Empirical argument for why Sharapova choked

[blubber]

See this article it discusses womens tennis

http://www.slate.com/id/2159145?nav=tap3

[Nuke]

Huh? The article suggests that women choke under pressure. But isn't Serena a woman, too?

[Nick Irons]

Originally Posted by Nuke

Huh? But isn't Serena a woman, too?

Technically.

[Nuke]

Thanks, Ms Hingis.

[Starlite]

Hmmm, I'm not going to argue that women choke more or less than men, but maybe, just maybe, Serena Williams played better than Maria Sharapova on that day. Also, this article has nothing to do with that match. So where is your evidence?

[Nick Irons]

Serena played the best match of her career last month. Period.

She just steamrolled Maria

[blubber]

If you go to the front page of slate.com they have a picture of Sharapova highlighting the article. I thought that was pretty funny and that probably influenced me when i wrote the title to the thread. The article only explains why some women choke or choke more often then men.

It's pretty cool that a scientist would use women's tennis to explain his theory. It lends credence to those who have complained about their inability to watch women's tennis.

[sureshs]

According to the article, %tage of UEs is 30 vs 34 or 30 vs 40. Significant difference, but not so large as the article makes it appear. Less topspin compared to the men may account for a lot of it, something that I am not sure the researcher will be aware of, as he is probably just compiling stats.

[BigServer1]

That wasn't a choke, that was a slaugtering. Sharapova just wasn't good enough that day, end of story.

[Camilio Pascual]

Some pretty deficient logic in the article. Here is one example:
Since the article states that women's rallies are longer than the men's on the crucial points, we could prove that women are capable of producing MORE good shots per crucial point and a LOWER error rate than men per shot. It comes down to which level of analysis one is using, per shot or per point. The article has "proved" to me that women have a HIGHER shot tolerance than men on crucial points.
As far as proving women to be bigger chokers outside of tennis, I wonder whether men or women "choke" more when presented with a crying baby. Hmmm....

[Moose Malloy]

I'd be interested in an analysis of the Graf-Seles era compared to today. I have noticed that womens tennis has an inordinate amount of choking compared to just a few years ago.

I don't think this means that women are naturally just chokers, but just that this generation of womens players are chokers. This trend could change.

Seles would never make errors on big points the way Mauresmo & co do today. And she certainly wasn't playing it safe.

[Budgerigar]

it said both men/women hit slower and rally less when important point. ue definition too murky.

[blubber]

You can watch some some clips of Seles vs Graf at the Australian Open thanks to Laurie's website:

http://www.classictennismatches.net/.../page0018.html

No choking going ion in that match. Except for Serena, they're head and shoulders above the women of today. I guess that's when women's tennis was fun to watch.

[samizram]

It turns out that by at least one measure—the number of unforced errors—men play equally well throughout the match. They make unforced errors on about 30 percent of the most important points, about 30 percent of the least important, and about 30 percent of all those in between. But women show a very different pattern: 34 percent unforced errors on the least important points, steadily rising to almost 40 percent on the most important. That's almost surely too big a difference to be mere coincidence.

No that isn't surely too big a difference to be mere coincidence.

That's an often used device of junk science. That's 6 percentage points, not much at all. And he doesn't state the sample size and raw data this is based on.

The women's tour has nowhere near the depth of the men's. That fact alone can more than account for this difference.

Both Serena Williams and Lleyton Hewitt are egomaniacs who can psyche themselves into believing they can make any shot, and when they get hot and have their psyche pump going full throttle, they can actually seem superhuman, whaling on everything and having it go in. Both psyched out their opponents when they were fresh on the tour. Both made their opponents choke.

I think the men got over it quicker. The women had to become better and deal with the pace the Williams' brought to the game, but they adjusted too.

Give lleyton and Serena a long lay off, and they can come roaring back out of the bue again, till again the other players realize their human and stop choking, stop letting the act and intimidation tactics get to them.

Because of the difference in how men and women are raised, and cultutral expectations, there might be some slight difference in how they cope, but there's really no proof of that. And there certainly is no proof that it isn't changing as women succeed in greater numbers in lifestyles that were formerly male territory. It's only been a few decades. We haven't yet had generations of girls raised to believe in (as opposed to second guess) themselves.

And I completely agree that women who choked just didn't make it to the very top of the game a few years ago. Or back in the 1970's either. It's hard to believe that someone like Maurismo can be there today. That's lack of depth.

So I'm pretty skeptical. Look at that headline "Women Are Chokers." He's out to get attention, make a name for himself, and knows just how to do it.

[jaggy]

All social science research has lots of exceptions, maybe women do choke more than men but it does NOT mean that all women are chokers.

[Raj]

Originally Posted by samizram

Both Serena Williams and Lleyton Hewitt are egomaniacs who can psyche themselves into believing they can make any shot, and when they get hot and have their psyche pump going full throttle, they can actually seem superhuman, whaling on everything and having it go in. Both psyched out their opponents when they were fresh on the tour. Both made their opponents choke.

I think the men got over it quicker. The women had to become better and deal with the pace the Williams' brought to the game, but they adjusted too.

Give lleyton and Serena a long lay off, and they can come roaring back out of the bue again, till again the other players realize their human and stop choking, stop letting the act and intimidation tactics get to them.

I can't speak for Lleyton Hewitt because I rarely watch the guy, but in Serena Williams' case, her intimidation factor didn't really start playing in until 2002 when the rest of the players realized just how tough it was to beat her. It was her superior athletic ability that allowed her to crush others, and after a while of doing that, an intimidation factor surrounded her and her game.

Quite frankly, I still don't think the rest of the tour has adjusted. It merely seemed that way when the Williamses took a hiatus from the sport. Serena playing at her best (and as we saw in Aussie in some matches, way below her best) can beat any woman on any given day, due to her athletic ability.

[noeledmonds]

Interesting theory, but I would like to know more about the sample Daniele Paserman used. It seems that it was only from the FO 2006. This is a very small proportion of the circuit and a year is a very small proportion of women's tennis. I would like it if this was investigated further including all the GS tournaments across maybe the whole of the open era. Then really conclusive results could be drawn. However I can see this would be a painstaking task.

[Condoleezza]

Originally Posted by Raj

I can't speak for Lleyton Hewitt because I rarely watch the guy, but in Serena Williams' case, her intimidation factor didn't really start playing in until 2002 when the rest of the players realized just how tough it was to beat her. It was her superior athletic ability that allowed her to crush others, and after a while of doing that, an intimidation factor surrounded her and her game.

Quite frankly, I still don't think the rest of the tour has adjusted. It merely seemed that way when the Williamses took a hiatus from the sport. Serena playing at her best (and as we saw in Aussie in some matches, way below her best) can beat any woman on any given day, due to her athletic ability.

Serena had great 13 months in 2002/03 when she won 5 of her 8 slams.
In the remaining 9 years she won 3 slams. No big deal, IMO ...

Condi

[fuzz nation]

Why is anyone even asserting that Maria choked? Was she up a set and two breaks? Were Serena's eyes bleeding two games into the match? If we were discussing a final where Maria played someone without a career slam under her belt, choking could perhaps enter the conversation with some relevance. Maria never had a wiff of a chance to win the match, let alone choke it away.

Maria got in line with everyone else who has tried to match Serena's power game, but didn't bring enough bullets. What boggles my mind is that, as one of the top women in the world, Maria didn't employ anything regarding a "Plan B" and the second set was a mere formality. She kept on doing what wasn't working!