5'7" Diego Schwartzman reached ATP #11

TimeToPlaySets

TimeToPlaySets

Legend
When someone mentions Schwartzman , it is like a booby prize.
Yea, short players can technically make it to pro, and Schwartzman is the given example.
But no one really mentions it in a serious context.
He is dismissed as if he's an ATP 500.
A mere technicality.

I had no idea 5'7" Diego Schwartzman reached ATP #11
He is currently a top 20 player. TOP 20.

If 5'7" can reach top 10, then height is vastly overrated in tennis.
He is ahead of tens of thousands of taller players.
 
Last edited:
Height means so little my brother, by no means a pro level talent, was told to take HGH by his coach when he was like 12 years old.

He's 5'9 now.
 
I believe Michael Chang was only about 5'8" without shoes, and he was a solid #2 for a while. So at least you have that.
 
IowaGuy said:
Rios was about the same height as Chang, and made it to #1.
Click to expand...

Yes, both are cited at 5'9"

So, Chang was a 5'9" guy at #2 in the early 90s
So, Rios was a 5'9" guy at #1 in the late 90s
and Diego is a 5'7" guy at #11 at present

Who were the top ranked 5'9" and under from 2000-2015 ?

People who say 5'9" de facto can't be a pro player are factually clueless.
 
TimeToPlaySets said:
When someone mentions Schwartzman , it is like a booby prize.
Yea, short players can technically make it to pro, and Schwartzman is the given example.
But no one really mentions it in a serious context.
He is dismissed as if he's an ATP 500.
A mere technicality.

I had no idea 5'7" Diego Schwartzman reached ATP #11
He is currently a top 20 player. TOP 20.

If 5'7" can reach top 10, then height is vastly overrated in tennis.
He is ahead of tens of thousands of taller players.
Click to expand...

Everything you said before this bolded part contradicts it. Can’t you see that?

Also, no—height isn’t overrated at all. How many 5’7 players have won anything in the last 30 years? How many have made the top 10? The number 1 correlative element related to the one shot (your serve) you have control over is height.

All that said, Diego has achieved far more than anyone thought he should, and he should be commended for that.
 
Height mattered less in the fast court era. Small guy had an advantage by being more stable around the court, and being able to be more consistent. Now that courts are slowed down, and polyester strings + big rackets increase consistency, being smaller isnt as much an advantage anymore compared to being bigger, where you can get a lot of extra power into your shots. I think if courts were still fast, big guys would have more trouble keeping the ball in play, as they sometimes struggle with that even on slow courts.
 
We've been through this a million times and Diego is about 5'5. Definitely a short dude. Incredible success given his height, but he's the exception that proves the rule.

Current (as of Monday) top 10:
Djokovic, 6'2
Nadal, 6'1
Zverev, 6'6
Fedr, 6'1
Delpo, 6'6
Anderson, 6'8
Nishikori, 5'10
Thiem, 6'0
Isner, 6'10
Tsitsipas, 6'4 (official, I think he might be taller).
 
Enga said:
Height mattered less in the fast court era. Small guy had an advantage by being more stable around the court, and being able to be more consistent. Now that courts are slowed down, and polyester strings + big rackets increase consistency, being smaller isnt as much an advantage anymore compared to being bigger, where you can get a lot of extra power into your shots. I think if courts were still fast, big guys would have more trouble keeping the ball in play, as they sometimes struggle with that even on slow courts.
Click to expand...

Height mattered less maybe in the wooden racket era (partly due to what you wrote in the first few lines), but ever since then, it’s mattered a great deal, peobsbly as much as anything.

Since Lendl became #1 in 1985:

1585 weeks at #1 for players 6’+ tall.
107 weeks at #1 for players 5’11 (Agassi, 101; Muster, 6)
80 weeks at #1 for a player 5’10 (Hewitt)
4 weeks at #1 for a player at 5’9 (Rios)

13 different players 6’1 + have become #1 since JMac was #1.
 
TimeToPlaySets said:
It's not statistics, it's logic.

Premise: Being short will prevent you from being a pro player.
Counterexample: Diego made top 10. Reject false hypothesis.
Conclusion: Being short does not prevent you from being a pro player.
Click to expand...
If you're gonna use disastrous logic, you might as well get your facts straight.

Schwartzman didn't make the top 10.

He's like a black swan.

Being short doesn't mean you can't be a pro. But it does make it much, much harder to do so
 
I don’t trust over the height of tennis players.
Check out Diego’s workout! He is a beast. Last month I trained next him and is enormous how passionate He is with tennis.


Enviado desde mi iPhone utilizando Tapatalk
 
TimeToPlaySets said:
If 5'7" can reach top 10, then height means almost nothing in tennis.
Click to expand...
Sysyphus said:
yea, that's not how statistics works.
Click to expand...
TimeToPlaySets said:
It's not statistics, it's logic.
Click to expand...

Yes. The logic of:

"Look, here is one single exception to a rule, therefore that debunks the whole rule."

Tantamount to people saying: "Look, my gramps smoked like a chimney through his whole life and lived to a hundred and didn't get lung cancer, therefore smoking means almost nothing in terms of developing lung cancer. Q.E.D."

And so on.

It's logic alright – just very bad logic.

Every meaningful indicator tells us that height clearly plays a big role in a person's chance of reaching the top of tennis. Cherry-picking a single player for confirmation or disconfirmation of this rule means jack squat. You have to look a the field more broadly and compare it with the general population.

In most countries, how many men are there who stand between, say, 5ft7 and 5ft10? Very, very many. (In the US, where the average height is 5ft9, this would be right in the middle of the bell curve.) And there are a fair few of them in the top 100 on tour as well, but they make up a very small share of those winning big titles in tennis. How many in the general population stand 6ft5–6ft6? Not very many. It's well to the right on the bell curve. Yet, such people are vastly over-represented in pro tennis compared to how widespread they are in the general population. Certainly so if you compare them with players who are equally many standard deviations below average height (pretty much non-existent in pro tennis). Why? Simple. Because height is a huge advantage in pro tennis. Doesn't remotely mean that the odd short player cannot defy the rule and become very good in spite of their height.
 
Diego is 5ft5, I think there was a thread about Diego's "official" height. What he lacks in height he makes up for with his heart.
 
TimeToPlaySets said:
When someone mentions Schwartzman , it is like a booby prize.
Yea, short players can technically make it to pro, and Schwartzman is the given example.
But no one really mentions it in a serious context.
He is dismissed as if he's an ATP 500.
A mere technicality.

I had no idea 5'7" Diego Schwartzman reached ATP #11
He is currently a top 20 player. TOP 20.

If 5'7" can reach top 10, then height is vastly overrated in tennis.
He is ahead of tens of thousands of taller players.
Click to expand...
As Diego shows you CAN overcome height.... but Isner, Ivo, Raonic, Krygios - and to a MUCH lesser extent Anderson - all show that servebotting based on height can make a player who otherwise wouldn’t even be a top 100 player into a top 20 guy.
 
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counterexample

The sentence "short players can't be top ranked pro players" is FALSE.

because logic...

In logic, and especially in its applications to mathematics and philosophy, a counterexample is an exception to a proposed general rule or law. For example, consider the proposition "all students are lazy". Because this statement makes the claim that a certain property (laziness) holds for all students, even a single example of a diligent student will prove it false. Thus, any hard-working student is a counterexample to "all students are lazy". More precisely, a counterexample is a specific instance of the falsity of a universal quantification (a "for all" statement).
 
TimeToPlaySets said:
When someone mentions Schwartzman , it is like a booby prize.
Yea, short players can technically make it to pro, and Schwartzman is the given example.
But no one really mentions it in a serious context.
He is dismissed as if he's an ATP 500.
A mere technicality.

I had no idea 5'7" Diego Schwartzman reached ATP #11
He is currently a top 20 player. TOP 20.

If 5'7" can reach top 10, then height is vastly overrated in tennis.
He is ahead of tens of thousands of taller players.
Click to expand...
Amazing. Wait until he gets to 5’8”!
 
I concur. Chang was maybe 5.6, and one point from number 1; Rios was number 1, both were in the Sampras era. Connors was 5.9 maybe. Diego is more like 5.5. Johan Kriek won 2 AOs at 5.7 in the prePoly age. Laver 5.6, Rosewall 5.6 back in the day. These are not just pros, they were TOP pros in tough eras. Diego top 11 in the world... people skoff like that´s nothing...hahahaha. Also my personal fav. Henin, 5.3 maybe, schooled the Williams when she was world number 1 in WTA.
 
Sysyphus said:
Yes. The logic of:



In most countries, how many men are there who stand between, say, 5ft7 and 5ft10? Very, very many. (In the US, where the average height is 5ft9, this would be right in the middle of the bell curve.) How many in the general population stand 6ft5–6ft6? Not very many. It's well to the right on the bell curve.
Click to expand...

It might be 5 ft 9 if you average all the ages/demographics of men in the US but certain sectors are much taller. I bet the average height for young upper middle class men is close to the atp top ten average and thats where most US tennis players come from.
 
er4claw said:
It might be 5 ft 9 if you average all the ages/demographics of men in the US but certain sectors are much taller. I bet the average height for young upper middle class men is close to the atp top ten average and thats where most US tennis players come from.
Click to expand...
Average height of the ATP top 10 is over 6'3/190, there's virtually no subpopulations in the world that come close to that average.
 
TimeToPlaySets said:
When someone mentions Schwartzman , it is like a booby prize.
Yea, short players can technically make it to pro, and Schwartzman is the given example.
But no one really mentions it in a serious context.
He is dismissed as if he's an ATP 500.
A mere technicality.

I had no idea 5'7" Diego Schwartzman reached ATP #11
He is currently a top 20 player. TOP 20.

If 5'7" can reach top 10, then height is vastly overrated in tennis.
He is ahead of tens of thousands of taller players.
Click to expand...


5'7" is generous.
 
ghostofMecir said:
Height mattered less maybe in the wooden racket era (partly due to what you wrote in the first few lines), but ever since then, it’s mattered a great deal, peobsbly as much as anything.

Since Lendl became #1 in 1985:

1585 weeks at #1 for players 6’+ tall.
107 weeks at #1 for players 5’11 (Agassi, 101; Muster, 6)
80 weeks at #1 for a player 5’10 (Hewitt)
4 weeks at #1 for a player at 5’9 (Rios)

13 different players 6’1 + have become #1 since JMac was #1.
Click to expand...
Good work. It establishes that a player under 6' definitely has a chance, though things are better for players over 6ft.

Note: Lendl became number #1 in 1983 not 1985.
 
TimeToPlaySets said:
It's not statistics, it's logic.

Premise: Being short will prevent you from being a pro player.
Counterexample: Diego made top 10. Reject false hypothesis.
Conclusion: Being short does not prevent you from being a pro player.
Click to expand...

Right, but no one made the claim that being short will prevent you from being a pro tennis player. Obviously it is possible. The statistics show that it is much more unlikely though.

You are creating a phantom argument and arguing against it.
 
timnz said:
Good work. It establishes that a player under 6' definitely has a chance, though things are better for players over 6ft.

Note: Lendl became number #1 in 1983 not 1985.
Click to expand...

Oh, I know, but that #1 vascullated between him and JMac. I should shave clarified that once Lendl won the 1985 USO over JMac and was # for good until 1988, the #1 spot has been dominated by 6’+ players.
 
IMO #1 is a poor metric because it's such a unique subset. All the big 3 would have been great players even if they were a few inches taller or shorter. The real thing to look at is overall trends of top 10, top 50,etc.
 
EloQuent said:
IMO #1 is a poor metric because it's such a unique subset. All the big 3 would have been great players even if they were a few inches taller or shorter. The real thing to look at is overall trends of top 10, top 50,etc.
Click to expand...
I definitely would look at #1s, top 5s, etc. Can't get there with a few months of good play and can't get away with clear limitations. For the general trend slightly lower ranks are fine.
 
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