Stats On the T

With the Grand Slam calendar for 2019 now at a close, which players faced the greatest challenges at the majors? And which achieved the most under extreme pressure?

We are likely to look back at the end of the 2019 season as the start of a generational breakthrough in men’s tennis. With four of the most impressive 23-and-unders on tour—Daniil Medvedev, Stefanos Tsitsipas, Alexander Zverev, and Matteo Berrettini—reaching the semifinals and taking out 2 of the Big 4 on their way there, it is feeling like we are on the brink of a ‘Big 4’ takeover by the ‘Next 4’. What can the early career trajectories of the Big 4 tell us about which if any of these young stars might follow their footsteps?

In the third instalment of the Laver Cup, Team World came the closest it has ever come to defeating the juggernaut that Team Europe continues to be. With a Day 2 score of 5-7, World, in taking the first two matches, made the contest as close as it could have been. There was some confusion about that fact by the TV commentators who seemed to think that it was still possible for the teams to get to a 13th match. Here I explain why that wasn’t the case and what would have had to happen to reach a decider.

The performances of Daniil Medvedev and Matteo Berrettini at the 2019 US Open showed that the future of men’s tennis is bright. In this post, I look at the point-by-point pressure each of these young stars had to confront and analyze how well they responded to it in each round of their US Open journey.

With 22 year-old Belinda Bencic, 19 year-old Bianca Andreescu, and twenty-three year-olds Daniil Medvedev and Matteo Berrettini into the US Open semifinals; are we seeing the first wave of a new generation of dominant players at Majors?

The round of 32 is set for the US Open. Out of all the matches that could still happen, which will be the ones not to miss?

With the last Grand Slam of the calendar approaching, it is the perfect time to review the relative strengths of the field and who has done the most to increase their hardcourt edge in the past year.

The format changes at Majors are the most prominent of a number of rule changes that are being considered to reduce the length of tennis matches in order to make the tennis ‘product’ more attractive. In this guest post, Francesco Lisi and Matteo Grigoletto of the Department of Statistical Sciences at the University of Padua investigate how removing the first serve or advantage points could impact match lengths.

A constant conundrum for tennis fans is deciding which match to watch at any particular time. In this post, I look at how we can quanitfy the ‘must-seeness’ of a match based on it’s overall quality and competitiveness using player ratings.

A new section of the website is debuted: ‘Ratings’. Here (the hope) is to provide the top 100 singles and doubles men and women on tour each week using MOV Elo ratings.