Stats for Sampras-Rafter (2000 W final)

Sampras d. Rafter 6-7 (10-12), 7-6 (5), 6-4, 6-2

SERVICE

Sampras had 27 aces, 12 doubles. He hit 42 other serves that Rafter could not get back; I gave him 9 service winners on those.

Rafter had 12 aces, 8 doubles. He hit 54 other serves that Sampras could not get back; I gave him 3 service winners on those.

Sampras won 101 of 132 points on serve (77%). Rafter won 107 of 167 (or 64%).


WINNERS

Sampras had 39 winners apart from service: 14 FH, 15 BH, 3 FHV, 7 BHV.

Rafter had 29 winners apart from service: 3 FH, 5 BH, 6 FHV, 14 BHV, 1 overhead.

Sampras hit 11 return winners, all passes; 8 came from the backhand. All 3 of the forehands, and 2 of the backhands, were returns of first serves. He had 14 other passing shots (8 from the forehand).

Rafter hit 4 return winners, all of them passes, two from each side. All were returns of second serves, except one backhand. He had 3 other passing shots, all backhands.

Neither player had a lob winner.

Sampras hit three-quarters of his winners with ground strokes.


ERRORS (FORCED AND UNFORCED)

As mentioned above, Sampras made an error on 54 returns (21 FH and 33 BH). Rafter made an error on 42 returns (16 FH and 26 BH).

Apart from returns, Sampras put out 16 attempted passing shots (including 13 BH), while Rafter put out 15 (including 12 BH, of which three were lobs).

Sampras made 15 other errors (3 FH, 2 BH, 9 FHV, 1 BHV), while Rafter made 30 (4 FH, 4 BH, 8 FHV, 14 BHV).

In all I counted 172 errors of one kind or another (85 by Sampras, 87 by Rafter), apart from their 20 double-faults (12 by Sampras, 8 by Rafter). With doubles, it’s 192. Add that to the 39 aces (27 by Sampras, 12 by Rafter) and 68 remaining winners (39 by Sampras, 29 by Rafter), and I’ve got 299 points, the same as the ATP and one more than Sports Illustrated.

Published stats

I found two boxscores for this match. The frustrating thing about boxscores is that no two are alike, and there are all sorts of problems with them.

The two for this match give the same numbers, but one refers to "Winners (Including Service)" while the other refers only to "Winners." If I had read both boxscores at the morning newstand, I would have assumed that probably the winners did include service, and that only one boxscore was being explicit about it.

As it turns out, the winners don't include service, per my count above.

This is one obvious example, one good reason, for doing your own stats on matches.

The first boxscore is from Sports Illustrated, part of this article.



This is the first boxscore I've seen, incidentally, in which the word "Winners" refers just to non-service winners.

The second boxscore was printed in the Washington Post. The numbers are the same, but I've bolded some extra information that it gives.



I'm going to refer to these boxscores, for simplicity, as the SI boxscore.

My own count could tell me what the winners were made of, but it can't tell me why SI has such a high count of unforced errors. The errors give the mistaken impression that it was a low-quality match.

Moreoever, the boxscore can’t begin to tell you how Sampras won the match. It gives Sampras 26 more winners/aces than Rafter, but he also has 28 more unforced errors/double-faults. That puts him behind Rafter by 2 points overall. Yet he won the match in four sets -- by a margin of 22 points, according to SI.

That means that in the missing category of forced errors, Sampras must have made only 6, while Rafter made 30. That gets them to the figures for total points won.

But I don’t know why SI should have given Sampras so few forced errors – if indeed they counted forced errors at all. In fact I don’t know how there could have been only 36 forced errors between the two players, because by my count they made a combined total of 96 errors on service returns. That means that even if all of SI’s putative 36 forced errors were marked down on returns, 60 remaining return errors were counted as unforced.

A strange stat.

One possibility is that the Double Faults are included in the line for Unforced Errors. In that case, Sampras made 18 forced errors, Rafter 38. That’s 56 forced errors between them, leaving 40 service returns marked down as unforced.

That is still a lot.

And no matter how you look at SI’s unforced errors, NBC had fewer. By their count, it was a high-quality match. At 2-all in the third, Leo Levin had Sampras at 22 unforced errors, Rafter at 13.

The ATP has the match at 6 minutes longer than SI does. They also have Sampras winning 161 points instead of SI's 160. They have Sampras at 24 aces instead of 27, and Rafter at 10 aces and 7 doubles instead of 12 aces and 8 doubles. And they have Sampras serving at 63.6%, Rafter at 58.1%.

My stats line up with the ATP on total points won; with NBC and SI on aces and doubles.


NET STATS

Per the ATP and my own stats, Sampras served 132 points. If you take out his 69 unreturned serves (27 aces, 42 other serves), and his 12 doubles, you’re left with 51 points on which he could have followed his serve to net – only two points higher than SI’s figure for all the approaches he made in his own service games and in Patrick’s. This suggests that Sampras was credited with two approaches in Rafter’s serve games. I actually counted 7 times that he came forward, though not of all those are clear approaches. Twice, for example, he was just hovering at the service line to make passes; three times he was drawn in to make running gets, but only on one did he need to make a volley.

Per the ATP and my own stats, Rafter served 167 points. If you take out his 66 unreturned serves (12 aces and 54 other serves), and his 8 doubles, you’re left with 93 points on which he could have followed his serve to net; SI has exactly the same figure for all the approaches he made in his own service games and in Pete’s. I marked down 5 times that Rafter did not follow his serve to net, but that's okay, because I marked down 6 times that he approached in Pete’s service games.

I'm not including 2 unsuccessful gets, so the 6 approaches in Pete's service games consist of 4 behind a service return, and 2 to make successful gets. On one get he made a pass and on another he made a forehand and ended up running to Pete’s side of the net as Pete put a volley out. I think, if a player ends up rushing the opponent's side of the net, it has to be counted as a net approach.

In sum, this boxscore calculates net stats just like the one published in the New York Times for the 1987 final between Lendl and Cash.

But it is very different from the one that SI published for the 1998 final. In that one, Sampras approaches 143 times, Ivanisevic 127 times, even though Goran served on far more points than Pete did. If anyone has a clue how those net stats are calculated, I'd like to hear your thoughts; I have not been able to figure that one out at all.


Other stats in the print media:

The South Florida Sun Sentinel referred to “69 unreturned Sampras serves.” I counted the same number (27 aces, 42 other serves).

The Denver Post said that Sampras ended with “27 aces and 13 passing-shot winners.” Highbeam.com had the same number on passing shots. So did SI. I had 14 -- but only if I exclude his 11 passes on service returns.

The AP reported two passes by Rafter. I counted 3 -- again, only if I exclude his 4 passes on service returns.

So again, it's not possible to tell on paper what definition of passing shot is being used.

Krosero, thanks for posting this.

You are quite right, it was very high quality, and a quite dramatic match especially the ending. Taking into account the very long rain delays both players did a marvellous job. So diid the crowd - it was quite a rowdy crowd by Wimbledon final standards - they were waiting for play for so long because of the rain. I remember David Mercer saying "nothing better than a few glasses of PIMS to loosen the inhibitions!

And the stas confirm what I always thought, Rafter fought real hard and should be congratulted, he almost pinched the match. In Sampras v Rafter meetings over the years, Rafter ususlly fought and fought to get to tiebreaks or Sampras would hammer him in sets, there was no inbetween usually.

This 7 minute clip I put on youtube last month is an indication of how tough Rafter had it in that 1st set - I don't know how he pulled off that set.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhVKmJs59X4

NBC had fewer. By their count, it was a high-quality match. At 2-all in the third, Leo Levin had Sampras at 22 unforced errors, Rafter at 13.

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how many winners did NBC have?

laurie said:

This 7 minute clip I put on youtube last month is an indication of how tough Rafter had it in that 1st set - I don't know how he pulled off that set.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhVKmJs59X4

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I actually always though that was a major choke by Rafter. He should have won the second set too.

rolandg said:

I actually always though that was a major choke by Rafter. He should have won the second set too.

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Rafter himself said he choked. But that's because he knew he had a major opportunity to take advantage of Sampras when he wasn't at his best due to injury. The point I'm making is that despite everything in Rafter's favour, he still couldn't win. Also, Sampras had about 15 break point opportunities and Rafter had about 3 in total. Rafter was outplayed in that match. A 100% Sampras would probably have beaten Rafter in straight sets.

Rafter did well to make their rivalry sort of competitive towards the end, maybe a sort of levelling with Sampras' drop off in absolute excellence. Between 1993 and 1998 Sampras beat Rafter 8 straight times including a few hammerings at the Philadelphia final in 1997, the Grand Slam cup final in 1997, the Davis cup semifinal in 1997 and the 1st set of the Cincinnati final in 1998. Rafter, so determined got under Sampras' skin and turned it around - some bad blood came in at that time, Sampras never really rated Rafter - Sampras doesn't like controversy so probably left that out of his new book. Rafter won 3 in a row between 1998 and 1999 then Sampras won their last 4 meetings including the 1999 Cincinnati final and here at the Wimbledon final in 2000 and two more in 2001 including the US Open.

Rafter would have stolen the match had he taken it, so it was by far the right result - Sampras' simply has too much game for Rafter, even when he's not 100% fit.

laurie said:

Rafter himself said he choked. But that's because he knew he had a major opportunity to take advantage of Sampras when he wasn't at his best due to injury. The point I'm making is that despite everything in Rafter's favour, he still couldn't win. Also, Sampras had about 15 break point opportunities and Rafter had about 3 in total. Rafter was outplayed in that match. A 100% Sampras would probably have beaten Rafter in straight sets.

Rafter did well to make their rivalry sort of competitive towards the end, maybe a sort of levelling with Sampras' drop off in absolute excellence. Between 1993 and 1998 Sampras beat Rafter 8 straight times including a few hammerings at the Philadelphia final in 1997, the Grand Slam cup final in 1997, the Davis cup semifinal in 1997 and the 1st set of the Cincinnati final in 1998. Rafter, so determined got under Sampras' skin and turned it around - some bad blood came in at that time, Sampras never really rated Rafter - Sampras doesn't like controversy so probably left that out of his new book. Rafter won 3 in a row between 1998 and 1999 then Sampras won their last 4 meetings including the 1999 Cincinnati final and here at the Wimbledon final in 2000 and two more in 2001 including the US Open.

Rafter would have stolen the match had he taken it, so it was by far the right result - Sampras' simply has too much game for Rafter, even when he's not 100% fit.

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Yeah, Sampras was better than Rafter, but I think Rafter choked that second set, and I don't think Sampras would have been able to come back from that. I loved the rivalry between those two, because although Sampras was by far the better player, you could see how jealous he was of Rafter. it was quite tragic really.

rolandg said:

Yeah, Sampras was better than Rafter, but I think Rafter choked that second set, and I don't think Sampras would have been able to come back from that. I loved the rivalry between those two, because although Sampras was by far the better player, you could see how jealous he was of Rafter. it was quite tragic really.

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Tragic? That's a strong word. Why do you say tragic?

laurie said:

Tragic? That's a strong word. Why do you say tragic?

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It's always tragic when you see accomplished people get all uppity and childish when they are challenged by somebody else, particuarly when the challenger is deemed less accomplished but is more popular. Tragic in a funny way.

rolandg said:

It's always tragic when you see accomplished people get all uppity and childish when they are challenged by somebody else, particuarly when the challenger is deemed less accomplished but is more popular. Tragic in a funny way.

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Ah, like a tragic comedy.

This will make you laugh, it's made me laugh since I saw it back in 1998. Sampras cracking up like that was amusing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIWfzp60YCo

laurie said:

Ah, like a tragic comedy.

This will make you laugh, it's made me laugh since I saw it back in 1998. Sampras cracking up like that was amusing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIWfzp60YCo

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I can't watch Youtube at work, so i'll watch it later.

I did generally find Sampras a bit cringe-worthy anyway. He didn't have a good sense of humour, and watching him try and be funny was like watching Ricky Gervais in The Office. Him trying to get the ball boy to put his hand up his shorts at Wimbledon that year is one of the most horrifying clips i've seen on youtube. You can't quite believe he's actually doing that, you can't quite believe he actually finds it funny, but you can't look away.

rolandg said:

I can't watch Youtube at work, so i'll watch it later.

I did generally find Sampras a bit cringe-worthy anyway. He didn't have a good sense of humour, and watching him try and be funny was like watching Ricky Gervais in The Office. Him trying to get the ball boy to put his hand up his shorts at Wimbledon that year is one of the most horrifying clips i've seen on youtube. You can't quite believe he's actually doing that, you can't quite believe he actually finds it funny, but you can't look away.

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If that's what happened in 2001 then Sampras clearly lost the plot for a short time there!

Moose Malloy said:

how many winners did NBC have?

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Actually after 3 sets they have more complete numbers:

Sampras had 24 aces, 10 doubles, 64 winners, and 24 unforced errors.
Rafter had 11 aces, 7 doubles, 39 winners, 17 unforced errors.

Actually after 3 sets they have more complete numbers:

Sampras had 24 aces, 10 doubles, 64 winners, and 24 unforced errors.

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how many clean winners & aces did you have after 3? just wondering how many service winners NBC gave him.

wow. crunching your numbers..
Sampras had 132 service points.. 12 doubles + 27 aces + 42 unreturned
out of 120 serves in, rafter only returned 51 .
I would be surprised if rafter broke sampras even once with these numbers..

Moose Malloy said:

how many clean winners & aces did you have after 3? just wondering how many service winners NBC gave him.

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I had Sampras at 24 aces and 32 clean non-service winners, so I'm short of NBC's total winners by 8. I had given him 7 service winners at that point.

I had Rafter at 11 aces and 23 clean non-service winners, so NBC had 5 extra winners. I'd given Rafter 3 service winners at that point.

Now that I've learned from Levin that winners can be credited on shots hit out to the stands, I'd hesitate to say that all of NBC's extra winners were service winners.

But probably most were. SI has 1 more non-service winner for Sampras than I do, and maybe it involves a judgment call. When I proofed my count of the winners I noticed one shot at 3-all in the first set that Rafter couldn't do anything with; he managed only to hit the ball up and toward the stands. That was before I contacted Levin and I still assumed that official stats only included clean winners (apart from service).

Incidentally in this project I see no reason not to continue counting as we have been, just sticking to clean winners.

No problem here with the ATP stats, since I got the same number of Total Points Won. And the ATP's first-serve percentages, and winning percentages on first and second serve, agree almost exactly with the boxscores in SI and the W. Post.

krosero said:

In sum, this boxscore calculates net stats just like the one published in the New York Times for the 1987 final between Lendl and Cash.

But it is very different from the one that SI published for the 1998 final. In that one, Sampras approaches 143 times, Ivanisevic 127 times, even though Goran served on far more points than Pete did. If anyone has a clue how those net stats are calculated, I'd like to hear your thoughts; I have not been able to figure that one out at all.

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But now I know why those net stats for 1998 made no sense: I was trying to analyze them based on incorrect ATP figures.

krosero said:

I had Sampras at 24 aces and 32 clean non-service winners, so I'm short of NBC's total winners by 8. I had given him 7 service winners at that point.

I had Rafter at 11 aces and 23 clean non-service winners, so NBC had 5 extra winners. I'd given Rafter 3 service winners at that point.

Now that I've learned from Levin that winners can be credited on shots hit out to the stands, I'd hesitate to say that all of NBC's extra winners were service winners.

But probably most were. SI has 1 more non-service winner for Sampras than I do, and maybe it involves a judgment call. When I proofed my count of the winners I noticed one shot at 3-all in the first set that Rafter couldn't do anything with; he managed only to hit the ball up and toward the stands. That was before I contacted Levin and I still assumed that official stats only included clean winners (apart from service).

Incidentally in this project I see no reason not to continue counting as we have been, just sticking to clean winners.

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Just wondering if when you contacted Levin if he had (or could provide a way) to get NBC's stats (you have them up to 3 sets) for this match and any others they might have. Thanks.

In seven Wimbledon finals and 131 service games, Sampras had lost his serve just four times – twice to Courier in 1993 and twice to Ivanisevic in 1998. He’d held 64 consecutive times in 2000, and was unbroken in the final.

By my count.

Sampras made 9 of 17 first serves in the tiebreaks (53%). By tiebreak:

4 of 11 (he won all 4)
5 of 6 (he won 4 of the 5)

Rafter made 10 of 17 first serves in the tiebreaks (59%). By tiebreak:

7 of 11 (he won 5 of the 7)
3 of 6 (he won 1 of the 3)

@krosero : Do you have the final net stats by your count for this match ?

abmk said:

@krosero : Do you have the final net stats by your count for this match ?

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Sorry no, I never did my own count of the net stats for this one

krosero said:

Sorry no, I never did my own count of the net stats for this one

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oh ok, I thought you might have, considering you did count the # of net approaches.

Have you done the net stats for matches later than this ?
If not, can you please do them when you do the stats for any match in the future ?

krosero said:

Sampras d. Rafter 6-7 (10-12), 7-6 (5), 6-4, 6-2

SERVICE

Sampras had 27 aces, 12 doubles. He hit 42 other serves that Rafter could not get back; I gave him 9 service winners on those.

Rafter had 12 aces, 8 doubles. He hit 54 other serves that Sampras could not get back; I gave him 3 service winners on those.

Sampras won 101 of 132 points on serve (77%). Rafter won 107 of 167 (or 64%).


WINNERS

Sampras had 39 winners apart from service: 14 FH, 15 BH, 3 FHV, 7 BHV.

Rafter had 29 winners apart from service: 3 FH, 5 BH, 6 FHV, 14 BHV, 1 overhead.

Sampras hit 11 return winners, all passes; 8 came from the backhand. All 3 of the forehands, and 2 of the backhands, were returns of first serves. He had 14 other passing shots (8 from the forehand).

Rafter hit 4 return winners, all of them passes, two from each side. All were returns of second serves, except one backhand. He had 3 other passing shots, all backhands.

Neither player had a lob winner.

Sampras hit three-quarters of his winners with ground strokes.


ERRORS (FORCED AND UNFORCED)

As mentioned above, Sampras made an error on 54 returns (21 FH and 33 BH). Rafter made an error on 42 returns (16 FH and 26 BH).

Apart from returns, Sampras put out 16 attempted passing shots (including 13 BH), while Rafter put out 15 (including 12 BH, of which three were lobs).

Sampras made 15 other errors (3 FH, 2 BH, 9 FHV, 1 BHV), while Rafter made 30 (4 FH, 4 BH, 8 FHV, 14 BHV).

In all I counted 172 errors of one kind or another (85 by Sampras, 87 by Rafter), apart from their 20 double-faults (12 by Sampras, 8 by Rafter). With doubles, it’s 192. Add that to the 39 aces (27 by Sampras, 12 by Rafter) and 68 remaining winners (39 by Sampras, 29 by Rafter), and I’ve got 299 points, the same as the ATP and one more than Sports Illustrated.

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I forget but did rafter have a big shot to close out second set ??
Seems like 50 yrs ago

abmk said:

oh ok, I thought you might have, considering you did count the # of net approaches.

Have you done the net stats for matches later than this ?
If not, can you please do them when you do the stats for any match in the future ?

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I can do that, if I do any matches in the future.

It's been forever since I did this 2000 final but as far as I know I never counted the net stats in full. I see in my notes that I counted the number of approaches made in return games, just to see if that would help make sense of the published net approaches. And I noted all times that Rafter didn't come to net directly behind his serve; I did that, possibly as part of the effort to understand the published approaches, or just because those instances were so unusual that I had to make note of them. I don't recall doing a full count of net points won by each player in his own service games; I can't find it anywhere in my notes and I certainly would have kept it, if I'd made such a count.

dgold44 said:

I forget but did rafter have a big shot to close out second set ??
Seems like 50 yrs ago

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It's been too long to go on memory. But in my notes I wrote that I never felt Rafter had as much of a chance as Ivanisevic did in the '98 final. That's partly because Rafter never got to set point in the second set. Partly, too, because Rafter never broke serve in the match.

krosero said:

I can do that, if I do any matches in the future.

It's been forever since I did this 2000 final but as far as I know I never counted the net stats in full. I see in my notes that I counted the number of approaches made in return games, just to see if that would help make sense of the published net approaches. I don't recall counting the approaches that each player made in his own service games; I can't find it anywhere in my notes and I certainly would have kept it, if I'd made such a count.

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I saw post #2.There is some information.
But yeah on checking again, nothing that could complete the info to get even the total number of net approaches.

krosero said:

My own count could tell me what the winners were made of, but it can't tell me why SI has such a high count of unforced errors. The errors give the mistaken impression that it was a low-quality match.

Moreoever, the boxscore can’t begin to tell you how Sampras won the match. It gives Sampras 26 more winners/aces than Rafter, but he also has 28 more unforced errors/double-faults. That puts him behind Rafter by 2 points overall. Yet he won the match in four sets -- by a margin of 22 points, according to SI.

That means that in the missing category of forced errors, Sampras must have made only 6, while Rafter made 30. That gets them to the figures for total points won.

But I don’t know why SI should have given Sampras so few forced errors – if indeed they counted forced errors at all. In fact I don’t know how there could have been only 36 forced errors between the two players, because by my count they made a combined total of 96 errors on service returns. That means that even if all of SI’s putative 36 forced errors were marked down on returns, 60 remaining return errors were counted as unforced.

A strange stat.

One possibility is that the Double Faults are included in the line for Unforced Errors. In that case, Sampras made 18 forced errors, Rafter 38. That’s 56 forced errors between them, leaving 40 service returns marked down as unforced.

That is still a lot.

And no matter how you look at SI’s unforced errors, NBC had fewer. By their count, it was a high-quality match. At 2-all in the third, Leo Levin had Sampras at 22 unforced errors, Rafter at 13.

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abmk said:

I saw post #2.There is some information.
But yeah on checking again, nothing that could complete the info to get even the total number of net approaches.

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Check this out (notice the asterisk):

http://web.archive.org/web/20010303...mbledon.org:80/scores/stats/day14/1127ms.html

So these high UFE totals include not only DFs but also "Unforced Errors Returning Service." Now what does that mean? Did they actually distinguish between forced and unforced errors on return or did they include all unreturned serves? It can't possibly be the latter as Pat had 66 of his serves unreturned which alone exceeds the official UFE count of 55. But then we're left wondering how many of these return "UFEs" they counted to begin with.

Don't think we can settle on our net stats without doing the whole thing all over. Moose, it's your turn now.