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It's the second part of my innovative attempt to summarize the Open era. As opposed to the first part which was prepared within a day actually as a stream of consciousness, I've been thinking about this "matrix" over the last couple of years, and the preparation of this thread lasted several weeks...
Comparison by each category (five best) (five worst)
The most tight "best of 3" wins (ten guys)
Random stuff
To some degree you can treat the names gathered here as the best typical Open era players. By "typical" I mean players, who started their pro careers after '68: the oldest is Adriano Panatta (b. 1950), the youngest Marin Cilic (1988). I have to admit there's lack of one player which should have been included - it's John Lloyd. I overlooked him somehow, because it's a thread not a book, I didn't see necessity to add him to the already prepared list and picture.
EXPLANATION:
I'd like to apologize all MTF members characterized by positive approach to discussions for my extensive explanation in this post. I've been a member of this forum long enough to know that there's a group of malcontents, and I'm not eager to waste my time discussing with them if they don't understand something or don't want to, so in case of yammering I can direct them to this post immediately. I don't claim the method of my calculation is perfect, so I'm open for remarks and questions.
Over the last few years, I've spent a lot of time considering issues:
"What's the mental strength/toughness in tennis?"
"Who is mentally weak/strong?"
I've drawn a conclusion that it can be manifested as a synthesis of winning matches in four different ways:
* Sometimes we witness matches that qualify to three different ways as far as their progress is concerned (exemplification: Marat Safin d. Roger Federer 5-7 6-4 5-7 7-6 9-7)
** Not all matches of this type have been included to the stats: I mean scorelines like "6-3 5-7 6-4" - if the winner lost this match for instance "6-3 5-7 4-6" (but he won 6-3 5-7 6-4!) it'd declare itself in a bigger negative number of the 4th category
METHOD:
First of all:
I've analyzed all the scorelines using the official ATP website, database of http://www.tennisabstract.com (Jeff Sackmann
) and my database.
I've taken into account the best "typical" Open era players to have participated in at least 100 main-level tournaments winning at least 1 title (I've made an exception for Julien Benneteau, hence the title of the thread is '250+1'). Only main-level matches have been counted so there's:
- no qualifying rounds,
- no Challengers,
- no Futures,
- no Satellites - all them counted would change the whole picture
It's pointless to explain what I mean by "the best players" in this thread. If you are upset there's lack of someone who deserves to be included IYO, simply count him according to my method and share your results in this thread... I consider "100 main-level tournaments" as a representative number of one's career to make comparable statistics, thus there's lack of the former Top 10ers here, like Kent Carlsson, Jay Berger & Joachim Johansson.
People sometimes tend to call a player "choker" based on a single match. If you're one of them, keep in mind this:
~ a notable retired player notches participation in more than 200 tournaments, playing more than 500 matches.
It's easy to calculate that if all the matches he plays are concluded as "two-setters", he must have played 1000 sets - guys included to the stats usually have played much more. When we talk about vast numbers of sets it's obvious that every player has lost
- dozen of sets squandering set points and
- dozen of matches being one/two/three points away from victory.
Besides: the more you win - you're the more prone to suffer dramatic defeats, Pete Sampras lost 194 tie-breaks, Filippo Volandri just 57. Does it mean Volandri knows better how to win tight sets than Sampras? (rhetorical question...)
I assume we can depict these four different ways ordering the numbers in a 4-category division:
1) Five-setters: obviously we have "five-setters" consisted of only one-sided sets (for instance: "6-2 1-6 6-2 3-6 6-1", but the shortest 5-setters usually last ~3 hours, so it's a time-wise equivalent of the dramatic "best of three" matches
2) Tie-breaks: it's a special category because includes scorelines of either three other Categories or any, however, it always tells something about one's ability to win sets being relatively close to lose them
3) Deciding 3rd set tie-break: when you know that a player won a match '7-6' in a final set, you are automatically aware that a loser was at worst 7 points away from victory (usually it's 3 or 4 points away); if you asked me, I'd say '7' it's far away, but you can be 100% sure that he was closer of winning a match than a loser with scorelines like "6-7 6-4 3-6" or "6-1 3-6 2-6" etc.
4) "2-game away" matches:
I think about scorelines like -
6-3 2-6 7-5
4-6 6-2 11-9
3-6 7-6 0-1 ret.
6-7 7-5 6-3
etc.
so belonging to the first or second way...
This is tricky category because a bit blurred looking only at scorelines; for example:
A - you have a "4-6 7-5 6-3" scoreline; you don't know what happened, it may be a case that the winner saved several match points, but he could lead 5:2 in the 2nd set and won two games in a row from 5-all to 'love' - so the loser was eight points away from victory at best
B - you have a "2-6 6-4 6-1" scoreline; you don't know what happened, it may be a case that the winner saved a double break point at 0:3 in the 2nd set, then saved a game point at 2:4 (exactly it happened during the Rafa Nadal-Fabio Fognini match in Beijing '13) - so the loser was five points away from victory, but he could have theoretically led 5:1 in the 2nd set, so he actually wasn't under pressure of losing the match at all.
My conclusion:
there are matches "6-2 4-6 1-6" when the loser was 5 points away from victory while in other matches like
"5-7 6-2 6-7(0)" the loser was 7 points away from victory at best
"4-6 6-3 5-7" the loser was 8 points away from victory at best
I've included to the 4th category all scorelines of the A type as opposed to the B type. Why? because I know enough scorelines (in terms of the match progress) of different players that I'm pretty convinced it's a safe assumption... matches like "Nadal-Fognini/Beijing" don't occur often; I bet if you knew the exact progress of all the matches played in the Open era, including to the fourth category scorelines like "3-6 6-4 6-4" when the loser was 5 points away, in some cases you'd obtain +/- 1 percentage difference, rarely +/- 2 percentage difference. It doesn't change the general outlook too much.
NOTES:
# Numbers included to the 1st & 2nd categories are/were accessible on Internet. Unfortunately the ATP website sucks lately with the tie-break records of the players born in the early 70s or earlier (it wasn't a case a few years backwards). When you see on the ATP website Stefan Edberg's record '107-71', I can ensure it's a nonsense. Why? Due to the wrong logarithm that doesn't include tie-break scorelines - more than 90% of them prior to 1991 are unavailable in the ATP website.
# Numbers included to 3rd & 4th categories - I've counted all
# I can't ensure you that all the numbers are correct - there are a few reasons of that. Nevertheless the possible mistakes cannot change the general view - it's not that a player with "62%" of the mental toughness would be "52%" when I've carefully investigated once again - forget it. For the clearer picture I've divided the players in six columns.
# It's not a number-juggle to place particular players higher/lower in the list. I'd adopted the four categories first, then I started counting with curiosity
# Keep in mind this thread hasn't any intention to point out who is a better/worse player - completely different numbers are responsible for that. If you are upset that Tommy Robredo - whom you call "Boredo" - is so high, although plenty of players achieved more, better ask yourself "why he achieved so much with his 'boring' game-style?", and looking at the numbers, perhaps you will immediately find the answer to the question.
# People sometimes tend to underestimate tight matches won over inferior players. So I ask you:
- why Boris Becker [4] loses to Nicolas Pereira [122] 6-7 7-6 6-7 in Doha '96?
- why David Nalbandian [11] loses to Yen-Hsun Lu [61] 4-6 7-5 6-4 4-6 2-6 at Aussie Open '09?
Those cases may be easily multiply every season... Of course, higher ranked/more experienced players usually win close matches against lower ranked/less experienced opponents, yet either you're "Aaron Krickstein" and you win tight matches against superior/inferior players than yourself or you're "James Blake" and you usually lose tight matches no matter who you play against.
# TV stats display the tie-break records of a particular season and commentators tend to draw conclusions based on that. It's ridiculous because:
- partial record can strongly differ from the career view, for example: Sampras won the vast majority of tie-breaks against his biggest rivals, yet he started the 1995 year having a period with an abysmal 1-12 record
It's more ridiculous when displayed before the final set tie-break. Some players are good in tie-breaks of 1st & 2nd sets when the pressure isn't huge, but weak in deciding 3rd set tie-breaks (Felix Mantilla), others work on reverse pattern (Andreas Seppi for instance)
# Some people like putting too much emphasis on wasted chances that don't mean anything in retrospective (usually it concerns fans focused only on particular players):
- a player wastes six break points in a game that eventually wins: problem
- a player wastes six set points but eventually wins the set: problem
- a player wastes six match points but eventually wins the match: problem
You know who's got the problem? The one who lost... Smaller or bigger.
Every experienced player wastes a 2- or 3-game advantage plenty of times during his career. The question is: how he responses on that? If he usually wins those sets it's a good sign from his perspective. It's a psychological thing - if you erases a huge deficit in a set only to lose it, it hurts you - you tried so much, but all in vain (Nadal is an exception, I guess he tends to think "better lost 1st set in 60 minutes than in 20 because in the deciding set the match will be 40 minutes longer and my opponent will be more tired" - but he's unique).
There's a "7-6 6-2" scoreline in a match of players of the similar sort where the winner blew a 5:1 lead in the 1st set and some people say "it should have been 6-1 6-2". It doesn't work this way. I've seen enough tennis over 23 years to notice that the most important moment is the moment which precedes the next moment. If there was 6-1 in the 1st it might have been "6-1 6-2", but it might have been "6-1 6-7 2-6". We never know. The one who lost the lopsided set starts the next one with a "I've got nothing to lose, I can't play worse than that" attitude, in turn the one who won that set with a "he's playing such a poor tennis I can't lose today" mindset, and it may cost him the loss of the concentration.
Five mentally strongest players of the Open era:
Code:
[B]
Category-> 1) 5-sets 2) TBs 3)Dec.3.TB 4) 2-game |Mental reliability|[/B]
Borg 26-6 48-42 13-6 19-9 [67.25]
Furlan 7-3 80-80 10-2 23-12 [67.00]
Robredo 13-4 152-116 19-11 25-10 [66.50]
Higueras 9-2 65-53 5-4 28-10 [66.00]
Djokovic 20-7 157-87 10-6 18-12 [65.00]If you want to see the entire research (3 Nov 2013) click below:
54 active players
197 non-active players
251 players gathered in one picture
(the largest pic I've ever made - 27 MB)
54 active players
197 non-active players
251 players gathered in one picture
(the largest pic I've ever made - 27 MB)
Comparison by each category (five best) (five worst)
The most tight "best of 3" wins (ten guys)
Random stuff
Born in the 50s - 37 players
Born in the 60s - 69 players
Born in the 70s - 82 players
Born in the 80s - 63 players
Underlined - double handed backhand (121 players out of 251)
* Asterisk - left-handers (32 of 251)
Born in the 60s - 69 players
Born in the 70s - 82 players
Born in the 80s - 63 players
Underlined - double handed backhand (121 players out of 251)
* Asterisk - left-handers (32 of 251)
To some degree you can treat the names gathered here as the best typical Open era players. By "typical" I mean players, who started their pro careers after '68: the oldest is Adriano Panatta (b. 1950), the youngest Marin Cilic (1988). I have to admit there's lack of one player which should have been included - it's John Lloyd. I overlooked him somehow, because it's a thread not a book, I didn't see necessity to add him to the already prepared list and picture.
EXPLANATION:
I'd like to apologize all MTF members characterized by positive approach to discussions for my extensive explanation in this post. I've been a member of this forum long enough to know that there's a group of malcontents, and I'm not eager to waste my time discussing with them if they don't understand something or don't want to, so in case of yammering I can direct them to this post immediately. I don't claim the method of my calculation is perfect, so I'm open for remarks and questions.
Over the last few years, I've spent a lot of time considering issues:
"What's the mental strength/toughness in tennis?"
"Who is mentally weak/strong?"
I've drawn a conclusion that it can be manifested as a synthesis of winning matches in four different ways:
- the match is balanced in the crucial stage and both players are simultaneously close to victory at the end (best exemplification: matches concluded with deciding a '7-5' '7-6' set or "advantage sets")
- one of players is close to victory, but the match wins the other one who was far away at the same time (exemplification: scorelines like "4-6 7-5 6-3" or "1-6 7-6 6-2" etc.)
- one of players is close to victory, but loses his advantage and there's a moment when both are similarly far/close to victory (exemplification: scorelines like "6-2 5-7 6-1" or "6-4 6-7 6-3" etc.) **
- the match is balanced, but wins it a player who wasn't close to lose it (exemplification: scorelines like "7-6 7-5" or "6-4 3-6 7-6 7-6" etc.)
* Sometimes we witness matches that qualify to three different ways as far as their progress is concerned (exemplification: Marat Safin d. Roger Federer 5-7 6-4 5-7 7-6 9-7)
** Not all matches of this type have been included to the stats: I mean scorelines like "6-3 5-7 6-4" - if the winner lost this match for instance "6-3 5-7 4-6" (but he won 6-3 5-7 6-4!) it'd declare itself in a bigger negative number of the 4th category
METHOD:
First of all:
I've analyzed all the scorelines using the official ATP website, database of http://www.tennisabstract.com (Jeff Sackmann
I've taken into account the best "typical" Open era players to have participated in at least 100 main-level tournaments winning at least 1 title (I've made an exception for Julien Benneteau, hence the title of the thread is '250+1'). Only main-level matches have been counted so there's:
- no qualifying rounds,
- no Challengers,
- no Futures,
- no Satellites - all them counted would change the whole picture
It's pointless to explain what I mean by "the best players" in this thread. If you are upset there's lack of someone who deserves to be included IYO, simply count him according to my method and share your results in this thread... I consider "100 main-level tournaments" as a representative number of one's career to make comparable statistics, thus there's lack of the former Top 10ers here, like Kent Carlsson, Jay Berger & Joachim Johansson.
People sometimes tend to call a player "choker" based on a single match. If you're one of them, keep in mind this:
~ a notable retired player notches participation in more than 200 tournaments, playing more than 500 matches.
It's easy to calculate that if all the matches he plays are concluded as "two-setters", he must have played 1000 sets - guys included to the stats usually have played much more. When we talk about vast numbers of sets it's obvious that every player has lost
- dozen of sets squandering set points and
- dozen of matches being one/two/three points away from victory.
Besides: the more you win - you're the more prone to suffer dramatic defeats, Pete Sampras lost 194 tie-breaks, Filippo Volandri just 57. Does it mean Volandri knows better how to win tight sets than Sampras? (rhetorical question...)
I assume we can depict these four different ways ordering the numbers in a 4-category division:
Percentages of all four categories summed up then divided by 4 = Mental Toughness. If someone has played less than 9 decisive 3rd set tie-breaks, then Cat. 3 & 4 summed up together and all divided by 3.
1) Five-setters: obviously we have "five-setters" consisted of only one-sided sets (for instance: "6-2 1-6 6-2 3-6 6-1", but the shortest 5-setters usually last ~3 hours, so it's a time-wise equivalent of the dramatic "best of three" matches
2) Tie-breaks: it's a special category because includes scorelines of either three other Categories or any, however, it always tells something about one's ability to win sets being relatively close to lose them
3) Deciding 3rd set tie-break: when you know that a player won a match '7-6' in a final set, you are automatically aware that a loser was at worst 7 points away from victory (usually it's 3 or 4 points away); if you asked me, I'd say '7' it's far away, but you can be 100% sure that he was closer of winning a match than a loser with scorelines like "6-7 6-4 3-6" or "6-1 3-6 2-6" etc.
4) "2-game away" matches:
I think about scorelines like -
6-3 2-6 7-5
4-6 6-2 11-9
3-6 7-6 0-1 ret.
6-7 7-5 6-3
etc.
so belonging to the first or second way...
This is tricky category because a bit blurred looking only at scorelines; for example:
A - you have a "4-6 7-5 6-3" scoreline; you don't know what happened, it may be a case that the winner saved several match points, but he could lead 5:2 in the 2nd set and won two games in a row from 5-all to 'love' - so the loser was eight points away from victory at best
B - you have a "2-6 6-4 6-1" scoreline; you don't know what happened, it may be a case that the winner saved a double break point at 0:3 in the 2nd set, then saved a game point at 2:4 (exactly it happened during the Rafa Nadal-Fabio Fognini match in Beijing '13) - so the loser was five points away from victory, but he could have theoretically led 5:1 in the 2nd set, so he actually wasn't under pressure of losing the match at all.
My conclusion:
there are matches "6-2 4-6 1-6" when the loser was 5 points away from victory while in other matches like
"5-7 6-2 6-7(0)" the loser was 7 points away from victory at best
"4-6 6-3 5-7" the loser was 8 points away from victory at best
I've included to the 4th category all scorelines of the A type as opposed to the B type. Why? because I know enough scorelines (in terms of the match progress) of different players that I'm pretty convinced it's a safe assumption... matches like "Nadal-Fognini/Beijing" don't occur often; I bet if you knew the exact progress of all the matches played in the Open era, including to the fourth category scorelines like "3-6 6-4 6-4" when the loser was 5 points away, in some cases you'd obtain +/- 1 percentage difference, rarely +/- 2 percentage difference. It doesn't change the general outlook too much.
NOTES:
# Numbers included to the 1st & 2nd categories are/were accessible on Internet. Unfortunately the ATP website sucks lately with the tie-break records of the players born in the early 70s or earlier (it wasn't a case a few years backwards). When you see on the ATP website Stefan Edberg's record '107-71', I can ensure it's a nonsense. Why? Due to the wrong logarithm that doesn't include tie-break scorelines - more than 90% of them prior to 1991 are unavailable in the ATP website.
# Numbers included to 3rd & 4th categories - I've counted all
# I can't ensure you that all the numbers are correct - there are a few reasons of that. Nevertheless the possible mistakes cannot change the general view - it's not that a player with "62%" of the mental toughness would be "52%" when I've carefully investigated once again - forget it. For the clearer picture I've divided the players in six columns.
# It's not a number-juggle to place particular players higher/lower in the list. I'd adopted the four categories first, then I started counting with curiosity
# Keep in mind this thread hasn't any intention to point out who is a better/worse player - completely different numbers are responsible for that. If you are upset that Tommy Robredo - whom you call "Boredo" - is so high, although plenty of players achieved more, better ask yourself "why he achieved so much with his 'boring' game-style?", and looking at the numbers, perhaps you will immediately find the answer to the question.
# People sometimes tend to underestimate tight matches won over inferior players. So I ask you:
- why Boris Becker [4] loses to Nicolas Pereira [122] 6-7 7-6 6-7 in Doha '96?
- why David Nalbandian [11] loses to Yen-Hsun Lu [61] 4-6 7-5 6-4 4-6 2-6 at Aussie Open '09?
Those cases may be easily multiply every season... Of course, higher ranked/more experienced players usually win close matches against lower ranked/less experienced opponents, yet either you're "Aaron Krickstein" and you win tight matches against superior/inferior players than yourself or you're "James Blake" and you usually lose tight matches no matter who you play against.
# TV stats display the tie-break records of a particular season and commentators tend to draw conclusions based on that. It's ridiculous because:
- partial record can strongly differ from the career view, for example: Sampras won the vast majority of tie-breaks against his biggest rivals, yet he started the 1995 year having a period with an abysmal 1-12 record
It's more ridiculous when displayed before the final set tie-break. Some players are good in tie-breaks of 1st & 2nd sets when the pressure isn't huge, but weak in deciding 3rd set tie-breaks (Felix Mantilla), others work on reverse pattern (Andreas Seppi for instance)
# Some people like putting too much emphasis on wasted chances that don't mean anything in retrospective (usually it concerns fans focused only on particular players):
- a player wastes six break points in a game that eventually wins: problem
- a player wastes six set points but eventually wins the set: problem
- a player wastes six match points but eventually wins the match: problem
You know who's got the problem? The one who lost... Smaller or bigger.
Every experienced player wastes a 2- or 3-game advantage plenty of times during his career. The question is: how he responses on that? If he usually wins those sets it's a good sign from his perspective. It's a psychological thing - if you erases a huge deficit in a set only to lose it, it hurts you - you tried so much, but all in vain (Nadal is an exception, I guess he tends to think "better lost 1st set in 60 minutes than in 20 because in the deciding set the match will be 40 minutes longer and my opponent will be more tired" - but he's unique).
There's a "7-6 6-2" scoreline in a match of players of the similar sort where the winner blew a 5:1 lead in the 1st set and some people say "it should have been 6-1 6-2". It doesn't work this way. I've seen enough tennis over 23 years to notice that the most important moment is the moment which precedes the next moment. If there was 6-1 in the 1st it might have been "6-1 6-2", but it might have been "6-1 6-7 2-6". We never know. The one who lost the lopsided set starts the next one with a "I've got nothing to lose, I can't play worse than that" attitude, in turn the one who won that set with a "he's playing such a poor tennis I can't lose today" mindset, and it may cost him the loss of the concentration.
?
