There is no time in tennis history that compares to what tennis (or the world, for that matter) is going through right now. The World Wars were the only other time where multiple Majors were suspended for an extended period of time. In this post we look at the slam winners in the 10 years before and after World War I and II and consider what history might tell us about the difficulty of coming back from the public health war against COVID-19.

Yesterday, I described one strategy for using round, game margin, and total games to automatically rank interesting matches. After using this approach to rank the Top 30 men’s matches, in this post I do the same for the women for all Grand Slam matches from 1997 to the present.

With the tours and most nations now on lockdown, many of us are feeling bereft of matches to watch. If you have been looking for great classic matches to watch and wondered where to start, I’ve got you covered! Using an ‘interest’ score that attempts to combine match length, competitiveness and quality, I’ve ranked the 30 most interesting men’s matches from 1990 to the present.

With sport at a standstill, there is ample time for sports nerds to get really wonky. In this post, I look at a question that should go to the heart of any tennis analyst: are players non-iid? I look at how we can measure non-iid effects, why we should care, and who has been the most non-iid among the Top 50 ATP players.

The announcement of a 6-week suspension of the ATP Tour was just the latest in a series of disruptions of the tennis calendar owing to the COVID-19 pandemic. With no official decisions on whether players will retain their current ranking, I consider what the possible impact would be if the tours were to decide to carry current rankings forward for a prolonged period.