By Almost Every Measure Nadal is the Greatest

Recently Andre Agassi said that Rafael Nadal was the greatest tennis player of all time. As if he was a reader of our blog, he said (1) “I’d put Nadal No. 1, Federer No. 2,”, (2) “Nadal had to deal with Federer, (Novak) Djokovic, (Andy) Murray in the golden age of tennis. He has done what he has done and he’s not done yet.” And (3) “It’s just remarkable to me what he has done, and he has done it all during Federer’s prime.” Perhaps no one would be better qualified to answer that question as Agassi dominated Federer 3-0 before he got too old at 33 to last a full match with him.

With Agassi’s impetus, we revisit our prior metrics established for player performance over their careers. In particular our methodology which is called the “Secada Tennis Equivalency Rating” or STER.

Echoing Agassi, Roger Federer has 17 grand slam wins. A record unlikely to be equalled according to John Ryle and the folks at 538. Rafael Nadal has 14 grand slams. Nadal has won slams on 3 different surfaces twice and 9 French Opens. Records unlikely to be equalled.

In such a great debate, most people would ask what was the head to head between the rivals. As in the Super Bowl or the NCAA basketball championships, the person who wins is usually the better player. A great argument for tennis’ lack of popularity as a sport among viewers is that this is not the case in tennis, 1+1 is not 2. Almost all tennis columnists argue Federer is the greatest. A few others are fence sitters on this topic and Rafael Nadal is treated by the sports media like Pancho Gonzalez was 60 years ago by the tennis world. Few of these journalists were ever tournament tennis players and even fewer have any sort of quantitative background. None can admit they missed the tennis story of the 21st century which is Rafael Nadal’s all time greatness.

Below, we take a deeper dive into the data focusing primarily on Nadal and Federer.

Nadal vs. Federer Rivalry

Most tennis journalists and commentators who look at the Nadal – Federer rivalry shrug off Nadal’s 23-10 dominance. But two facts show Nadal’s absolute domination which is greater than the actual record. Grass court tennis (Wimbledon) is played about 4 weeks during the tennis year and indoor tennis primarily the Masters, is played for 4-6 weeks during the tennis year. So in a year of tennis about 80% of the tennis is played on hard courts or clay. Nadal’s record vs. Federer on those surfaces is 9-2 on Hard Courts and 13-2 on Clay. 4 of Federer’s wins against Nadal have been indoors where Nadal is ineffective and 2 have come on Grass where Federer has not beaten Nadal since he was 21. So for about 80% of the tennis season Nadal is an overwhelming favorite to beat Federer 85% of the time.

As we discussed in a prior blog post, Federer has not had a tournament win in a grand slam against Nadal since Nadal was 21. And Nadal has beaten Federer the last time they played in the finals of every slam on every surface. So a betting person would see Nadal as the odds-on favorite on every surface against Federer except indoors where tennis is rarely played.

Inside the Federer – Nadal Match

But what about inside the match? We developed a new metric to quantify the difference between Nadal and Federer. Federer usually holds an advantage in aces and service winners against Nadal, but what happens when the point gets into play? If Nadal gets the ball back, what chance does Federer have in the point? We created the Secada Point Differential, Less Ace Differential (SPODLAD) metric to account for this. SPODLAD is simply the calculation of point differential per match i.e. the difference in points won per match, less the ace differential per match. Prior to Nadal’s turning 22 Nadal’s SPODLAD vs. Federer in matches he won was about 13 points.

Since turning 22, Nadal’s average SPODLAD vs. Federer in wins has widened to a 20 point advantage. So since learning how to beat Federer in his early years, it has become much easier. In 85% of Federer’s hard court and clay court matches against Nadal, he starts at a 20 point disadvantage off serve which is like being 1-2 points behind every game in a 2 set match. Why play the match, just bring the shellac!

Indeed in Federer’s 2007 Wimbledon win against Nadal, Nadal had a superior SPODLAD of 16 but Federer served 23 more aces and several more service winners to provide the winning margin. You might say, “Eureka, that’s it, Federer has a great serve”, but he doesn’t. Federer hasn’t had a 20 Ace differential match against Nadal since the 2008 Wimbledon. The Ace differential since then is about 5 Aces per match in wins or losses. Note: Federer’s serve has not improved speedwise since 2007 while Nadal has added 10 miles per hour to his serve on faster services. Even more telling, Federer’s SPODLAD in wins against Nadal is 6 in his career and when eliminating indoor tourneys is less than 3. When Federer wins, it is by the skin of his teeth.

Comparative Slam Victories

We dug even deeper. What about the 17 grand slams Federer has vs. Nadal’s 14. Critics say that matters. To measure that, we developed the Secada Finals Efficiency Rating (SFER).

In the past we have used the Secada Total Opponent Slams (STOS) as a measure of the quality of the opponent a slam winner beat in the finals. STOS takes the number of slams an opponent has won during the career and assigns a numerical power rating to that number. So in 17 Slams Federer’s opponents have won a respectable total of 55 grand slams in their careers or about 3 career slams on average. Meanwhile, Nadal’s opponents have won 124 grand slams between them or about 9 slams on average. Nadal is 6-2 vs Federer at Slam finals and has not lost to him at a slam final since he was 21 years old.

But world renowned tennis historian, Phil Secada, suggested we look at the actual Grand Slam championships won at that point in time by opponents and zeroed out the slams won against champions past their prime (Andre Agassi) and slams not yet won. We call this the Secada Finals Efficiency Rating for Power (SFERP). In other words, SFERP takes the number of slams won by the champion’s opponents only up until that point in time to normalize the data for relative match experience.

And Nadal continues to impress. His opponents still have a record 87 grand slams under their belts between them as Nadal has beaten Djokovic twice since Djokovic’s 6th grand slam victory and Federer 4 times since his 12th slam.

But Federer’s SFERP rating of 12 tell a different story.

New York Times Wine Diarist and Sommelier Journal writer – Michael Steinberger (seriously, tennis is that unpopular, no really) claims Federer is the all time greatest because he set records against chumps and babies. Federer has no championship wins against all time great players in their prime. Federer’s wins against Murray and Djokovic in Slam finals was before they won a slam. Just because somebody won during a weak year doesn’t mean that year (that title) is as good as someone who won during a great year. In layman’s terms “Shakespeare in Love” won the Academy Award in a weak movie year. Does that make it as good as “Gone With the Wind” or “Titanic” or “Gladiator” that all won out over other great movies? HECK NO! In tennis parlance, John McEnroe’s Wimbledon victory over 5 time defending champion Bjorn Borg is far greater than Pat Cash’s win over non titlist Ivan Lendl. OF COURSE!

How About Federer vs. Djokovic?

Federer never beat a player with more than 3 slam victories in the finals of a slam and once he has lost to a player at a slam final he has not beaten that person again at the same slam. In contrast, after Nadal lost to Djokovic at the 2011 US Open, he came back and defeated Djokovic at the 2013 final. Nadal has beaten players with more than 3 slam victories in their prime at 9 slam finals, another record! The next closest are Ivan Lendl and Sampras with 4 finals wins against players with more than 3 slam victories. And Djokovic’s Ascension to arguably the #1 player the last 4 years has had an impact on Nadal. The last time we calculated all time winning percent against all time greats, Nadal was #1 with a 66% rate. Since then and with several losses to Djokovic, Nadal is now #4 in all time winning percent against other all time greats at 57.8%. And we expect Nadal’s winning percent to continue to decline against the younger Djokovic.

What about other measures. SITDON and SATERICCON are quantitative, analytical metrics created to measure the body of a tennis players career as a whole vs. the field. It looks at the Grand Slam championships of rivals in the tournament and rivals played. As your opponents records improve, your own ranking goes up. According to our SITDON and SATERICCON 2014 All Time Rankings, Federer has finally surpassed Pete Sampras as an all court champion. But, Federer himself has been surpassed as an all court champion by Novak Djokovic. On a total points basis Rafael Nadal is way out in front with 292 points, Federer has 170 points but Novak Djokovic has 171 points. Pete Sampras has 161 points.

Djokovic has rocketed ahead based on superior competition in tournaments he has won including this year’s Wimbledon. We expect, with little competition in sight and a game like Agassi’s built to last, Djokovic will win a few more fast surface slams before his career is over putting him far ahead of Federer. Again, below are all time rankings based on draw competitiveness. Of players with more than 6 championships in our top 8 rankings based on tournament competitiveness, Federer has won against the weakest finalists in aggregate. Nadal has won against the strongest finalists followed by Sampras, McEnroe and Djokovic.

With this data, now ask any one of these commentators if their money was on the line in a head to head who would they bet on and it would be Nadal. What about the third best player of the era, Novak Djokovic. In the last 5 years, Federer is 2-4 in slams against the Djoker (6-6 all time), Nadal is 5-3 vs. Djoker in the same period and 9-3 overall. So who would you bet to have the best chance against the third best player of the era at their prime? So right, you would bet against Federer playing Nadal and Djoker, but Federer is the best?!? HE ISN’T!!!If Federer isn’t the best of his era by 2, he can’t he be the best of all time.

Palookas Named Andy – The Making of the Roger Federer Legend

More quick metrics following Nadal’s latest domination of the French Open. Our own ratings have Nadal at Number 1 with 7 Frenchies beating a cumulative field twice as good as Borg did in his 6 slams. Nadal has also passed Sampras on the cumulative power list of quality slam victories.

A former pro player mentioned to us that Nadal and Djokovic were beating Federer when he was not at his peak. And, that Federer, as the winner of 16 slams, is just better. This is mind numbingly dumb as 99% of society believes that in any sports endeavor when someone beats someone else, the winner is better than the loser. Nadal’s 6 title wins at Grand Slam finals without a loss to Federer the last 5 years dictates pure superiority. But not for that slim .1% of the tennis intelligentsia and innumerates like Peter Bodo. No wonder other sports fans don’t take tennis seriously. So we have a new metric to cut through the argument.

At #3 in the world, Federer is still at his peak. Since Federer’s first loss to Nadal at the 2006 French Open final when he was 24, Federer has reached the finals of more than 40 atp tournaments or about 47% of his total finals. There has been very little dropoff in performance unlike for example, Lleyton Hewitt, who reached only 9 finals or the last 20% of his career finals after his 2004 loss to Federer at the finals of the US Open and quickly fell out of the ATP top 3. Our eyes don’t deceive us, Federer at his peak is simply not as good as Nadal or Djokovic at their peak.

Below, we have a table that looks at the players Nadal beat in his Grand Slam finals vs. the players Federer and Sampras beat for their championships. Nadal owned Federer 6 times (from Federer at 24 years old to 29, beating him on every surface) and Djokovic twice to win 8 of his 11 championships. Putting a cumulative score on the number of slam wins of Nadal’s opponents, that amount is 106. For Sampras his cumulative score is 48. Federer’s cumulative score is 43 of which 27 come from beating Nadal and Djokovic before they turned 21.5 years old.

Unlike Nadal and Federer, Sampras 3 times beat 3 other grand slam winners to win a slam. His field was much tougher and he didn’t have a 32 seed draw to protect him from early round challengers. Sampras also was winner in 2 of the toughest Wimbledons and US Opens ever played. Nadal won a single slam defeating 3 prior slam winners but never repeated that feat. Federer never accomplished this. Another feat that Sampras accomplished that Federer did not near the end of his career is that when Sampras lost to Marat Safin at the US Open finals in 2000, he came back and defeated him in the subsequent year’s championship. Once Federer has lost to Nadal and Djokovic on any surface at a Slam, he has never beaten them again at that Slam.

But just who did Federer beat at his slam championships. Close scrutiny shows he won against a collections of journeymen named Andy (Palookas), Nadal and Djokovic before their prime (Puppies) and the Ghost of Andre Agassi. Four of Federer’s slam victories, and 4 of his cumulative “points” came against Andy Roddick. Andy Roddick never should have won the 2003 US Open. He was losing to David Nalbandian 2 sets to love, in a 3rd set tiebreaker with the score 7-7 when a fan called an in ball “Out” and Nalbandian mishit the next ball and lost the next point, the next two sets and the match. Another 2 of Federer’s slams came against Andy Murray. So 6 of his 16 have come against …

Palookas Named Andy

All Federer’s Slam wins against Nadal and Djokovic came before their peaks. Federer won his first slam at 21 and 11 months old.

Federer’s other big win was against an over the hill, 35 year old Agassi. Agassi was a shell of the player that demolished Federer at the US Open in 2002 when he was 32 years old. Taking out Federer’s win over out of his prime Agassi in 2005 with before their prime Nadal and Djokovic (as our former pro would do), his overall slam score falls to a mundane 8 points with wins over Palookas like Andy Murray, Marcos Baghdatis and Robin Soderling.

In contrast Sampras beat a host of players at their peak such as Edberg, Becker, Lendl, Agassi, Courier and Chang. He was the best player on hard courts until his last tournament, the 2002 US Open, which he won. The year following Sampras’ loss to Marat Safin at the US Open finals, he came back and beat him at the next year’s semifinals. Similarly, Nadal also came back in 2010 to avenge his loss against Soderling at Roland Garros. Federer hasn’t won a Wimbledon, his best surface, since 2009 and that year Nadal was out with a knee injury. It has been 5 years since Federer won a Wimbledon with Nadal in the field. If Nadal isn’t injured or out at the end of 2008 through the beginning of 2010, maybe Federer’s slam count stays at 14 and Nadal’s is at 13.

You can say for the all time greatest, Federer had a very short peak, from 21 years and 11 months old to 25 and 11 months old (the last time he beat Nadal at a slam) unlike any other all time great. Or that his path to number 1 was paved with Palookas named Andy.

EPIC FAIL! How the US Massively Underperforms the World in Tennis Player Development

An expectation reducing mind-set has come out of the United States Tennis community trying to explain away the remarkable decline in US men’s tennis the past few years.  US tennis enjoyed a golden age of tennis where male professional players won more than 25 slams between Michael Chang’s 1989 French Open win and Andre Agassi’s 2003 Australian Open Championship.   Since then, the US has won no Men’s Grand Slam championships.  At the time of this writing the US has 9 players in the top 100 in the world today, five of those players are near 30 years old or above and are likely to drop out or retire from the top 100 in the near future (At the time of publication 2 players have dropped out of the top 100, down to 7).  Pro player development is at a standstill as “keystone cops” management fumbles Grand Slam wild cards substituting washed-up older players for younger players with potential.

USTA executive leadership or pro players have two lines of thought about the US cliff dive out of the tennis world elite.  First, US tennis fans are spoiled and they need to expect less.  Second, the US tennis public will need to wait 10 years for US tennis to bounce back.  Much of this is echoed by sportswriters like Peter Bodo who doesn’t expect things to get better any time soon or Peter Alfano who reports tennis is in a nose dive.  Greg Couch, in “From Spoiled to Rotten…”  covers the same territory as this article in a qualitative, Royko-esque fashion.

We wondered if there some way to assess and illustrate if American expectations for professional tennis should be abandoned?  Is this the end to American Tennis Exceptionalism?  Should we expect to be outperformed and viewed as another sport where American supremacy has been bypassed like Lebron and Dwayne watching Dirk Nowitzki driving to the hoop?

In response, we created a methodology called the Secada Population and Economic Country Tennis Efficiency Rating (SPECTER) with a formulation to measure a country’s tennis player performance vs others measured by youth population available to play tennis and by a country’s tennis economic power rating.  Note:  We’ll address the second, corrosive, 10-year wait line of thought in another post.

Our ratings  show the United States radically underperforms the market to the extent that any programs instituted have no impact on US tennis.  When adjusting for youth, the United States has more children of tennis playing age than all of its modern European rivals combined including Russia, Spain, France, UK , Switzerland and  Serbia.   Also, the U.S. is home to one of the grand slams, the US Open, which we have already analyzed as a $1.4 billion economic powerhouse worth $200 million to the cash flush USTA foundation which has $200 million of it’s own money already socked away.  When you factor in the economic capability for tennis development the US program is a catastrophe!

First we show the results.  We came up with a metric to measure tennis performance by country using number of players in the top 100, providing a power score for each ranking by adding up the difference between 100 and a players ranking.  So #1 Novak Djokovic would have 99 points, #10 Andy Roddick, 90 points.  When we add up these scores (based on mid July, 2011 rankings) by country, we can compare actual results by country reducing the impact of quantity focusing on total quality of rankings.  Note:  Tennis historian Phil Secada has done a similar study on power ratings for tennis.  

Tennis Players in Top 100 Rankings

Country	# of Tennis Players in top 100
Spain	14
USA	9
France	8
Argentina	6
Russia	5
Serbia	3
Swittzerland	2
Great Britain	1
Australia	1

Weighted Average Strength of Program by Country

Country	Total Weighted Rankings
Spain	815
France	519
USA	372
Argentina	334
Russia	268
Serbia	254
Switzerland	181
Great Britain	96
Australia	29

Total Tennis Economic Capability by Country

Country	Market Potential (Millions)
France	235.67
Australia	232.30
Great Britain	214.65
USA	210.00
Spain	38.11
Switzerland	16.50
Russia	9.29
Serbia	5.02
Argentina	4.41

Total US Power Efficiency Rating vs. Other Countries or Secada Population and Economic Country Tennis Efficiency Ranking (SPECTER)

Country	SPECTER
Serbia	48.27
Switzerland	10.47
Argentina	7.71
Spain	3.21
Russia	1.40
France	0.19
Great Britain	0.04
USA	0.03
Australia	0.03

As shown by the tables above the US appears to have a respectable tennis program ranking second with 9 of the top 100 players in the world after Spain which has fourteen players.  Drilling down a bit further even when adjusting for the cumulative rankings of all players by country, the US finishes third behind Spain and France, slightly ahead of Argentina.

But what happens when we adjust country ratings by population and then by the ability to commit economically to tennis development.  As discussed above, the US has more people of tennis player development age than all of its main European rivals combined.  In addition, the USA is one of four tennis economic super powers.  As we discussed in our prior article on the billion dollar US Open, the USTA is a remarkably wealthy not-for-profit with the US Open as its central cash cow.  It spends more than $15 million a year on player development and richly rewards their executive staff in total compensation ranging from $8 million in 2009 to $50 million in 2008 with a steady $10 million a year in travel expenses for those executives and others.  When factoring in these numbers as shown in our SPECTER Power Ratings, the US finishes dead last among the major tennis countries to an extent that it has a power rating less than 1% of world leader, Serbia.  Though Serbia may be a super-charged performance outlier; the US still rates less than 10% as effective as Switzerland, Argentina and Spain.

Demographics is Destiny Everywhere but the USTA Development Program

In providing this analysis, we took a deep dive into the demographics of tennis development age youth by country.  Our data came from the CIA factbook and 2010 US Census data.  Since detailed 18 and under Census data by country wasn’t readily available, we used CIA factbook data for 14 years and under population as a proxy.  Reviewing prior ranking data, we found that most top rated tennis players began playing professional tourneys at 16 or 17 year olds so for development purposes, the numbers aren’t divergent from population trends.

Country	Population Size  14 Years and Under (Millions)
USA	61.9
Russia	21.6
France	12
Switzerland	1.1
Serbia	1.1
Great Britain	10.8
Spain	7
Europe Total	53.6
Argentina	10.3
Australia	3.9

The chart below shows the US placing last among leading tennis countries based on population of potential tennis players.   Some may argue that the US has less temperate weather than Australia.  But we can eliminate all tennis regions with the exceptions of historical hotbeds California, Florida, Texas, Georgia and Arizona and the US potential population is still greater than every other country combined except Russia which has some bad weather of its own.

Realized Tennis Potential by Population

Country	Realized Tennis Potential by Population (higher ratings mean better)
Serbia	2309.09
Switzerland	1645.45
Spain	1164.29
France	432.50
Argentina	324.27
Russia	124.07
Great Britain	88.89
Australia	74.36
USA	60.10

But weather isn’t the only rationale for impact on tennis player development as Serbia worked its way through the breakup of Yugoslavia and a civil war, Spain suffers from massive unemployment and Argentina has had to work through two existential financial crises in the last decade.

Economic Potential for Player Development

After reviewing for population we next determined what is the economic potential for player development.   We looked at Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as an indicator but determined that GDP  represents a country’s entire economy and would overstate the US and European countries ability to commit to youth tennis development.  We also looked at GDP by potential player development population but determined that it would reflect negatively on a small country like Switzerland which has a large GDP/Capita and a small birth rate.  Likewise, low birthrate countries like Australia and Great Britain would suffer.

Eat What You Kill

Ultimately, we determined a better measure would be what we call Market Economic Potential (MEP).  MEP states that a tennis program can only spend money it has and no more to develop players.  We measure MEP  by the largest tennis tournament held in a country and the revenue it generates.  Though some may argue by purchasing power parity that one tennis dollar in Argentina or Serbia is worth more than a tennis dollar in the US we reviewed purchasing power parity GDP indicators vs country GDP indicators and found less than a 30% variation in real GDP vs. purchasing power parity GDP for any countries involved in this study.  So a dollar in Argentina may be worth more than in the US, but not more than 30% more.  Negligible since Argentina outperforms the US in tennis by a factor of 10 not .3.

We measure MEP using revenue generated by the largest tennis tournament run by each country’s tennis association.  Like the US Open that generates $210 million a year in revenue for the USTA which it then applies about $15 million to player development, most countries have a main tennis tournament which feeds resources into their player development program.  Though we don’t have the revenue for each tournament, assuming cost and profit ratios are the same as the US Open, we use prize money as a proxy for revenue and estimate it based on that prize money number which is easily available via the ATP web site.   As an aside this approach can only OVERSTATE, the ability of other countries to compete with the U.S.

The Grand Slam (dis) Advantage

Using these numbers, we see that any of the 4 hosts of the grand slams, Australia, France, Great Britain and the United States offer more prize money than the other leading tennis countries combined.  As a result we would expect that these countries would have outsized tennis programs with outstanding performance.   But outside of France, (with a potential tennis population a bit larger than California’s) with 8 players in the top 100 (4 players under 25), all the grand slam hosts radically underperform the market.   It’s as if the Anglo Saxon world forgot how to play tennis.  Assuming that all of these countries pay the same sort of $8 million in executive compensation as made by the top 8 or 9 USTA executives, The typical tennis fan sees pay for  non-player development and turns off the tv.  We can see the value of the prior USTA executives who fixed the broken US Open and doubled revenue from the tournament over the last 10-15 years, but existing programs are in “run the engine” mode with respect to their prized events.  The US Open already sells out every year, unless USTA adds seats, there isn’t much new work to be done.  But player development has gone into the abyss.

Country	Score / Market Potential
Argentina	75.67
Serbia	50.57
Russia	28.84
Spain	21.39
Switzerland	10.97
France	2.20
USA	1.77
Great Britain	0.45
Australia	0.12

It is easy to explain Great Britain’s lack of performance, they have bad weather, but the US has many states with moderate weather that historically have been suppliers of world class tennis talent and are still ripe for tennis player development as US population moves southward.  One of the negative statements about US tennis players has been that there are no clay court players coming out of the US.  How is this possible when we have Florida, the state that gave us Jim Courier and Chris Evert (Brian Gottfried, Eddie Dibbs and Harold Solomon)?

Fair Weather States	Potential Tennis Player Population (Millions)
Florida	4.12
California	9.51
Texas	6.98
Georgia	2.55
Arizona	1.68
	24.84

Perhaps the best explanation is that building a complex regionally centralized development program may not be terribly useful if developing players can’t afford the gasoline to get to those centers and don’t like being away from their parents.  At the same time there hasn’t been any substantial growth in USTA membership that exceeds US general population growth so it is hard to imagine where USTA dollars are going.  Let’s say there are 1,000 meaningful tennis centers around the country, then each center potentially could receive a $15,000 infusion to drive participation, pay the guys in the trenches more and lead more recruiting efforts.  But that doesn’t happen under the present regime’s model.  Likewise, the USTA web site offers no significant on-line tools for learning tennis or receiving coaching. ($15 million works out to about $15,000 a center.)

Regardless, we believe there are many ways to spend dollars on US tennis on a depth and breadth approach where players can be discovered and as they advance get the coaching they need without prejudice or obstruction.

If development dollars being spent are misdirected then what does work?  Serbia and Argentina have secret weapons.  It’s called “coaching”.  Serbia’s national ascendancy coincides with their usage of Niki Pilic as coach of their national team.  Pilic is the only person to win Davis Cup titles as coach of 3 different countries.   Marcelo Gomez has been the tennis development coach for US Open Champ Juan Martin Del Potro, Juan Monaco and a plethora of other top Argentinian talent.  We stole Jose Higueras from Spain, but so far his main response has been “Ay Caramba” to the broken development program.

And the US has great home-grown coaches who have developed top level talent, won Grand Slams, but are not associated with USTA tennis.  Their names, Brad Gilbert and Paul Annacone.  Between them they’ve coached players who have won far more grand slams than anyone presently involved with USA tennis.   Add in Michael Chang and Jim Courier you’ve got strategies for every surface category.

How Much Longer For Federer and Nadal – Tennis Champion Lifecycles

After a magnificent victory against Novak Djokovic, ending the match in the 4^th set when the tennis-viewing audience would bet against him in a 5 setter, Roger Federer was the story of this year’s Roland Garros despite losing in the final to Rafael Nadal.  Federer ended Djokovic’s 43 match winning streak.  Though we stuck a fork in Federer’s future slam chances last year when he lost in the US Open semifinals in a grinding 5-setter to Djokovic ( a match as pivotal to Djokovic as Lendl’s French Open victory against McEnroe was) we aren’t surprised to see Federer reach another slam final.  Federer beat a competitive field and had the most difficult draw in the tourney.

Not to be undone, the 25 year old Rafael Nadal won his 6^th French Open championship equaling the iconic Bjorn Borg.  Nadal and Borg are European twins with equally haughty won-loss records against the field of 82.6%.   Much of their damage was done on clay.  Nadal has eclipsed Borg with a career grand slam.  He is one of only 5 modern era champs to win slams on 3 surfaces including Jimmy Connors, Andre Agassi, Roger Federer and Mats Wilander.  What makes Nadal’s record more impressive than Federer’s is that he beat Federer on all surfaces in the finals of the slams they played.

Last year we gave our reasons for Federer’s fade:  (1) He needs too many winners against a player like Nadal to be competitive, (2) He can be outlasted in a tourney and by the semi-finals or finals is out of gas i.e French Open final set, (3) He doesn’t have a major-league fastball serve like Sampras that gets him many easy points, important as you get older.  LZ  Granderson from ESPN gave all the reasons Federer is not the greatest in agreement with our prior arguments but also described why Federer would lose to Nadal in Paris.  Greg Garber from ESPN has jumped on the bandwagon as well with Tim Joyce of Realclear Sports.  Is it much longer for Peter Bodo to acquiesce?

When we look at historical tennis data, we begin to conclude that Nadal is near the end of a remarkable story arc as well.

What has been Nadal’s story arc?  Like fellow all-time greats: Borg, Becker, Sampras and Wilander, his championship play manifested itself as a teen winning his first French Open at 19 after thoroughly dominating the South American clay tour.   Later he moved onto the finals of Wimbledon at 21 years of age.   Like every other left hander to reach the finals at a young age(McEnroe, Ivanisevic), he went on to win the championships and a total of 10 grand slams with this year’s French Open compiling an astounding 47-17 won-loss record in pro finals again rivaling Borg’s final percentage.

So the question remains how much gas do either have in the tank?  Is there data in tennis history that is relevant to answering the question?  If Federer is going strong near 30 years old, why shouldn’t Nadal?

Grand Slam Championships by Age – One Handed Backhand strokers.

So what does tennis look like for All Time Great (ATG) Slam champions after 25.  First let’s talk about the data.  We have compiled data since the Open era began for all tennis champions.   Eliminating the Rosewall and Laver data due to the “Dream Team” affect i.e. pros playing against amateurs we come up with a data set that shows a typical age range for people to win Grand Slams is from age 17 to 32 or about 15 years.  More dramatically we see that with the exception of Connors and Agassi, most two handed all time greats end their championship runs around 25 years of age.   We see the limit on one handed backhand hitters winning slams as 31 years of age.

Ultimately, the test of aging in the grand slams is whether you can win 7 matches and up to 35 sets in 14 days in terrible heat and other conditions against opponents 5-10 years younger than you.   Sampras had the benefit of easy points from one of the best first serves tennis has seen and certainly the best second serve far  faster than Federer’s with as much disguise.  Its not about the aces as much as the unreturnable serves or easy setups for putaway volleys.

Grand Slam Championships by Age – Two Handed Backhand strokers.

Data on Connors and Agassi winning post 25 should be taken with a grain of salt.  Connor’s 2 of 3 slams post 26 years of age benefitted from draws where Ivan Lendl eliminated McEnroe prior to a finals match with Connors as well as Borg’s sudden early retirement i.e would Connors win a tourney with semifinalists Borg, Lendl and McEnroe, instead of Bill Scanlon?  All of Connors victories over Lendl were before Lendl’s career-defining victory over McEnroe at the French Open.

Whose Head is Bigger?

  

Agassi’s admission of Performance Enhancing Drug(PED) usage in his autobiography casts a huge red flag over Agassi‘s  THREE slams at the age of 29. At 28 and 29 Lendl, Sampras and Federer, perhaps the fittest players ever to play tennis limped into the final years of their careers having problems lasting through the later rounds. With a career decline far worse than Roger Clemens as a Red Sox, Agassi  emerged with 10 pounds of additional muscle and endurance better than the fittest players in tennis history.  Things that make you go hmmm.

Regardless, Nadal is a different style player than Connors and Agassi as he has relied on defense far more in his career whereas Connors and Agassi dictated the pace of their play throughout their careers.   We have concluded that this is the last year or two of Nadal’s challenging for slam championships.   This is based on a few changes in the tennis environment and Nadal’s aging.

1.  Nadal is losing to Djokovic on all surfaces and Del Potro has returned to tennis which will threaten Nadal on harder / faster surfaces.
2. Nadal has shown that he is vulnerable on clay to flat ball hitters like Djokovic.  And now Tsonga on grass.
3. Nadal’s game more resembles Borg where he is opportunistic rather than Connors or Agassi where they forced play.  That is a harder game to maintain as you age per Borg and Wilander (Chang, Hewitt, etc).

Though Nadal is a different type of physical specimen than tennis has seen with Popeye musculature, a boxer’s gait and a peculiar penchant to adjust his shorts on every serve, we think this may only buy him an additional year of challenging for slams.  Do we favor Rafa to win Wimbledon this year?  Yes, but we won’t be surprised if he loses either.   The US Open will depend on the draw, where DelPo and Andy Murray land and if Djokovic can find his form again by the US Open.

Nadal Sticks a Fork in Federer’s Legend

Rises to Number 2 All Time – All Surface

After 15 days and 2 rain delays, Rafael Nadal has cemented his position as the greatest player of his era.  A traditional tennis champion, he emerged as a 19 year old wunderkind, dominating the clay court circuit going on to win the French Open 5 out of 6 years and accomplishing the longest clay court winning streak in men’s history.  With victories over Roger Federer on all 3 slam surfaces the last time they played and a 2 slam win streak over players not named Federer, Nadal entered the US Open finals awaiting the winner of the Roger Federer – Novak Djokovic semi-final.

Federer was the talk of the tournament and of the sumer circuit.  He hired Pete Sampras’ coach, Paul Annacone, and played with new abandon approaching the net at every chance.   For 4 sets and 9 games Federer executed the style Annacone had burnished in the forges of Pete Sampras’ instinctive game.  But then in the last 3 games, Federer changed styles, coming to net only once, reverting to his all-court / baseline style, ultimately losing the match.

The tennis world gasped and in a moment messages went out to the tennis player and coaching twitter world that roughly paraphrasing read like this: “Federer is not 100% committed to Annacone’s strategy”, “Federer can’t win tight or long matches anymore”.   Djokovic baked Federer for 3 hours, stuck a fork in him and said “He’s done”.

The number one ranked Nadal who had measured Federer like no other in the sport (14-7 head to head record) took his 80% finals winning record into the last match of the tournament and clocked Djokovic with devastating serves rivaling Federer’s speed while laying waste to Djokovic’s serve with 26 break point chances.   The fork was in Nadal’s hands this time.  Victorious, Nadal is the first person to win The French Open, Wimbledon and the US Open consecutively since Rod Laver and he has completed a career grand slam.

In his own humble style Nadal has gone about becoming the second greatest player of all time based on our championship quality ranking, SATERICCON.  The myopic tennis media and sponsor world focused primarily on Federer, humiliating Nadal with tennis vans painted with #2 ranked Federer’s image carrying him to matches and the exaggerated coverage of the Federer William Tell commercial.  Luke Jensen claimed Nadal had peaked years ago.  Tennis hasn’t treated Nadal as the number 1 player he was in 2008, coming back from an injury, but instead went right back to Federer as number 1 as if Nadal’s on-court ferocity were a hiccup in tennis history or as if Federer would have won the French Open and Wimbledon in 2009 had he faced Nadal at either tournament.

A man of Spanish lineage hasn’t been so disrespected by the tennis world since Jack Kramer paid Tony Trabert  $80,000 and Pancho Gonzalez $15,000 on the fledgling pro tour, despite Gonzalez’ year in, year out domination of the circuit and his 74-27 record vs. Trabert.  We have already discussed how Federer is the Larry Holmes of the tennis era with Sampras as it’s Muhammed Ali, on our blog.

Nadal has emerged onto the tennis  world like the Mike Tyson of the sport leaving devastation and ruin to all those who challenged him.  While Federer was the Gentleman Jim of the sport winning in an oh-so Swiss manner, Nadal has been all fire facing off against Federer with a boxer’s gait and bounce.   He is a man supremely confident in his athleticism, skills and mental fortitude.

So where does Nadal rank on the all time – all surface list?  Nadal has moved ahead of John McEnroe and Bjorn Borg within a handful of points behind Pete Sampras.  One more grand slam victory over a talented pool in Australia or any Grand Slam to come and he will pull ahead in Sampras on an all-court basis in terms of greatness (primarily due to his dominance over Federer).

And what of Federer?  Our model re-calculates greatness based on how other players you beat perform at future Slams.  Federer is now riding Nadal’s coattails in our rankings.  Federer moves ahead of Becker to 9^th on an all court basis and is within a point of surpassing Wilander based on his record at slams against Nadal.  On a fast court basis he moves within one point of Borg at 5^th place.  Any combination of Nadal winning a slam or Federer beating another slam winner in winning a slam will put Federer ahead of Borg but nowhere close to Stefan Edberg in 4^th place.

Cumulative All Surface Rank
via SATERICCON Analysis
1		Sampras
2		Nadal
3		Borg
4		McEnroe
5		Connors
9		Federer

What is the career trajectory of Nadal at this point?  As we mentioned before, Borg retired at 25 after winning his 6^th French Open and becoming convinced he could not beat McEnroe after 3 successive fast surface defeats at Slams.  Wilander didn’t win another slam after his tour de force over Lendl at the 1988 US Open.  We think Nadal will win one or two more slams but his period of dominance is likely to be over within the next two years.

The only two handers to consistently challenge for and win slams after 25 years of age were Connors and Agassi.  Neither were counter punchers or defensive players like Nadal has been for much of his career but instead they were aggressive baseliners, hugging the lines, looking to end points quickly.  To become more Agassi than Borg, Nadal needs to modify his game significantly (as he has done already) continuing to add punch to the serve, shortening points, being more opportunistic, and more importantly, shortening his strokes.  It is doubtful even with his weight training assisted body that he will continue to be able to defend,  get around his two handed backhand or have the massive rotation on his forehand as younger and more agile players come onto the court.

Slams at Age	23	24	25	post 25	Total Slams
Borg	2	2	0	0	11
Nadal	1	2	???	???	9
Connors	0	1	0	3	8
Agassi	0	1	1	5	8
Wilander	0	3	0	0	7

And what of Men’s tennis with it’s two major brands, Federer and Nadal sunsetting and not one teenager in the ATP top 100 ?  Will tennis wise up to its ways and go back to diversified surfaces as golf has different courses?  Will it correct the error it made by slowing down 100% of the tennis court when only 12.5% (the service box) may (or may not) have been in need of change?  What about the inflated record consequences of the 32 seed era which guarantees the higher your seed, the easier your path to a title?  No  one seems concerned about the convergence in results.  Records which occurred once every twenty years have now happened 3 times in 11 years with Agassi, Federer and Nadal recording career Grand Slams.  By sheer chance Agassi won the 2^nd least compelling career surface slam in the professional error.  Rule changes instituted by the ATP and other tennis authorities allowed Federer to win the weakest career slam . This is like 3 players hitting more than 65 home runs in 11 years, it just doesn’t happen without assistance (in this case administrative).  But in tennis, records are being broken with abandon, and there are 50 men over 25 years old in the top 100 who have no chance of ever winning a grand slam.  So what next new talent in the sport is a young fan to cheer?

Next, the economics of the US Open.

Ranking Federer by Surface All Time

ADDING THEM UP – MEASURING TENNIS GREATNESS

We’ve covered how Roger Federer stacks up vs the other all time greats on an all surface basis.  Our methodology, SHOTS , argues that for tennis greatness it is important to establish a consistent framework.   SHOTS relies on 2 metrics we created, SITDON, which looks at career winning percent between all time greats, Pantheonists, vs. each other and SATERICCON, a multi-dimensional snapshot of the competitiveness of open era slams ranking each one of them.  When we aggregate the results of those slams for each winner, it gives us a portrait of the all time most competitive slam champions, those players who were greatest when greatness was required.   So rather than hypothesize, we look at player records, value the toughest tournaments and add them up.  In the absence of an alternative methodology, we provide a robust framework to answer the question, who really is the Greatest Tennis Champion.

Breaking out Federer’s match record by surface, he places 7^th at Wimbledon in SATERICCON score vs. Sampras who comes in first with a 2.63 ranking.   Sampras may not have a 2.63 times greater chance of winning a Wimbledon championship than Federer (though we think it is somewhat indicative).  But he is more likely to win such a championship where players have won 2.63 times more slams than in Federer’s era.  (Remember that we have adjusted the SATERICCON rating to almost double Federer’s chances of winning a slam vs all time greats based on cumulative rather than average score. )  Some consider Sampras’ victory in 1993 to be the greatest Wimbledon.  Quarterfinalists included 6 slam winners (Agassi, Edberg, Becker, Stich, Courier and Sampras) and 2 multi-slam finalists (Todd Martin and Cedric Pioline).  However, Becker’s 1989 victory had 4 quarterfinalists that had won as many grand slams as the 1993 quarterfinalists combined (Edberg, McEnroe, Lendl, Wilander). Both are great feats and show the confluence of great all time players and styles in that era.

Again, SATERICCON Analysis shows the quality of a player by the field they defeat.  Not surprisingly the 4 toughest Wimbledon’s occurred within a 6 year time frame, between 1988 and 1993.

A similar story plays out at the US Open where Federer places 6^th to John McEnroe’s 2.93  cumulative rating.  Though some have argued that Sampras’ first US Open victory was the hardest with 5 Pantheon quarterfinalists (McEnroe, Lendl, Agassi and Becker), on a SATERICCON basis, Edberg’s 1991 victory had at least the same difficulty and his 1992 victory was superior with 5 Pantheon quarterfinalists (Sampras, Agassi, Courier and Lendl) plus Michael Chang, a slam winner. McEnroe had a similarly challenging 1980 victory with 4 Pantheonists (Borg, Connors, Lendl) and multi-slam winner, Johan Kriek.

Again, SATERICCON Analysis shows the quality of a player by the field they defeat.  Not surprisingly the toughest US Open’s are concentrated in two eras when great new talents emerged to challenge the established talents still in their prime.   2 of the top 5 occurred when McEnroe and Lendl came to challenge Borg and Connors and the remaining 3 occurred when Agassi, Sampras, Courier and Chang came to challenge Becker, Edberg and Lendl.

When taken on a weighted average across fast surfaces Federer ranks a cumulative 7^th on the SATERICCON scale.   Though Borg never won the US Open his cumulative Wimbledon score puts him ahead of Federer.  Likewise, Becker and Edberg who won less than half the titles of Federer, rank ahead of him when you consider that they played at  the nexus of all time great play.

When reviewing the fast surface data, we do a reality check of Federer’s play vs. comparable players who emulated the champions listed above him.  With a 10 year age difference there is insufficient match experience between Federer and Sampras to make a judgement, though Sampras frequently won tournaments at least twice as difficult as Federer and served 5-10 mph on average faster.  Federer lost to Nadal on fast courts many times.  Would he do any better against a left handed serve and volleying McEnroe.  Using Federer’s record against Agassi prior to Agassi turning 33, would Federer do well against a left handed, tough returning player like Connors?  Finally, Patrick Rafter dominated Federer before he retired, would Federer do better against Stefan Edberg who stylistically is a similar yet vastly superior player to Rafter?

When we started this discussion of all time greatness, it was pre-Wimbledon before Rafael Nadal won his 2^nd title in 4 consecutive finals.  Nadal fits the prototypical model of the Pantheon players as a teenage winner of a slam or a person who wins a slam within a year or two of turning pro such as Connors in 1974.  All of the top 5 Pantheon  players established themselves this way but not Federer who finishes 10th all time / all surface via SATERRICON .  Nadal is likely to move to #2 all time with his next slam win based on his SATERRICON rating while still maintaining the highest winning percent among Pantheon players via SITDON analysis.

We now look at Nadal’s French Open record.  Nadal’s French Open record is marked by his victories over Federer in 3 finals and 1 semifinal and Federer’s participation in each quarterfinal during Nadal’s era.  Borg’s era is marked by the absence of great clay court players and the retirement of the great Aussie generation early on and Lendl’s is hindered by his quest for a Wimbledon title where he skipped multiple French Opens.   In Lendl’s absence, Wilander and Andres Gomez (who Lendl handily beat 4 times at the French Open) won the title.

Again, SATERICCON analysis shows the quality of the players by the fields they played against.  Not surprisingly the toughest French Open’s involve the Lendl – Wilander rivalry which saw many great multi-surface matches and by Jim Courier’s two year dominance of the surface over Agassi.

To improve his legacy, Federer  will need to do more as the path of his career continues to mirror Sampras with fewer victories and even less victories against other grand slam winners.  A US Open, Wimbledon or Australian Open win against Nadal (the French seems out of the question) and tournament wins over the next generation of greats will be significant and could improve his SATERICCON ratings so he passes Becker and Edberg.  Sampras, Borg, Nadal and McEnroe seem unobtainable and surpassing Connors will depend on his success against a younger generation of future slam winners perhaps including Juan Martin Del Potro (should he return successfully from wrist surgery) and maybe Sam Querrey as both Nadal and Djokovic are on the down side of their career grand slam trajectories and are unlikely to add significantly to their totals.  We don’t see a new generation of players on the horizon like Sampras and Agassi or Lendl and McEnroe that will catalyze the game via a great rivalry with Federer and Nadal.

If Federer Isn’t the Best of His Era, How Can He Be the Best of All Time?

Simulation Metrics for All Time Greats

Tennis Grand Slam winners have played more than 3,000 matches between each other.  Pantheonists, the 16 greatest tennis players of all time, have played more than 1,400 matches against each other while winning 70% of the available grand slam titles of the Open era.  We crunched the numbers and created two metrics to measure the overall greatness during a career for Pantheonists.  In reviewing the data, we normalized it by considering only matches where players were younger than 31 (there are only a few slam winners over this age) or if there was less than 5 years of age between the players, such as with Sampras and Agassi, we included that data into their later years.

Results are below which show that on a winning percentage vs. other all time greats, Roger Federer ranks #14 on the SITDON scale.  Rafael Nadal’s #1 ranking is built entirely on his dominance over Federer and we consider there to be insufficient data to rank him #1.  We believe that we will need to see Nadal’s performance over the next few years vs. other rising players to clearly see where he ranks among the all time greats, but he has a fantastic start and it is clear that we are now in the midst of the “Nadal” era overshadowing Federer’s era with his defeat of Federer at Grand Slam finals on every surface the last time they played.

On a cumulative quality of slams all surface ranking, Federer ranks #10 all time.  Federer’s all surface slam does little to influence his overall ranking as there was only one other single slam winner in the quarterfinals of his French Open victory.  Assuming Federer does not change stylistically i.e. adapt a kamikaze net rush style at all costs approach like McEnroe, Rafter, Edberg and Sampras in their later years, we don’t anticipate he will win another slam without injuries or upsets to his central competitors.  Nadal is on course to surpass both Borg and McEnroe from a cumulative quality point of view on his next slam victory and may surpass Sampras with 2 or 3 more slams.  We consider this a difficult task since Nadal is the same age as Wilander at the time he won his last slam and one year younger than Borg when he retired.

Our two metrics are SITDON, the Secada Index of Tennis Dominance with Overt Normalization, and SATERICCON, the Secada Absolute Tennis Era Relative Influence and Championship Competitiveness Over Normalization.  SITDON looks at career winning percentage before the player turns 31 to determine how they did vs. other all time greats.  We consider this to be an excellent substitute for weeks at number 1 ranking and number of slams won.  From our point of view, SITDON is the equivalent of baseball ERA which tells you week in, week out, what was the consistency of that player.  However, SITDON is far more granular as it only looks at the statistics in matches between all time greats, like pitching against Reggie Jackson or Barry Bonds and does not include the equivalent of baseball’s bum of the month.

SATERICCON, measures individual greatness at any point in time.  Though SITDON measures overall career performance, SATERICCON answers the question, in a tournament of the greatest players, who would win those tournaments?   Historically, who was the greatest at the instant when it mattered.   It is a complementary statistic to our Slam Triple metric yet it considers the cumulative value of winning a number of slams which may be less competitive vs. winning a few ultra-competitive slams.  So it answers the question, if you won a slam in the ultra competitive 1987-1993 period, how would that translate into playing in slams in the far less competitive, A32 era and vice versa.

Normalization is the process of looking at data, in this case, 1,400 plus match results and selecting the good data while throwing out the bad.  Though not a perfect process we erred on the side of conservatism in determining when a player was at or near their peak.   In this case we included all data for players from the time they began playing pro tournaments to their 31^st birthday.  Long-playing champions such as Connors, Lendl, Sampras and Agassi are rewarded by both metrics for their longevity.  They are more than just champions for tennis, they are part of the fabric of the sport, tennis DNA.

SITDON has 4 advantages over other measures.   (1) it eliminates factors that others say make era comparison indeterminate such as equipment,  fitness or seedings.  All that matters is the results between top players, (2) it makes it easier to evaluate how age, mileage and style impact the outcome of a match and (3) it refines overall win record and overall match record to only those matches between the greatest players of eras at their peak.   (4) It eliminates computer ranking which is frequently subverted for business to incentify players to play more with higher risk of injury.

SITDON is an absolute measure of competitiveness between Pantheonists in the same era.  Federer’s total match record vs. Pantheonists ranks him 15^th all time in number of matches and with normalization, he ranks 14^th out of 16 in winning percentage vs. Pantheonists  as well.  John Newcombe  takes the last spot as all of his wins over Laver and Rosewall are eliminated via normalization i.e. they were all over 30 when he played them.  Even without normalization i.e. elimination of matches vs. Pantheonists far from their peak, Federer finishes near last in the Pantheon.

Note:  though cumulative career statistics matter on an absolute basis, there is a danger in quoting mid-career statistics average or percentile statistics for tennis players as they are surely to decline in the second half of a career.  Nadal and Federer’s percentages and averages are surely to decline as has every Pantheonist before them as they play longer and deeper into the latter half of their careers.

SITDON measures what would happen if Pantheonists were to play one singles match against each other, SATERICCON measures what would happen if Pantheonists were to play a succession of matches against each other.   SATERICCON’s basis is to determine who was greatest when the greatest all played each other assuming a winner of an all time great tourney would be indicated by past performance.

To create this measure, we use analytic methodology and then we consider ancient and present competitive folklore.  Larry Holmes was undefeated in his first 44 bouts beating an old Muhammad Ali in 15 rounds.  Ali defeated 6 heavyweight champs in or near their prime.  Experts consider Ali a greater champion.  Michael Jordan’s Bulls became champs after beating Isiah Thomas’ Detroit Pistons (at their prime) who had beaten the Celtics and Lakers before them.    Olajuwon’s Rockets won the championship when Jordan semi-retired and the Bulls and Pistons were long past their glory.  They disappeared when Jordan returned.  Jordan’s Bulls are considered greater than the Rockets.

In the Trojan war, Achilles retired briefly over compensation issues, in the interim period Hector laid waste the Greeks slaying far more than Achilles that year and nearly destroying their navy, almost altering history.  But when Achilles came out of retirement, everyone well knew who would win, it was destiny.  Our methodology borrows heavily from this philosophy and the Highlander series.  When the Highlander defeats another Highlander he gains the power of that Highlander and all their previous victims.   Likewise in the Volsunga Saga of Nordic and Germanic literature, if you defeat a dragon and eat it’s heart you gain it’s power.  When measuring greatness, history has always looked at the quality of your victories over the quantity. In SATERICCON, when you defeat another slam champ or the person who defeated them in the slam, you gain their power rating as a cumulative score.

We measure the overall difficulty of winning a grand slam championship by the quality of the field at the quarterfinal stage of the tournament.  We consider the number of grand slams won by the other quarterfinalists, excluding the winner and score the slam as having the value of difficulty assigned by all quarterfinalists.   So for example, Pete Sampras’ first Wimbledon championship had Jim Courier, Boris Becker, Mats Wilander, Stefan Edberg, Goran Ivanisevic and Andre Agassi in the quarterfinals.  The cumulative score of that win is a 28 which is the number of career slams by those players.  In Federer’s first US Open victory, Andy Roddick, Lleyton Hewitt and Andre Agassi were quarterfinalists .  Those players won 11 grand slams between them and Federer’s score is an 11.  However, to come up with a true “normalized” measure of greatness, we only measure players who were at or near their peak in skills and athleticism, so Federer’s score was reduced to 3 by eliminating Agassi who was already 33 at the time of this tournament.  Every player was impacted by this measure as almost each player had an all time great long past their prime in the quarterfinals of one or more of their championships.

The impact of normalization on Federer’s record is far greater since he has played  so few Pantheonists and is dominated by Nadal, the only other Pantheon player in his era.  Without normalization, based on his wins over a 33 year old Agassi, Federer would move past Becker and Wilander on the all time list but that would only get him to #8 all time on an all surface basis.  It was important to use the cumulative score of grandslam wins vs the average score as it balances out the dearth of grand slam champs Federer defeated per tournament but gives him extra points for his cumulative slam wins.  (On an average Slam victory Q-Rating score basis, Federer would rank near last.)  This study does not address what would have happened if Lendl had given up his Quixotic quest for a Wimbledon title and won 2 more French Opens, what would have happened if McEnroe had not taken a break during his career or what would have happened should Jimmy Connors have been allowed to play the French Open in 1974.  All these players ranked ahead of Federer in SITDON and SATERICCON rating.

To create the metric for competitiveness of grand slam victory, we used Federer as the baseline for all other players since so many journalists and talking heads rank Federer as #1 we gave Federer’s cumulative score a 1 and then graded the other players on a scale relative to Federer.  Though several other players have won a Slam Triple, Federer has never been able to do it which questions his ability to win a tournament of all time greats.  Though our SATERICCON rating does not say Pete Sampras is 2.37 more likely to win an average slam than Federer (though we think it is positively indicative), it does say he is far more likely to win a slam 2.37 times more difficult than Federer.

We also eliminated the Australian Open from consideration because it had little relevance in tennis until it became the first slam on the calendar in 1987.  Players like Orantes never played the Australian Open and Borg and Nastase played in it once.  Next, The toughest tournaments of all time on each surface and the winners.

SHOTS, the Hierarchy of Tennis Supremacy

There are around 1 million articles or comments on the internet about Sampras vs. Federer.  Few articles ask, in a tournament of all time greats on any surface, exactly who would Federer (the first seed by A32 rules) beat and how?  If you had to bet your last dime on who would win a tournament of all time greats, would it go towards Federer or someone else?  To understand this concept we created SHOTS, Secada’s Hierarchy Of Tennis Supremacy.  We discuss SHOTS at the midway point of this article while delving into more of Federer’s career statistics comparisons in the next few paragraphs.

Successor Champions

Successor champions occur in tennis when the prior number 1 player is on the decline or has retired and there is a succession fight for number 1.  Martina Hingis, became number 1 without beating Steffi Graf; Roy Emerson remained amateur as other Aussies turned pro.  Sampras is the only open era player to win a slam in his teens, 20’s and 30’s.  Federer never won a Sampras era slam.  He became number 1 after Sampras retired and as Agassi became too long in the tooth to compete with him as displayed in the  “rope a dope” 2005 US Open final.   With Sampras and Rafter’s retirement, tennis saw the same absence of high quality serve and volleyers experienced in the 1974 – 1980 era when the Australian greats retired.

Federer’s career winning percentage of 80.66% trails Borg, Lendl and Connors.  In the diluted A32 era, he won 16 slams, a career grand slam and reached more semifinals than others (as the A32 rules enabled).  Federer won the French Open when there was only a one time slam winner in the quarterfinals.   He lost his last 3 slam finals to Nadal on every surface.  But Federer’s career slam is exaggerated and, SATERICCON analysis shows, happened with weaker fields.  Connors was undefeated in slams  in 1974 dominating Borg on clay.  Would he have won the French Open, and completed a one year slam if he had not been banned from the tourney?

What happens when we adjust for all time greats i.e. Pantheonists who have won slams on all surfaces.  In that case both Connors and Nadal enter the discussion and Federer’s all surface slam Q-rating is last using our SATERICCON methodology.  Nadal’s supremacy over Federer is dispositive  since no other top Pantheon player has had a significant losing record on every surface against another during their period of dominance.  If Federer wasn’t his era’s best, how could he be the greatest ever?

Federer’s Career All Surface Slam Quality (Q) Rank
via SATTERICON Analysis
1		Connors
2		Nadal
3		Wilander
4		Agassi
5/Last		Federer

With SATERICCON on an all surface slam record we modify it to take only the best results on that surface during a slam victory.  Each player ranked ahead of Federer beat a field more than twice as competitive as Federer’s in their respective all surface slams.   On that basis, Connors wins over Borg on hard courts and clay to win the US Open and his grass win over McEnroe at Wimbledon are dispositive with Nadal ranking a slight second.

Nadal is a classic all time great emerging as a teen like McEnroe, Borg, Sampras, Becker, Wilander and Agassi and he won a grand slam early in his career.  Federer was unable to show an extra gear vs. Nadal on any surface, unlike a Boris Becker on grass vs. Edberg or Lendl on hard courts vs. Wilander.   We saw the limit of his game.

Federer’s 82% and declining, winning percent against non-slam winners matches Sampras’ first 874 matches at the same point in his career.   Federer’s record against non Pantheon slam winners was built on a gaudy 40-5 record against 1 time slam winners and baseliners (for the most part) such as Gaston Gaudio, Thomas Johansson, Juan Carlos Ferrero and Andy Roddick  (not a natural serve and volleyer).  Sampras’ record against the power serve and volleyers Krajicek and Stich was no better than 8-10.  Outside those players, Sampras overall record is superior to Federer’s.  With respect to matches between Pantheonists, Sampras ranks first for players with more than 35 of these matches, Federer last.

Creating a Framework for Tennis Greatness

So how do you control for rule changes and the many other variables in different eras of tennis when tennis corporatists inflate statistics and smooth the way to championships?  In a tournament of all time greats, who would win?  SHOTS is a 4 step pyramid where to get to the highest level of realization, you must first complete the prior levels.  Level one is experience as a Grand Slam winner.  Level 2 is experience as a top 16 Grand Slam winner (Pantheon level player).  Level 3 is won-lost percentage vs. other Pantheonists as reflected in SITDON analysis.  Level 4 is the difficulty of slam championships won using SATERICCON analysis or Slam Quality (Q) Rating.  So although one can argue that today’s players may be taller, stronger and use better equipment or that the fields have been diluted due to rule and surface changes, they can’t argue the number of slam winners at any one tournament or their head to head record.  It is known data.

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Our Hiearchy of Tennis Supremacy is dominated by SITDON – Normalized head to head record and SATERICCON – Normalized difficulty of winning a slam.

GOVERNING TENNIS PREDICTIVE MODELS

Tennis is governed by a few 80-20 rules of match play.  After 3-5 matches it becomes settled science as to who will win 80% of the time if one player shows dominance over the other, moreso in a slam with Pantheonists as seen in this year’s Wimbledon final between Nadal and Berdych.  The lone caveat is a “breakthrough” event when a player reaches another level of tennis such as Pete Sampras after his loss to Stefan Edberg at the 1992 US Open or Ivan Lendl after his French Open victory over John McEnroe.   They both went to a next level of greatness, dominating most opposition and fighting the remainder to a draw at worst.  In contrast, each time Federer lost to Nadal, he came back and lost worse the next year.  Watching Nadal’s career progression shows that Nadal has an extra gear that Federer doesn’t.

Absent match competitive data, style of play matters, certain players have a style that beat other players.  Kick serve and volleyer Rafter dominated Federer, similarly styled Edberg may have the same result.  Left handed Nadal dominated Federer at his prime, then left handed, kick serving McEnroe, a clutch player, may have a significant chance against Federer.   Or if Agassi who hits off the bounce early, dominated Federer, then Connors a similar lefty may have a chance against Federer and his backhand.

And finally, youth triumphs over experience when there is a significant age difference and mileage.   For example, Jimmy Connors overall career record vs. Pantheonists is less than 40%.  When isolating for when he was at his peak i.e. younger than 31 and eliminating players over 31, his normalized performance was 57% about the same as Borg.  And of course a young Federer beats a 35 year old Agassi.  Next, SITDON analysis of the Federer record – crunching the numbers.

Wimpledon and the Inflated Tennis Era

Fans at the 1980’s Wimbledon tennis finals between Stefan Edberg and Boris Becker would wonder what they’re watching if they entered a “hot tub time machine” and saw the 2010 semifinals.  2001 rule changes by tennis corporate rule makers diluted the value of a Slam victory and inflated the likely number of wins for any all time great.  Wimbledon court was slowed the same year to align better with the other surfaces all but removing the serve and volleyer from contention in the game.  Wimbledon has become “Wimp”ledon.

In 2000, tennis was faced with the loss of their “Greatest Open Era Generation”.  Boris Becker, Jim Courier, Michael Chang, Stefan Edberg, and the aging Sampras, Agassi and Gustavo Kuerten were all heading to the tennis court in the sky.  They were also the “Greatest Marque Generation” with championship level players from high net worth countries besides the U.S. including Germany, Sweden, France, a well-liked player of East Asian descent and a great South American champion.

Sponsors and Slams revolted as the brand dissipated.    Independently controlled Slams wanted to seed by surface and sponsors were concerned about the relative no-names or surface specialists  (read “unbranded players”) who could pull an upset in an early round and ruin attendance and tv viewership for later rounds.  Unable to bridge the discrepancy between relative talent on different surfaces corporate tennis decided to save the brand moving to the 32 seed (A32) approach which limited all the Grand Slams with the exception of Wimbledon from seeding by surface.  A32 reduced risk and the number of tough matches a top ranked player would play in succession saving them only for the later rounds.  Like McGwire and Sosa in baseball’s home run era, by inflating statistics, in this case the number of times the top players reached later rounds and finals, they could market the brand and hide underlying problems in the game while satisfying sponsors.  Like baseball, this resulted in smashing hard won tennis records and metrics as high seeds win more slams than ever due to A32.  Tennis corporatist’s stewardship of the game’s integrity is questionable with A32.  When considering their disastrous PEDs testing program after 25 years of scandal or inability to develop metrics to measure tennis athleticism across eras it is awful.

A32 business decisions impacted the game’s integrity with intended and unintended consequences that were many and immediate.   Besides minimizing surface specialist challenges, older champs in decline would typically fall into the 17-32 unseeded rankings slots but now had no “puncher’s” chance to knock off younger, high seeds in earlier rounds when they were well-rested.  This would then open up the draw for a deep run into a tournament and for new contenders to emerge.  Falling out of the top 32 for a tennis Pantheonist was equivalent to retirement as almost every all-time great has fallen out of the top 100 within a year of falling out of the top 32 rankings.

A concrete example of this was Federer’s US Open victory over a 35 year old Agassi in 2005 after Agassi had already played 3 consecutive 5 setters the prior 6 days, the finals played on one day’s rest.    It was a triumph of a player in his prime against one with an expired warranty and more than 1,000 pro matches under his belt.  Agassi’s prior match record to Federer before turning 33 was 3-0 including a shellacking at the US Open where Federer won 7 games.  Low-seeded Sampras faced a similar uphill battle in decline, losing to Hewitt in 2001 after performing a Slam Triple defeating the last 2 players to beat him at the Open, Rafter and Safin (the year before, he beat Hewitt).

Meanwhile Federer (82%) has an almost identical winning record against a weaker non-slam field to Sampras after 874 matches.  He has played about 55% as many slam winners as Sampras and played 30% the matches against tennis Pantheonists than Sampras and less than 20% the matches than Connors and Lendl.  Simply put, Federer won slams in an era with a dearth of challengers in a system favoring champions.

The “Slam Triple” is a metric we’ve created that marks when a player in a slam defeats 3 prior slam winners in a row, typically to reach the finals or win the tournament.  A32 has decimated this metric.  12 times on fast surfaces between 1973 and 2001 a player had to defeat 3 slam winners in a row to either win a slam or get to the finals.  Sampras did it 3 times.  It is another measure of the difficulty of a tennis tournament.  Post A32, no fast surface slam winner has beaten 3 slam winners consecutively to win or reach the finals of a slam.  Federer had a chance in 2009 but instead lost his 3^rd consecutive slam final on a 3rd surface to Nadal in Australia.

In addition, since A32, the top seed  has not won Roland Garros which speaks to the spurious use of seeding by ranking across surfaces.  When incorporating the slam triple for clay courts, we find multiple occurrences by Pantheon players as Ivan Lendl did it in 1984, Jim Courier did it twice to win his two French Opens in 1991 and 1992 and Rafael Nadal did it to win the 2007 Roland Garros.  Between the 1990 US Open and 1993 Wimbledon the slam triple was accomplished 7 times (in those 12 tournaments) by 5 different Pantheon players.  Clearly the most competitive era in tennis.  Thomas Muster and Yevgeny Kafelnikov won slam triples later in 1995 and 1997.

Wimbledon’s decision to slow down the surface and balls with A32 eliminated some of the power player’s advantage as seen by the contrast in the serve and volley slugfest of 2001 with dozens of net approaches by both players and 40 aces to the 2002 baseline tournament with 7 aces in total and few jaunts to the net.  Tennis commentators and former pro serve and volleyers:  Paul Annacone, John McEnroe and Darren Cahill, all commented on how balls no longer skid, they popped up while match after match saw multiple lengthy baseline rallies.

Commentators  blame racquet technology, but racquet technology doesn’t alter physics much when a ball skids 6 inches high.  The biggest change is most players are hitting down on the ball at a height equal to or over the net height which favors the groundstroker.  Indeed, no serve and volleyers made it to 2010’s quarterfinals.   Federer averaged net approaches on less than 15% of his total points in the tournament before elimination, averaging a measly 118 mph first serve for the tournament (well below some of Sampras 125 mph average service speed in many matches).

Wimbledon used to see the days of a hard charging Boris Becker, John McEnroe or Pat Cash coming to the net at all costs to avoid the balls skidding bounce.   Frequently the players would hit the ground before the ball, as grass tennis was a crazy form of hockey and rugby.  It wasn’t unusual for players to face off blasting volleys a few feet from each other.  You are lucky to see players get within a court length of each other in a match today and Nadal who frequently plays 10-20 feet behind the baseline remains the best all court player left in the draw.  Today’s tennis is like a basketball game where players only shoot 3 pointers.  What about using the rest of the court?  When this happened in the NBA threatening to ruin the game, they changed the rules.

Another consequence has been the advent of serving giants like Ivo Karlovic, John Isner, Tomas Berdych and Sam Querrey.  Though tennis has slowed the ball, the geometry of the game has made it easier for big men who can serve at greater angles and speed as the balls now pop up at stroke level for taller players rather than forcing them to bend to hit skidding balls.  In 2001 3 seeds were 6’4” or taller.  This year there were 10 such seeded players prior to Ivo Karlovic dropping out of the tournament.   Only Berdych, a baseliner made it to the semifinals.  Gone is the “serve and volleyer”, now we have the ”serve and rallyer”.

Other consequences are what to do as favorites begin downward progressions.  Federer is at the age where Sampras saw marked decline and has lost in successive slam quarterfinals.  Nadal at 24 is closing on the age where Borg retired (25) and is the same age when Wilander won his last slam.  Unless Nadal dramatically changes his game to reduce wear and tear and reliance on backcourt movement, it is likely that tennis will see substantial changing of the guard within the next 2 years.  And then what for the tennis brand as A32 starves its young talent of wide open draws?  Next, a framework for determining all time greats.

Unexpected Consequences of A32 Era
*		No First Seed Wins Roland Garros in 8 years.
*		Serve and Volleyers become Serve and Rallyers – Wimpledon
*		Slam Triple, Eradicated
*		Diminished New Branding Possibilities (What to do as Federer winds down and Nadal reaches 26, old age for 2 handers)
*		Super-Sized Players
*		Greater Difficulty for Older Champions to Win Tournaments

Comparing Tennis Eras, Why Federer’s Second Half Matters

Wimbedon’s first week is midway and tennis pundits will discuss how much more Roger Federer will extend his lead on the other all-time great tennis players in the great players’ Pantheon.  Disbelievers will be silenced looking for arguments like, ”Could Federer have beaten Becker, Edberg or McEnroe on fast courts?” or “If Federer couldn’t beat an aging Rafter or Agassi before they turned 31 how could he beat them at their best?”.   If you have heard the reply, “can’t compare eras tennis”, you are not alone as Googling for that statement comes up more than 2 million times in results.  But you can compare eras.

We at Secada Labs have analyzed more than 3,000 tennis matches played between all time greats, “The Pantheon” and other slam winners across the Open era(s) and more than 1,400 matches between the 16 players who comprise “The Pantheon”, winners of 4 or more Grand Slams during the open era.  Using our patent pending SITDON and SATERICCON methodology and based on our copyright pending SHOTS framework, we have come up with an absolute measure of tennis greatness.  The framework and metrics answer 3 questions.   (1)  How do you measure all time greatness?  (2) What was the level of greatness of any player in the tennis pantheon at the time they were playing?  (3) What was the level of greatness of the field of any tournament won by an all time great?

The Pantheon of All Time Great Players
4 Slam Victors or More (top 16)
Roger Federer		Mats Wilander
Pete Sampras		Stefan Edberg
Bjorn Borg		Boris Becker
Jimmy Connors		Rod Laver
Ivan Lendl		Jim Courier
Andre Agassi		Guillermo Vilas
Rafael Nadal		Ken Rosewall
John McEnroe		John Newcombe

Federer’s Rank Among All Time Greats

We ran the analysis and Federer ranked no greater than 6^th on all time basis on any surface even when weighted in favor of his “volume” of slam victories rather than the average competitiveness of those wins.   Indeed, 5 players, Boris Becker, Stefan Edberg and 3 Americans, Pete Sampras, John McEnroe and Jimmy Connors ranked ahead of Federer on a weighted average basis on his two best surfaces and Federer ranked 7 overall on a blended basis.  Sampras, Edberg and McEnroe ranked ahead of Federer on both surfaces.  We think back to the old Reebok commercial where Shaq is faced with the Pantheon of great centers, he shows his prowess and they reply, “That isn’t enough” .   Federer’s record of beating tennis also-rans with a rapidly diminishing tournament record has not been enough.  The last part of Federer’s career will determine his place in the Pantheon.

Before drilling down into the numbers there are 3 philosophical arguments that are the basis of the study and need to be asked in any comparison.

Comparing All Time Greats

(1) How do you compare all time greats?  Does the level of competition matter.  Does Muhammad Ali’s triumphs over 6 heavyweight champs in or near their prime make his fights more meaningful than Larry Holmes victories over an aged Ali and Ken Norton and a succession of unknowns?   Does the Quality (Q rating)  of who you beat or the Q rating of the overall tournament matter as much as what you win?

(2)  Though all time slam records matter, any determination of greatness would be determined by a tournament of champions or long term competition.  So though people may say that Federer’s defeat of an aging Sampras long past his Wimbledon peak is exemplary of his likely outcome with Sampras (we disagree), the question remains how many times would Federer beat Sampras out of 10 matches, 5 out of 10, 6 out of 10?  Could Federer win in a tournament of 16 people where he could face an Agassi or Connors in their prime in the first round, then Lendl or Vilas then Edberg or Becker before he ever faced Sampras?  We know the answer to that for Sampras as he is one of the few who has won such a tournament as have Edberg and Becker.   The answer is unknown for Federer.

(3)  If grand slams or “Majors” are the gold standard of measuring tennis success and championships are the coin of the realm, what happens when the gold in the coinage is diluted?  In the book “eight centuries of financial folly” The authors stated “Many of the earliest financial crises occurred when monarchs of a country reduced the gold or silver content of their coinage to finance budget shortfalls”  Did rule changes occur in tennis that diluted the value of slam championships by increasing the likelihood that top players would reach later rounds as seeded?  Did rule changes occur, (like slowing down the court and balls at Wimbledon) that favored one style of play over another. Although our study eliminates equipment changes  as a factor in greatness, 2001 tennis rule changes have had many unintended consequences that unequally favor a champion over challengers and certain styles of play over others.

More to come in our next part – The 2002 Slow Court era – Saving the Tennis Brand

Note:  Credit goes to Phil Secada, who is loosely associated with Secada Labs for serving as a backboard and devil’s advocate about these concepts with respect to Federer all time.