A statistical comparison of some of the 'great' matches in recent years

[5263]

Originally Posted by Moose Malloy

I'm pretty sure the stats I listed for this match are incorrect. Got it from this article:

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/tenni...-game.htm#more

The article has Goran at 42 winners, 30 unforced errors, Rafter at 49 winners, 11 unforced errors. I don't believe aces were counted in the winner count. Goran had 27, Rafter had 13. If aces were counted in that winner total, that means that Goran only had 15 winners outside of aces in the entire match, which seems unbelievable.

When I add the aces, Goran now has a differential of +39, Rafter at +51, which makes more sense for a match of this length & a match that Goran won(and both players were S&V on 1st & 2nd serve, that type of tennis usually lead to high winners/low errors)

I think Aces are normally included.

[Cindysphinx]

Originally Posted by akv89

Thanks for the stats, but wouldn't the winners-UE ratio be more indicative of quality of play than the differential.

It might depend on what kind of tennis you like, but I think the best stat to measure match quality would be average number of strokes per rally.

When they put together those features of the "10 best points in a tournament" there is never an ace included. That's because aces are kind of dull. The stuff that makes the viewer gasp is the long rally with lots of crazy defense.

Give me a match with lots of long rallies over a match with lots of "winners" (including aces) any day.

[BeHappy]

yeah, these numbers are meaningless to anyone who has any understanding of tennis.

They:
1)Never take into acount forced errors
2)Are compiled by amateurs
3)Are highly subjective
4)Aren't consistant, eg: s&v
5)don't take into acount conditions like: wind, surface speed etc
6)Don't take into account the standard of defense etc

They are almost meaningless and should be taken with a large pinch of salt.

[krosero]

Originally Posted by Moose Malloy

I'm pretty sure the stats I listed for this match are incorrect. Got it from this article:

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/tenni...-game.htm#more

The article has Goran at 42 winners, 30 unforced errors, Rafter at 49 winners, 11 unforced errors. I don't believe aces were counted in the winner count. Goran had 27, Rafter had 13. If aces were counted in that winner total, that means that Goran only had 15 winners outside of aces in the entire match, which seems unbelievable.

I think you're right, 42 non-service winners is far more realistic for that match. And he had 40 non-service winners in the '98 final, also over 5 sets.

So then this boxscore is like the one in the W. Post for the '00 final, which said that the winners included service when they actually didn't.

However, this makes me think that maybe the line in which the unforced errors is reported does not include the double-faults.

Obviously, a double-fault is an unforced error, but what I mean is that if the aces were not included in the row for Winners, then how do we know that the doubles were included in the row for Unforced Errors?

And that sort of uncertainty, I think, might be one of the risks in comparing differentials across the years and from many different sources.

(Goran had 16 doubles, and if they're included in the ue's, it means he had only 14 ue's on other strokes for the whole match, which again seems too low).


I have these stats in my notes on this match:

Cox News Service, Palm Beach Post:

Ivanisevic ripped 27 aces and had 80 winners against 33 unforced errors in the course of the three-hour match. Rafter, incredibly, had 66 winners against 11 unforced errors.

The Sports Network:

Rafter played an extremely clean match, committing only 11 unforced errors and striking 49 winners.

The former of these two seems to be including service while the latter does not.