.
Tourney Player Rank Reached Attempts
RG 18 Marco Cecchinato 72 SF 6
AO 18 Tennys Sandgren 97 QF 3
RG 03 Martin Verkerk 46 F 3
W 00 Alexander Popp 114 QF 2
W 97 Nicolas Kiefer 98 QF 3
RG 97 Galo Blanco 111 QF 4
W 96 Alex Radulescu 91 QF 1
RG 95 Albert Costa 36 QF 4
RG 94 Hendrik Dreekmann 89 QF 2
AO 93 Brett Steven 71 QF 1
As the table shows, rarely has a player gotten past the quarterfinal after recording his debut win at a Grand Slam, with the notable exception of Martin Verkerk, who reached the final 15 years ago at his third attempt. Still–especially in the 1990s–there were a few players who won four consecutive matches. Not included in the table, but not less impressive, is the run by Mikael Pernfors. Interestingly, he had not won a single Grand Slam match, but he had built himself a ranking of 26, when he reached the final round of Roland Garros 1986, where he also won his first main draw match.
When looking at male Grand Slam competitors from Italy, not many names besides Fabio Fognini, Andreas Seppi, Simone Bolelli, and Paolo Lorenzi spring to mind. With 150 main draw appearances, the quartet shares a mere ten appearances in the round of 16 and one quarterfinal appearance (Fabio Fognini at Roland Garros 2011). Marco Cecchinato is the first Italian player in the semifinal of a Grand Slam in 40 years.
The following table shows all appearances of Italian players past the round of 16.
Tourney Player Reached
RG 18 Marco Cecchinato SF
RG 11 Fabio Fognini QF
W 98 Davide Sanguinetti QF
RG 95 Renzo Furlan QF
AO 91 Cristiano Caratti QF
RG 80 Corrado Barazzutti QF
W 79 Adriano Panatta QF
RG 78 Corrado Barazzutti SF
UO 77 Corrado Barazzutti SF
RG 77 Adriano Panatta QF
RG 76 Adriano Panatta W
RG 75 Adriano Panatta SF
RG 73 Paolo Bertolucci QF
RG 73 Adriano Panatta SF
RG 72 Adriano Panatta QF
Despite the fact that male Italian players seem strongest on the dirt, since 1978 no one reached the semifinal of a Grand Slam. Even Fabio Fognini’s quarterfinal appearance at Roland Garros 2011 was the first in 13 years. Marco Cecchinato is one win away of being the first Italian Grand Slam finalist since 1976.
Marco Cecchinato was not seeded. If we look at Grand Slam semifinals comprised of unseeded players an interesting pattern appears.
Tourney Player Reached
RG 18 Marco Cecchinato SF
AO 18 Hyeon Chung SF
AO 18 Kyle Edmund SF
W 08 Rainer Schuettler SF
W 08 Marat Safin SF
RG 08 Gael Monfils SF
AO 08 Jo Wilfried Tsonga F
UO 06 Mikhail Youzhny SF
W 06 Jonas Bjorkman SF
AO 06 Marcos Baghdatis F
UO 05 Robby Ginepri SF
RG 05 Mariano Puerta F
W 04 Mario Ancic SF
RG 04 Gaston Gaudio W
AO 04 Marat Safin F
W 03 Mark Philippoussis F
RG 03 Martin Verkerk F
AO 03 Wayne Ferreira SF
W 01 Goran Ivanisevic W
UO 00 Todd Martin SF
W 00 Vladimir Voltchkov SF
RG 00 Franco Squillari SF
Since 2008 this is only the third time that an unseeded player reached the semifinal. All three occurrences happended this year. It appears that we can again get used to see new faces deep into the second week of a Grand Slam tournament.
Finally, let’s take a look at Grand Slam semifinals between players using a one-handed backhand. The decreasing popularity of the one-hander has already been discussed here and with this in mind it seems even more unique that Dominic Thiem–the player who Marco Cecchinato will face tomorrow in the semifinal–inititally played a two-hander, but then changed to a one-hander.
Tourney Player 1 Player 2
RG 18 Marco Cecchinato Dominic Thiem
AO 17 Roger Federer Stanislas Wawrinka
UO 15 Roger Federer Stanislas Wawrinka
W 09 Roger Federer Tommy Haas
W 07 Roger Federer Richard Gasquet
AO 07 Fernando Gonzalez Tommy Haas
UO 04 Roger Federer Tim Henman
UO 02 Pete Sampras Sjeng Schalken
RG 02 Albert Costa Alex Corretja
W 99 Pete Sampras Tim Henman
UO 98 Patrick Rafter Pete Sampras
W 98 Pete Sampras Tim Henman
If we ignore Roger Federer and Stanislas Wawrinka, two players who brought the one-handed backhand back into discussion, the last Grand Slam semifinal between two one-handers was played between Fernando Gonzalez and Tommy Haas at the Australian Open 2007. Before that, Pete Sampras was involved in four of six such encounters. Without Roger and Pete the world of one-handed Grand Slam semifinals would look really thin.
Whatever the result of the semifinal between Marco Cecchinato and Dominic Thiem will be, we know already that Marco achieved what only few players have done before him, especially in recent years. Whether he will be able to repeat this feat at Wimbledon, where he will be seeded despite having never won a match on a grass court, is arguable. Still, placing a bet on his own first round loss probably won’t be a good idea–at the very least, a lot more fans will be watching his opening match than ever before.
* A previous version of this article wrongly stated that the Wimbledon 2001 championship run by Goran Ivanisevic is more similar to Marco Cecchinato’s run. However, in 2001 Ivanisevic had already achieved his career high ranking, which is not the case for Cecchinato. Thanks for @rtwkr at Twitter for pointing this out.
—
Peter Wetz is a computer scientist interested in racket sports and data analytics based in Vienna, Austria.
