Age distribution of all Open Era major finalists
- Thread starter falstaff78
- Start date
falstaff78
Hall of Fame
Great questions Zam88
Turns out that reaching major finals as a teenager has always been a rare phenomenon. Out of 360 major finalists in the open era only 11 have been teenagers, and 7 of those were in the 80s.
The more of this data I look at, the more I am convinced that players' will pretty much always perform in their mid 20s. There will always be 3 kinds of outliers
1.) guys like Federer who are so good that they can compete in their late 20s and early 30s.
2) guys who are so good in their teenage years that they can compete who achieve brilliance at a young age - e.g. Rafa, Becket, Wilander
3) guys who achieve brilliance late - e.g. Lendl, Connors, and I suspect Murray
Prisoner of Birth
Banned
Is there a graph here for Grand Slam wins only? Not finals? I may have missed it somewhere.
falstaff78
Hall of Fame
Totally agree. Good memory re: reaching major finals at 32 or older. The complete list of 14 appearances (out of which Rosewall has eight) is (from my spreadsheet not from memory!):
Agassi - W: Aus 03 - RU: USO 02 & 05
Gimeno - W RG 72
Ken Rosewall - W: Aus 71 & 72, RG 68, USO 70
Ken Rosewall - RU: RG 69, USO 74, Wimb 70 & 74
Malcolm Anderson - RU: Aus 72
Nikola Pilic - RU: RG 73
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falstaff78
Hall of Fame
You should be a researcher.
Haha many thanks sir. As a matter of fact I am a PhD student in Economics....!
falstaff78
Hall of Fame
falstaff78,
Great work in putting all this data into graph form.
Many thanks ABMK
falstaff78
Hall of Fame
Haha yeah post #2 has a distribution for winners of majors and season finales.
here is a distr for only winners of majors. can't believe I didn't think of doing it before....
Prisoner of Birth
Banned
Haha yeah post #2 has a distribution for winners of majors and season finales.
here is a distr for only winners of majors. can't believe I didn't think of doing it before....
Thanks! This, for me, is perhaps the most important graph of all. Interesting looking, too.
falstaff78
Hall of Fame
haha you said it man.
falstaff78
Hall of Fame
yeah. following my training as an economist i was so desperately trying to increase the size of the sample that I lost sight of the forest for the leaves there for a second.
this should clearly have been the first graph to post. good call there!
heninfan99
Talk Tennis Guru
Interesting spike at 29 yrs old.
The_Order
G.O.A.T.
Great thread probably one of those rare ones free from trolls
Don't you think it's a little boring though? Everyone's commenting on what a great job the OP has done (and he has), but nothing much more than that except for "it makes Fed's 2012 WIM EVEN MORE impressive" or some variation of that.
SLD76
G.O.A.T.
nitish put out the bait,, and the troll responded.
The_Order
G.O.A.T.
WOW and you find it necessary to quote everything I say only to call me a troll or *******. Having fun?
SLD76
G.O.A.T.
I like trolling trolls, sue me.
The_Order
G.O.A.T.
I posted before Nitish and it wasn't a troll post like you claim.
Funny how I'm a troll because I say Fed racked up a lot of majors during a **** poor era. Does the truth hurt?
SLD76
G.O.A.T.
Well nadal is part of the same era so....
The_Order
G.O.A.T.
Don't turn this thread into an era war. We've got plenty of other threads for that.
SLD76
G.O.A.T.
what era war. Nadal is part of fed's era, thats a fact.
dont open doors you cant close.
The_Order
G.O.A.T.
I've already embarrassed the crap out your fellow *******s regarding era's.
I just don't want to send this thread into an era war.
SLD76
G.O.A.T.
the only one you have embarassed is yourself.
Nadal won his first major in 2005, how in the world is he in a different era from Fed? Nadal was the longest number two in history behind Fed...how are they different eras again?
ETA: Fed major titles before 2005 FO- 4
Fed major titles after FO 2005-13.
yes..clearly there is a huge gap between the times Nadal and Fed were at the top of the game. :roll:
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The_Order
G.O.A.T.
No fool, the argument is that the field from 04-07 is far weaker than the field from 08-present.
Fed took advantage of weak opponents and a teenage Nadal who was only consistent on clay and hadn't yet developed his HC and grass game. Only WIM 07 was when Nadal grass game was pretty good.
Rafa is going to create a spike in these results I believe. When he is 30+ he will still be winning RG.
SLD76
G.O.A.T.
Umm...nobody is saying Rafa and Fed had the same peak.
But they are a part of the same era.
Just because Rafa wasnt good enough outside of clay for years doesnt mean he wasnt the same era as fed.
or wait, he isnt in the same era just because he didnt win non clay majors?
Oh..ok then. By that logic, Hewitt is a different era from Fed since he didnt win any majors after 2002.
Rofl.
And wait, wasnt Rafa a playing pro during 2004-07..so he was part of that **** poor competition fed faced?
:lol:
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The_Order
G.O.A.T.
Rafa was playing pro in 04-07, but he was only a teen-20. Fed faced his **** poor competition in the non clay majors. Whenever he faced Nadal he got beat for the most part.
And just like Fed winning an impressive WIM at 30 years of age, it will be even more impressive when Nadal of 30+ years of age wins RG since clay is more physical than grass tennis.
There will be more numbers to come for that 30+ year old slam spike. Tennis is changing, we are seeing that teens are no longer able to crack the top 100 because of the physicality required. 30 year olds making and winning finals will become more common.
SLD76
G.O.A.T.
who won a major and who was winning non clay master titles in 2006 and 2007.
So basically your argument is that since Rafa and Fed had different peaks cuz of the age a difference and rafa wasnt a factor in HC majors til 2009..they are a different era, no matter that rafa was number 2 in the world from 2005 to 2008.
ok
LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL
as far as success rates are concerned its around 50% or less but at 30 its astounding 77% and 75% at 19 for cases having more than 5 attempts ...pretty odd at these ages :-?
This thread attempts to provide a quantitative basis for answering questions like these with the Agressive Margin statistic.
tennis_pro
Bionic Poster
It's like players realize - "heck I'm not in my prime anymore, better make full use of my tennis when I'm still in my 20's!"
And then they actually hit 30 - "damn, I'm old:-?" so the stats go down again
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Yeah, Nadal and Fed are competing against the same field. In fact Fed haven't won a slam when Nadal turned pro(2001). 2001 both Fed he was still a journeymen. 12 years later, Fed won 17 and Nadal won 11. Fed is better and his records/streaks speak volumes. How can anyone say they are competing against a different field makes no sense.:shock:
This is not Federer vs Sampras, or Sampras vs JMac.
Cosmic_Colin
Professional
No problem. I'm not actually from Cambridge, but I live nearby. I work in software & web development.
Hey -
Great analysis! You may be onto something....sample sizes for the over 30s are a little small but I think there's an effect. If I stop being lazy at some point I'll eventually take a look at confidence intervals to see if this effect is statistically significant. in the meanwhile I ran the numbers by decade - here they are.
What would be interesting would be to look at matches won per major by age.
So, for example, if we looked at all of the players with 5+ majors and for each major of their career gave a 7 for a win, 6 for a final, 5 for a semi and so on. If this was then aggregated by their age (or age groups) then we could get a picture of how far into tournaments older and younger players would generally reach.
I would find this particularly interesting as it would show where we should expect Federer (and later, Djokovic, Nadal and Murray) to reach in major tournaments, and also the younger guys like Tomic, Raonic etc.
It might even be possible to create a model for performance in majors, where we could input players' results to date and see what we could expect if they follow an average age profile (plus an early and late bloomer version)... even if they haven't won a major yet.
I'm rambling now, but this could also work in reverse for the very top players: if they are exceeding their age profile by some margin, say 5-7s at 30+ then how many could they theoretically have won during their peak? It would likely show 8, 9 or even 10. This could be used as a kind of index for their peak level.
I don't really have the time to do this, but then again next time I find myself reading a GOAT debate or doping speculation thread I'll try to remember to do something more constructive, like this.
SLD76
G.O.A.T.
just going by the eye test, Id say the fact that fed was so talented and relatively injury free his level is still incredibly high even with his natural decline.
falstaff78
Hall of Fame
Hey thanks a lot! Really means a lot.
falstaff78
Hall of Fame
Yeah. That would be an enterprising project. But would be fantastic.
I'd be keen to meet and discuss sometime. I'm in Cambridge 3 nights a week. There's usually something going on in the evenings if you wanted to join a bunch of grad students for a meal.
falstaff78
Hall of Fame
PoB - I included this chart in the OP. Thanks for the suggestion.
The age distribution of winners in the opening post would imply that that we're likely to see some new winners in the next couple of years as Murray and Djokovic turn 26/27, and Nadal turns 27/28. The problem is when you see the players in the 21-24 age group who should be taking over you relaise that's not going to happen. Harrison, Raonic, Dologopolov, Nishikori, Dimitriov: They haven't even been able to overtake Ferrer, Berdytch and Tsonga, so they're definitely not going to be dominating Grand Slams in the next 18 months. Del Potro might win one but won't dominate. It all looks good for Tomic who might inherit a weakening Djokovic/Nadal/Murray era when he's about 22.
Fiji
Legend
By 26-27, players decline big time. Djokovic winning many slams from now on is not a foregone conclusion. Between 22-25, Federer won 10 slams while Djokovic won only 5 slams, half of what Federer won. From 26 and beyond, Federer only won 6 slams. Djokovic winning just another 3 slams, half of what Federer won from 26 and beyond, might happen.
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90's Clay
Banned
From 22-25, Nole was playing prime Nadal and Fed slam after slam.. From 22-25, Fed was playing diaper rash Nadal, Roddick, Hewitt, Baghaditis, Gonzales, Davydenko, 50 year old Agassi
Prisoner of Birth
Banned
From 22-25, Djokovic was playing *******. If Agassi was 50 years old when Federer was dominating, Federer was 45 when Djokovic turned 22. That's your butthurt bursting out again.
paulorenzo
Hall of Fame
Here you go sir. Frequency of reaching MAJOR finals ONLY, lumped in (1) 68-79, (2) then 80-89, (3) then 90-99 and (4) then 00-13.
I was a little surprised to see these numbers as I'm sure you will be. Essentially, reaching a major final as a teenager was a 1980s only phenomenon. It has happened 11 times in the open era - and 7 of those were in the 80s!
great stuff falstaff! i too have often thought about the rise and fall of teenage champions.
with your findings, perhaps we can hypothesize that the state of the game in the 80s in regards to conditioning, court speed, and technology were ripe for younger players to reap the benefits of.
taking what we already know, there wasnt a huge gap in the level of fitness between the top and young players (compared to today), the courts were still fast enough to use serve and volley, or get lucky returns off the more experienced player's serve (as Federer puts it), while the state of technology is there for the young guys to capitalize on.
I'd be surprised if Djokovic/Murray/Nadal don't add to the numbers of 26/27 year olds winning over the next couple of years. It's surprising how dramatic the drop off at 26 relative to 25 has been over 40 years but it's hard to imagine these 3 guys not winning several more over the next couple of years.
sbengte
G.O.A.T.
Thanks a lot for the additional charts, falstaff. Much appreciated !
No major really stands out as an exception though there are some differences in the pattern of distribution. The spike at 29 (30 in the case of AO) is indeed interesting as someone already observed.
Agree with you that Murray is a late bloomer and was also probably unlucky to face Federer in his first 3 slam finals. Interestingly, even before he teamed up with Lendl, I always saw a parallel between the two of them and used to say that Murray will end up with 8 slams like Lendl
Outstanding analysis. Makes it worth putting up with the ****s to get insightful gem like this. I think something that is lost after 25 is the quick eye to return serves. Fed used to be unbelievable at handling roddick prime first serves, but after 25 he didn't have the same abilities. He still had enough to win but i noticed a difference.
Will be interesting to watch nadal at 27+
Will be interesting to watch nadal at 27+
muddlehead
Professional
heya falstaff78
A while back I posted maximum length between majors (first to last) was pretty much seven years for players on your list of more than 5 majors. i.e. nadal won"t get to 17 because his first major was in 2005. any chance you could make one of your beautiful charts for that list. grazi.
A while back I posted maximum length between majors (first to last) was pretty much seven years for players on your list of more than 5 majors. i.e. nadal won"t get to 17 because his first major was in 2005. any chance you could make one of your beautiful charts for that list. grazi.
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