Meles
Bionic Poster
I don't know about that. Lendl played no clay events in 1990. Barcelona 1989:
Semi-Finals
Andres Gomez
L 61 67 79
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90's Clay: ELO Ranks the Roland-Garros fields from 1978
- Thread starter Meles
- Start date
Semi-Finals
Andres Gomez
L 61 67 79
Gary Duane
Talk Tennis Guru
No. It might look better here but it makes the columns wider when the headings already clearly say %. It is less readable in the actual database.Just remove that extra decimal point and show the % symbol; then you can copy and paste right in to TTW.You are getting in F in your science for not showing units.
Gary Duane
Talk Tennis Guru
You ignored the rest of my post. Please reply to the rest of it.
Meles
Bionic Poster
And yet I'd say Thiem is considered considerably better than Goffin on clay despite their epic FO QF. First serve points won and first return are key ingredients to clay greatness. Goffin had a stellar 2nd serve return game and excellent first return, but his first serve game on clay stops him from going deep in the big events.
Thiem is close to being a slam contender on all surfaces; something I would not have thought before the Stuttgart win on grass. His first serve points won on grass went from 75% to 91% in 2016. That is a big deal.
I believe Thiem's 2016 stats on clay were slightly dissappointing:
1. He was down from 73.1% to 72.1% first serve points won from 2015 and I believe this was from early signs of his hip issue affecting his serve. The whole first serve game could be oh so much better if he'd continued the February serving assault (78% first serves in Acapulco final.)
2. Thiem's 2nd return ponts won was down 2.0% from 2015 to 51.6%
3. The massive improvement was first return; up 2.4% to 32.9% and this was a bit of a dissapointment given the superlative first return Thiem developed on hard courts this Spring.
4. Thiem was up nicely on total points won increasing from 52.1% to 52.7% in 2016, so fear not Thiem fans he is on track and will be death on clay if the serve returns.
I don't have exact numbers, but lets talk Courier 1991 on clay:
1. Courier won 61% of his serve points compared to Thiem at 65.4%; Thiem 4% better
2. Courier won 44% of his return points compared to Thiem at 40.0%
3. Thiem is 52.7% points won on clay in 2016. Courier was 53%, but is certainly south of 53.0% and I'd guess narrowly ahead of Thiem.
4. Thiem has the superior points DR
5. Detailed points; Thiem was superior on both first and second serve points by a wide margin. Courier had the antidote for the big serve with an excellent 38% first return points won.
Thiem is very close on clay, but far from dominant. He's already good enough to win a French Open with a weak field like 1991.
One other fun stat that I don't rate as highly is 2nd serve points won on clay. Thiem has been a robust 54.8% on clay the last two years. How does that compare to the clay greats since 1991?
Rafael Nadal 56.0%
Roger Federer 55.4%
Dominic Thiem 54.8%
Thomas Muster 54.1%
Novak Djokovic 54.1%
Juan Carlos Ferrero 54.1%
Meaningless, but it shows that the Thiem service game is just one small gear away from all time great.
Murray had a weak French Open run despite the final, so his stats are not as good as 2015.
Wawrinka is up accross the board from 2015. He was unable to get red hot at the end of the French and Murray out served him in their SF. Stanimal is very much alive.
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metsman
Talk Tennis Guru
Madrid in 1989? lol...you mean Barcelona.I don't know about that. Lendl played no clay events in 1990. Madrid 1989:
Semi-Finals
Andres Gomez
L 61 67 79
Tennisanity
Legend
No wonder Sampras won so many slams with his limited talent, it was a weak era.
eldanger25
Hall of Fame
I don't know about that. Lendl played no clay events in 1990. Barcelona 1989:
Semi-Finals
Andres Gomez
L 61 67 79
Fair point. He did beat Gomez 4x at RG through the years though, and was 17-2 overall against him - plenty of reasons to favor Lendl if they met in Paris in 1990.
Gary Duane
Talk Tennis Guru
Did you catch that I agree with you about Thiem's superiority over Goffin?
I said:
For reasons I don't understand you are completely ignoring the point that I agree with you about Thiem's dominance. I just don't agree about WHY. I am saying that Thiem is clearly the better player. His service game is much better. That is the dominance we have both found on all surfaces.
You're wrong. Courier is lower on that stat.
But Goffin is superior to both of them on DR for points when you use the actual points. The reason is this: Goffin has a better ratio of service points to return points - .94. Thiem's is 1.
You're grasping at straws. What you really want to show is that Courier's stats in 1991 were rather weak, and it's hard to figure how he did so well in 1991. It is likely he began to find his mojo on clay around the time of RG in that year. His clay play went through the roof the next two years.
You also have to weight DR mentally a bit when comparing 1991 serving to 2016 serving. Actually quite a lot.
Courier went through the roof in 1992 with over 56% of points and over 64% of games. That was Rafa-like. Winning 89% of service games on clay in 1992 was insanely good.
We have no proof yet that Thiem can or will ever reach the level of Courier in 1992, and it seems that Courier's ascent began that summer. You can say how weak RG was that year, but winning 60% of games at a slam is nothing to sneeze at, and the next year he won 68% at RG after winning 64% all year.
Gary Duane
Talk Tennis Guru
Elo's method was devised for chess and has a number of assumptions. From Wikipedia they are:
"Elo's central assumption was that the chess performance of each player in each game is a normally distributed random variable. Although a player might perform significantly better or worse from one game to the next, Elo assumed that the mean value of the performances of any given player changes only slowly over time. Elo thought of a player's true skill as the mean of that player's performance random variable.
A further assumption is necessary, because chess performance in the above sense is still not measurable. One cannot look at a sequence of moves and say, "That performance is 2039." Performance can only be inferred from wins, draws and losses. Therefore, if a player wins a game, he is assumed to have performed at a higher level than his opponent for that game. Conversely, if he loses, he is assumed to have performed at a lower level. If the game is a draw, the two players are assumed to have performed at nearly the same level.
Elo did not specify exactly how close two performances ought to be to result in a draw as opposed to a win or loss. And while he thought it was likely that each player might have a different standard deviation to his performance, he made a simplifying assumption to the contrary.
To simplify computation even further, Elo proposed a straightforward method of estimating the variables in his model (i.e. the true skill of each player). One could calculate relatively easily, from tables, how many games a player would be expected to win based on a comparison of his rating to the ratings of his opponents. If a player won more games than expected, his rating would be adjusted upward, while if he won fewer than expected his rating would be adjusted downward. Moreover, that adjustment was to be in linear proportion to the number of wins by which the player had exceeded or fallen short of his expected number.
Subsequent statistical tests have suggested that chess performance is almost certainly not distributed as a normal distribution, as weaker players have greater winning chances than Elo's model predicts."
So the main question is - are Elo's assumptions also valid for tennis? Because if they are not, then Elo numbers do not have meaning for tennis.
"Elo's central assumption was that the chess performance of each player in each game is a normally distributed random variable. Although a player might perform significantly better or worse from one game to the next, Elo assumed that the mean value of the performances of any given player changes only slowly over time. Elo thought of a player's true skill as the mean of that player's performance random variable.
A further assumption is necessary, because chess performance in the above sense is still not measurable. One cannot look at a sequence of moves and say, "That performance is 2039." Performance can only be inferred from wins, draws and losses. Therefore, if a player wins a game, he is assumed to have performed at a higher level than his opponent for that game. Conversely, if he loses, he is assumed to have performed at a lower level. If the game is a draw, the two players are assumed to have performed at nearly the same level.
Elo did not specify exactly how close two performances ought to be to result in a draw as opposed to a win or loss. And while he thought it was likely that each player might have a different standard deviation to his performance, he made a simplifying assumption to the contrary.
To simplify computation even further, Elo proposed a straightforward method of estimating the variables in his model (i.e. the true skill of each player). One could calculate relatively easily, from tables, how many games a player would be expected to win based on a comparison of his rating to the ratings of his opponents. If a player won more games than expected, his rating would be adjusted upward, while if he won fewer than expected his rating would be adjusted downward. Moreover, that adjustment was to be in linear proportion to the number of wins by which the player had exceeded or fallen short of his expected number.
Subsequent statistical tests have suggested that chess performance is almost certainly not distributed as a normal distribution, as weaker players have greater winning chances than Elo's model predicts."
So the main question is - are Elo's assumptions also valid for tennis? Because if they are not, then Elo numbers do not have meaning for tennis.
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Nadal will or would have destroyed all past and present clay court players. The king of clay is unrivalled on the red dirt. Dude destroyed fed and novak from 2005-2014 and went a combined 10-0 against both during this period. If he can do it to them as well as the rest of the tour then there is no doubt he would have destroyed past clay court greats with relative ease. Nadals game is built for the clay courts and he has dominated the surface like no one else before.
metsman
Talk Tennis Guru
Watching inspired Davydenko play was such a treat...there were games where the guy would just crack winner after winner from everywhere in the court. He was like that in the 07 FO semi but then dropped off at the end of the sets. The guy had some real game on dirt.
Meles
Bionic Poster
Won't fix it, but you can just post this link if you want to be a stickler like me.
http://stretch.site/?videoUrl=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sy0Mvg0UTy0&scaleFactor=0.747&zoomFactor=1.000
http://stretch.site
NatF
Bionic Poster
Won't fix it, but you can just post this link if you want to be a stickler like me.
http://stretch.site/?videoUrl=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sy0Mvg0UTy0&scaleFactor=0.747&zoomFactor=1.000
http://stretch.site
I meant fix it for viewing on YouTube
Yep the guys groundstrokes were just deadly when he was on. He could just get into an unplayable groove and then lose it just as quick. Wonder what kind of 2010 he would have had without injuries.
Surprised to see Clerc in the top 10 over several French Open champions, including his contemporary Noah. Clerc's best French Open results were two semifinal losses, to Lendl in 1981 and Wilander in 1982. Noah, of course, would go on to win the 1983 French Open, beating Lendl (6-0 in the 4th set) and Wilander (straight sets). Clerc's only big clay court title was the Italian Open, beating Pecci in the final. Noah, meanwhile, won both the Italian Open (beating Mecir in the final) and the German Open (beating Higueras in the final).
Head-to-head, Noah had the edge 3-1, losing their one match on carpet, but going 3-0 against Clerc on clay, with two wins at the French and 1 win at the Italian Open.
Meles
Bionic Poster
@NatF Clay ELO has Davydeno at a respectable 37, not far behind Agassi or Magnus Norman. His peak ELO on clay was May 30th, 2005. Usually the peak ELO date is a little past the peak win as beating some lesser players may still boost ELO slightly. I'd guess that ELO says beating Coria in 2005 French was Davy's peak. Must be so, no?
I've made the mistake of ignoring Nalbandian and Davydenko on clay because of issues with their serve game and my clay court hand book. Davy is not in top 200 for first serve points won (which blew up my handbook.) Nalbandian was bad on break points saved at 59%. I am now putting in the crude stat into the exact lookup for these two so they have full numbers. I actually used Davy's first serve percentage and calculate a rough raw points since my handbook actually calculated these percentages from the exact numbers and probably is accurate to two decimal places rather than the 0 decimal detail the ATP site displays. Both of these players standout for really strong return games and are tied for 9th since 1991 with 43.1% of return points won (Guadio too.)
I would still strenuously disagree with this conclusion. Kafelnikov was the 2nd best player at the French Open from 1995-2001. During those 7 years, he won one title and lost to the eventual champion on four other occasions (Muster in 1995, Kuerten in 1997, 2000, and 2001). Two of his losses to eventual champion Kuerten were 5 setters. His 1996 title run, during which he dropped only one set (in a tiebreaker), is a pretty high peak level.
Meles
Bionic Poster
The Clerc date is wrong. That is a corrected number and you can tell by the lack of decimal detail. Sackmann built a top 10 ELO for clay built from 1969. It is not slam weighted which has its plusses and minuses.
Player Year Clay Ct Elo
Rafael Nadal 2009 2550
Bjorn Borg 1982 2475
Novak Djokovic 2015 2421
Ivan Lendl 1988 2408
Mats Wilander 1984 2386
Roger Federer 2009 2343
Jose Luis Clerc 1981 2318
Guillermo Vilas 1982 2316
Thomas Muster 1996 2313
Jimmy Connors 1980 2307
I looked at the relative position in the top 10 to give them a slam weighted ELO that was more accurate since the slam weighte ELOs built from 1978 aren't accurate for Borg, et al. Any of those numbers that don't have decimal points are guestimates. Feel free to suggest amended guestimate ELOs based on your expertise. I'd do round numbers like 2424, 2475, 2500, etc. Clerc and Vilas were shoe horned in just above Muster for right or for wrong in the slam weighted ELO list. I'm not so sure that peak Clerc being ahead of Muster or virtually tied is a bad estimate, but I have little time with these early players.
Meles
Bionic Poster
Well that is the great thing about peak ELO it rates him as you do and if he makes QF that is used to rate the field. Kafelnikov won 50.9% of his points on clay for his career that is really low. We've discussed his points results in those other years. As a player he may have matched up well with Kuerten on clay due to some head to head advantage. Its nice he lost to the eventual champion, but that can be misleading.
All I can say is Kafelnikov has some of the weakest stats for a French Open champion. The one and only stat he has that makes him great and dangerous on clay is his first serve points won. The year he won he was at a very strong 74% and most years he was at a very strong 70% (Nadal's average). That number makes a player dangerous because if they serve well on the day (high percentage of first serves in play), they become much tougher. I suspect these players tend to have more easy points and that helps conserve energy.
You may be right on 2nd best player at the French during this period. Peak ELO might identify some other contenders:
15 Carlos Moya 2730.34 July 27, 1998
16 Albert Costa 2716.11 June 3, 2002
17 Yevgeny Kafelnikov 2713.52 July 15, 1996
28 Alex Corretja 2622.45 June 1, 1998
45 Marcelo Rios 2557.07 June 1, 1998
All of these guys won about 52% of their points on clay, 1% clear of Kafelnikov for career. Corretja, Moya, and Rios all had pretty healthy first serve points won numbers, so I'd rate them higher outside of 1996. The only major title for Kafelnikov on clay was the French Open with two other small titles.
Meles
Bionic Poster
Its 90's Clay.
Its really just one number, like ranking points; you can handle it.
Meles
Bionic Poster
I've not posted youtube videos, so try googling. Its extremely annoying. I'm suprised they don't have something in their process that gives the poster control.I meant fix it for viewing on YouTube
Yep the guys groundstrokes were just deadly when he was on. He could just get into an unplayable groove and then lose it just as quick. Wonder what kind of 2010 he would have had without injuries.
Costa's French Open results from 1995-2001 were QF, 2R, 3R, 4R, 3R, QF, 1R. His title came in 2002, followed by his epic run to the SF in 2003.
From 1995-2001, Moya went DNP, 2R, 2R, W, 4R, 1R, 2R.
I think Kafelnikov is definitely ahead of both for the 7 year period between 1995 and 2001. I also think that he was a lot more than just a good matchup for Kuerten. Looking at the ELO ratings for some of the top clay courters of the '90s, he was no great shakes against #10 Muster on clay (1-4), but he was 2-0 against #13 Bruguera, 1-1 against #14 Courier, and 2-2 against #19 Moya. I would also put Agassi in the top 20, despite what ELO says, and Kafelnikov was 2-0 on clay against him, beating him at Monte Carlo in 1994 and straight setting him in the French Open QF in 1995.
With all due respect, I don't see how this Peak ELO ranking is better than a simple objective look at the careers of various players. You'd obviously expect to see most French Open winners in your top 23, and every French Open champion starting with Vilas is there, minus three: Agassi, Chang, and Gomez. On the other hand, the person commonly thought to be the worst French Open champion -- Gaston Gaudio -- is not only on the list, but he's also above 4 other champions: Moya, Costa, Kafelnikov, and Wawrinka. I would pretty easily put all 4 ahead of Gaudio, who had no French Open QF appearances outside of 2004 and no clay Masters Series finals, period.
Meanwhile, (1) Moya had 3 French Open QFs outside of his title run and 2 Masters Series titles on clay; (2) Costa had a French Open SF and 2 QFs outside of his title run, a Masters Series title on clay and 2 other finals; (3) Kafelnikov had 3 French Open QFs outside of his title run and a Masters Series final on clay; and (4) Wawrinka has a French Open SF and QF outside of his title run, a Masters Series title on clay, and 2 other finals.
I would also pretty easily put Agassi, Chang, and Gomez ahead of Gaudio: (1) Agassi head 2 French Open Fs, 2 SFs, and 4 QFs outside of his title run and a Masters Series title and final on clay; (2) Chang had a French Open final and 2 QFs outside of his title run; and (3) Gomez had 3 French Open QFs outside of his title run, 1 "Master Series" title and 1 "MS" final on clay.
In addition to the FO champs in its top 23, ELO has a handful of players who never won the French, but not the player routinely thought to be the best clay court player never to win the French: Corretja, who had these results from 1998-2002: F, QF, QF, F, SF. He also has a Masters Series title on clay and 3 other finals. According to a later post, though, Alex is all the way down at #28. I don't agree with that. There are very few players with better results over a 5 year period at the French Open.
Meanwhile, (1) Moya had 3 French Open QFs outside of his title run and 2 Masters Series titles on clay; (2) Costa had a French Open SF and 2 QFs outside of his title run, a Masters Series title on clay and 2 other finals; (3) Kafelnikov had 3 French Open QFs outside of his title run and a Masters Series final on clay; and (4) Wawrinka has a French Open SF and QF outside of his title run, a Masters Series title on clay, and 2 other finals.
I would also pretty easily put Agassi, Chang, and Gomez ahead of Gaudio: (1) Agassi head 2 French Open Fs, 2 SFs, and 4 QFs outside of his title run and a Masters Series title and final on clay; (2) Chang had a French Open final and 2 QFs outside of his title run; and (3) Gomez had 3 French Open QFs outside of his title run, 1 "Master Series" title and 1 "MS" final on clay.
In addition to the FO champs in its top 23, ELO has a handful of players who never won the French, but not the player routinely thought to be the best clay court player never to win the French: Corretja, who had these results from 1998-2002: F, QF, QF, F, SF. He also has a Masters Series title on clay and 3 other finals. According to a later post, though, Alex is all the way down at #28. I don't agree with that. There are very few players with better results over a 5 year period at the French Open.
Rusty Shackleford
G.O.A.T.
Thank you for being so generous putting together these threads. They must take a lot of time and effort.ELO says 90's Clay is weak: discuss.
the above is the average peak ELO of the 4 Quarterfinalists at the French Open.
The above is the average of the middle 4 quarterfinalist's ELO at the French (truncated mean.) This throws out 2 of Nadal, Djokovic, and Federer for the last ten years and also the two lowest peak ELO players in the quarterfinals.
The QF and SF ELOs are just the average of the participants peak ELO rating.
The ratings and rankings for the top 500 of all time built from 1978 can be found here:
http://simtheworld.blogspot.cz/2012/10/tennis-elo-ratings-clay.html
The above rankings were built at the end of 2012. This creates ELO rating issues for perhaps the first six years. Many of the early and later players were adjusted for based on this list built at the end of 2015 (not slam-weighted):
http://www.tennisabstract.com/blog/...-djokovic-and-roger-federer-and-rafael-nadal/
Here are the ratings through some of the later guestimates (easily detected as they don't have decimal points):
Pos Name Ratings Date
1 Rafael Nadal 3142.25 May-09
2 Bjorn Borg 3020 Apr-82
3 Novak Djokovic 3000 May-11
4 Roger Federer 2953.74 Sep-09
5 Ivan Lendl 2879.27 May-88
6 Mats Wilander 2800.23 Sep-85
7 Gustavo Kuerten 2794.66 Jul-01
8 Guillermo Vilas 2793 May-82
9 Jose Luis Clerc 2793 Nov-81
10 Thomas Muster 2792.64 Jun-95
11 Jimmy Connors 2780 Jun-85
12 Juan Carlos Ferrero 2777.8 Jul-03
13 Sergi Bruguera 2775.01 Jul-93
14 Jim Courier 2768.41 Jun-92
15 Yannick Noah 2765 Apr-84
16 Robin Soderling 2763.97 May-09
17 Guillermo Coria 2749.76 May-04
18 Gaston Gaudio 2743.86 Jul-04
19 Carlos Moya 2730.34 Jul-98
20 Albert Costa 2716.11 Jun-02
21 Yevgeny Kafelnikov 2713.52 Jul-96
22 Andy Murray 2700 Jun-16
23 Stanislas Wawrinka 2700 Jun-15
This thread is the successor to the Wimbledon and US Open ELO threads:
http://tt.tennis-warehouse.com/inde...-ranks-the-wimbledon-fields-from-1978.569259/
http://tt.tennis-warehouse.com/inde...lo-ranks-the-us-open-fields-from-1978.569296/
Please see those threads for all references for this OP and much discussion on ELO, etc. The US Open thread already has some discussion on clay.
90's clay was weak, and still Sampras couldn't win RG...
Nadal dominated the strongest era at RG.
Those are the two clear conclusions.
Oh, and: 2016 was the weakest year at RG since 2002.
Meles
Bionic Poster
Thx. I love spreadsheets and the first took 3 or 4 hours and I got to do some new things. The cool thing is the way I set it up it only took 1/2 hour each to generate US Open and French Open data that you see.Thank you for being so generous putting together these threads. They must take a lot of time and effort.
90's clay was weak, and still Sampras couldn't win RG...
Nadal dominated the strongest era at RG.
Those are the two clear conclusions.
Oh, and: 2016 was the weakest year at RG since 2002.
A lot of this intuitively makes sense. The weakness started in 1989 when Chang won the French Open which was really cool, but a sign of weakness that a 17 year old came in and one the tournament. Gomez was considered a weak champion in 1990 (nice player, but not a great one.) Courier was not strong in 1991 when he won either. Courier and Bruguera had some nice years, but the overall field was not super strong then and so their achievements are put in perspective. From a points perspective Courier has very nice stats, but the points stats only start in 1991 and so about six of the late 70s and 80s players knock him back to 13. A player like Jose Luis Clerc might appear over rated, but he was knocked out by Lendl in 1981 and Wilander at 1982 at the French. With over 20 titles on clay in a fairly short period I'm not stressed that he rates above two time champs Courier and Bruguera. Clerc got knocked out by a young Yannik Noah in 1980 in a five settter as the 16th seed. Clerc stopped winning tournaments in 1983.
For me the amazing thing is that ELO ranks Borg close to Nadal. The gap though is still huge at over 100 points with Djokovic and Federer being below Borg, but much closer. For anyone to beat peak Nadal, the odds would be really against them.
Part of the weakness of the 2016 French field stats are that many young quarterfinalists were in the tournament and ultimatley their peak ELOs may be much higher which will boost the ranking. Nadal dropping out before the QF hurts some too. Every stat I've seen under states the danger of Wawrinka.
The current live ELO rankings for all surfaces are very interesting from abstracttennis.com:
1 Novak Djokovic 29.2 2555.8 2016 Miami Masters F 28.8 2570.6
2 Andy Murray 29.1 2389.2 2016 Wimbledon F 29.1 2389.2
3 Roger Federer 34.9 2340.8 2007 Dubai F 25.6 2524.3
4 Rafael Nadal 30.0 2302.7 2013 Beijing QF 27.3 2489.5
5 Kei Nishikori 26.6 2280.0 2015 Canada Masters QF 25.6 2289.8
6 Milos Raonic 25.6 2223.0 2016 Wimbledon SF 25.5 2243.3
7 Stanislas Wawrinka 31.3 2170.7 2016 Australian Open R32 30.8 2232.2
8 Tomas Berdych 30.9 2163.7 2013 Miami Masters R16 27.5 2226.1
9 Dominic Thiem 22.9 2138.3 2016 Halle R16 22.8 2215.4
10 Juan Martin Del Potro 27.8 2133.8 2009 US Open F 20.9 2352.3
11 Gael Monfils 29.9 2122.4 2011 Halle QF 24.8 2171.0
12 Richard Gasquet 30.0 2120.2 2013 Monte Carlo Masters R16 26.8 2136.1
13 Jo Wilfried Tsonga 31.2 2119.0 2009 Indian Wells Masters R64 23.9 2257.7
14 Nick Kyrgios 21.2 2089.2 2016 Rome Masters R32 21.0 2158.7
15 David Goffin 25.6 2077.8 2016 Monte Carlo Masters R32 25.3 2115.2
16 David Ferrer 34.3 2065.8 2013 Acapulco SF 30.9 2313.1
17 Roberto Bautista Agut 28.2 2044.6 2016 Rotterdam R16 27.8 2106.2
18 Marin Cilic 27.8 2024.6 2010 Dubai R16 21.4 2194.3
19 Philipp Kohlschreiber 32.8 2018.2 2009 Stuttgart R32 25.7 2086.2
20 Jack Sock 23.8 2016.3 2016 Australian Open R128 23.3 2109.4
21 John Isner 31.2 1997.5 2012 US Open R64 27.3 2147.2
22 Alexander Zverev 19.3 1980.5 2016 Halle SF 19.1 2050.6
23 Gilles Simon 31.6 1964.2 2009 Rotterdam R32 24.1 2118.7
24 Lucas Pouille 22.4 1960.4 2016 Wimbledon R16 22.3 2004.1
We see Nadal and Federer are significantly declined from the earlier peaks, but still good enough to make any top ten list of players at peak since 1978.
They are declined, but far, far from washed up.We see that Isner, Ferrer, Tsonga, and even Cilic are significantly declined, while others like Ninja, Murray, Djokovic, Raonic, Goffin, Kyrgios, Monfils, RBA, Sock, Wawrinka, and even Berdy are still peaking or near peak.
ELO also spotted that Del Potro was a huge threat before he beat Wawa and Djoko. If Delpo can find his peak form he would be neck and neck with the top players except for Djokovic
Thiem is a fun one and already has a peak ELO of 2215 which is close to Wawrinka's best, not to mention peak Berdych and Tsonga. Thiem is rated much higher than peak Gasquet, Monfils, and Simon. ELO is a very cool stat. So much fun from one little number.
Meles
Bionic Poster
We've identified a few things that need to be taken with a grain of salt. Guadio's run probably really pumped up his ELO, but the field in 2004 was strong. Juan Carlos Ferrero, Moya, and Coria made up a strong field. This uses peak ELO, so Moya's SFs and QFs don't help him with peak ELO. Its who he was beating. There is little doubt that Coria really folded in the final and that gave Guadio a win that probably pumped up his ELO a bit too much.
Again with Corretja we are talking peak ELO and he did not get the job done. Its like saying Murray is an ATG based on his consistent results, but ELO says his peak level is still well below the big guns who won a lot of slams.
Wawrinka might be the other end of the spectrum from Corretja where he only gets hot for very short period and can't build up a better peak ELO.
Be careful with hanging up on rankings; its all the rating. From Courier down to Chang is only a 100 point spread.
If we switch to points stats all of the players in question are quite close around 52%, except for Agassi who probably was helpd a bit by a lot of play on green clay and Kafelenkikov who is much lower on points.
I will try to look very hard for some way that ELO might be misrepresenting the 90's, but the points stats are quite weak for this group and the likes of Juan Carlos Ferrero and Coria rate exceptionally high on points stats clocking in a percent higher than this group. I don't think peak ELO is far from the mark. If we massage these guys around plus and minus 50 points the graphs are still going to show the 1990 fields as not strong when its all averaged out.
Flash O'Groove
Hall of Fame
Kafelnikov won RG which is great but he did so going through a Wimbledon-like draw, beating Krajicek, Sampras and Stitch! All in all Kafelnikov won 3 clay court tournaments in his career and made 3 other finals, including a sole M1000.
Losing to eventual champion is nice but is nice but it's not enough to make a great clay courters out of you. From 2004 to 2010, Hewitt only lost once to someone else than the eventual champion.
Flash O'Groove
Hall of Fame
What I don't understand is why the 90's were weaker than the early 00's? Because we can explain the weaker field in the 90's by the playing conditions of the 90's, which lead to nearly two different tours: A fast tour, favoring attacking players (who were incidentally generally the best players) and a slow tour, favoring the defending players. Thus the competition on clay was lower than before and after because too many good players had game style unsuited for the clay game, which wasn't true before with Lendl, Wilander, Borg, nor after with Federer, Nadal, Djokovic.
But the early 00's it's the same. The baseline game wasn't dominant yet and many of the best players of the early 00's were not very comfortable on clay: Hewitt, Roddick, Agassi, Safin, Federer, etc. And so the FO had still a lot of volatility with many different clay court specialist winning it or being runner-up, none being able to be consistent except Ferrero.
So why do you think the ELO for the early 00's is stronger than for the 90's? Is it because some of the successful clay courters had also some success on other surfaces (thinking Ferrero again)?
I think we should always seek theoretic explanation for the evolution of the strength of the field. With the quantity of professional tennis players now, there is little reason to have significative variation in the "amount of talents" at the top.
Flash O'Groove
Hall of Fame
Here is an explanation of how I view the evolution of the clay field, from the beginning of the open era:
In the 70's, the field was relatively weak mostly because of the turmoils of the tour, with too much conflict between different organisations. Also many players were focused on fast surfaces (grass) which had been common until now: Laver, Rosewall, Smith, Ashe, Connors, Newcombe, Roche, many of the early 70's players were more proficient on faster surfaces. Obviously the presence of Borg makes the era quite good, and Vilas was no slouch either.
In the early 80's, the field was very good as more top players were baseliners and were efficient at the FO. Also the tour had solved most of his turmoil and the FO was a fully legit slam. Lendl, Wilander, Vilas, Clerc, etc. Also the racket technology still made it possible for more offensive players to have some success (McEnroe, Connors, Noah). From the mid 80's, the field started a transition with the advent of the power game, which led some of the most talented players to specialize to a more aggressive and risky game which was not suited for clay (Edberg, Becker). In the late 80's, the lack of interest of 24 years old three time champions Wilander and the focus on Wimbledon of the other three time champion Lendl created a sudden gap at the top of the clay field, which could be filled by anyone (and indeed, it was by Chang!).
From the 90's to early 00's, the field was very we ark again due to the strong polarisation of the playing conditions. Many of the best players were totally unable to compete on clay, because their games were more suited for grass and fast hard court. The situation reached an all time low in the late 90's.
In the early 00's, the polarisation started to reverse to homogenization and the strength of the field was slightly better, but still very weak overall, for the same reasons than in the 90's.
This ended in the mid 00's when the best players in the world were finally also the best players on clay. Still, the injuries of Kuerten, Ferrero and Coria created a gap and the field became strong again a bit later. Federer and Nadal by themselves made the field strong, like Borg did in the 70's, but it had more depth when Djokovic arrived since 2007. It has been extremely strong since then until 2014-2015 and the marked decline of Federer and Nadal.
So overall I would say the best clay field was the decade from the mid-00's to the mid 10's, mostly because of Nadal, Djokovic and Federer. Then the early 80's, then the 70's, then the early 00's, then the 90s.
In the 70's, the field was relatively weak mostly because of the turmoils of the tour, with too much conflict between different organisations. Also many players were focused on fast surfaces (grass) which had been common until now: Laver, Rosewall, Smith, Ashe, Connors, Newcombe, Roche, many of the early 70's players were more proficient on faster surfaces. Obviously the presence of Borg makes the era quite good, and Vilas was no slouch either.
In the early 80's, the field was very good as more top players were baseliners and were efficient at the FO. Also the tour had solved most of his turmoil and the FO was a fully legit slam. Lendl, Wilander, Vilas, Clerc, etc. Also the racket technology still made it possible for more offensive players to have some success (McEnroe, Connors, Noah). From the mid 80's, the field started a transition with the advent of the power game, which led some of the most talented players to specialize to a more aggressive and risky game which was not suited for clay (Edberg, Becker). In the late 80's, the lack of interest of 24 years old three time champions Wilander and the focus on Wimbledon of the other three time champion Lendl created a sudden gap at the top of the clay field, which could be filled by anyone (and indeed, it was by Chang!).
From the 90's to early 00's, the field was very we ark again due to the strong polarisation of the playing conditions. Many of the best players were totally unable to compete on clay, because their games were more suited for grass and fast hard court. The situation reached an all time low in the late 90's.
In the early 00's, the polarisation started to reverse to homogenization and the strength of the field was slightly better, but still very weak overall, for the same reasons than in the 90's.
This ended in the mid 00's when the best players in the world were finally also the best players on clay. Still, the injuries of Kuerten, Ferrero and Coria created a gap and the field became strong again a bit later. Federer and Nadal by themselves made the field strong, like Borg did in the 70's, but it had more depth when Djokovic arrived since 2007. It has been extremely strong since then until 2014-2015 and the marked decline of Federer and Nadal.
So overall I would say the best clay field was the decade from the mid-00's to the mid 10's, mostly because of Nadal, Djokovic and Federer. Then the early 80's, then the 70's, then the early 00's, then the 90s.
But, see, this is where I question the utility of peak ELO for comparing the strength of different eras. Peak ELO says that Coria is #17 and Gaudio is #18 while Agassi and Chang aren't even in the top 30. Looking at this, you would says 2000s clay is stronger than 1990s clay. After all, #17 Coria played the French Open from 2000-2005 and in 2008 while Gaudio played it from 1999-2007 and in 2009. But the problem with this is that Gaudio literally only had 1 good French Open while Coria only had 2.
Meanwhile, Agassi had 9 good French Opens and Chang had 4 of his own. I certainly debate whether Gaudio's clay peak was higher than Agassi's clay peak, but, regardless, that peak tells us nothing about how often a player played close to their peak. The bottom line is that, if I'm a player in contention for French Open titles, I would much rather play in the era of Gaudio than the era of Agassi. But peak ELO says the opposite by a significant margin.
In 1996, it was unusually hot at the French Open, which is why so many fast court players did so well. Kafelnikov winning that tournament while dropping only 1 set (in a tiebreaker) was very impressive. I agree that just losing to eventual champions doesn't prove much, but Kafelnikov had his French Open title to go along with his 4 losses to eventual champions, including two 5 set losses to Kuerten.
In addition to his title, Kafelnikov had a SF loss and 3 QF losses. Those are better results than the 4 guys ranked immediately above him: (1) 1 W, 1 SF, 2 QF for Costa; (2) 1 W and 3 QF for Moya; (3) 1 W and nothing else for Gaudio; and (4) 1 F and 1 SF for Coria. Then, when you consider that all of these second week losses by Kafelnikov were to eventual champions, he looks even better.
Flash O'Groove
Hall of Fame
Yes I agree. Probably these guys are ranked better than him because they won more clay titles and thus defeated well ranked clay courters. For example Kafelnikov won 3 clay titles and made 3 finals, Gaudio won 8 titles and made 8 additional finals.
It's pretty clear that fans had a lot of estime for Kafelnikov's level at the FO in the late 90's, while few fans of the early 00's were very impressed by Gaudio win against Coria.
But then how can we explain Gaudio having a significantly higher peak clay ELO than Andres Gomez? Gomez, of course, won the 1990 French Open, beating future champions Thomas Muster (in straight sets) and Andre Agassi (in 4 sets) in the SF and F. For point of reference, Muster made the Monte Carlo finals and won the Italian Open in 1990 while Agassi made the 1988 French Open SF (losing to peak Wilander in 5), the 1989 Italian Open F, and the 1991 French Open F (losing to peak Courier in 5).
In addition, Gomez made 3 other French Open QF (losing to peak Lendl in 4 sets all 3 times) vs. 0 for Gaudio, won 2 Italian Open titles vs. no other big clay titles for Gaudio, and won 16 clay titles, with 7 other finals vs. 8/8 for Gaudio. By basically any metric, Gomez is way ahead of Gaudio, and yet he is well below Gaudio in peak ELO.
Meles
Bionic Poster
Wonderful post. I agree 100% with the first paragraph and I think this sort of pops the myth of 90's clay.
At some point we need to cry Poly (strings). Kuerten famously won his first french open in 1997 with early Poly and it clearly gave him the edge to break through for the earlier title. Agassi and Federer switched in early 2002 to Poly and Agassi has commented on how it really helped his game and he went on to win his first tournament (Rome) on Poly. Federer experts say it took him quite a while to adapt to Poly (worse touch perhaps). I'm sure everyone was switching to Poly once Fed started working his magic. (More recently in 2010 Nadal racked up Majors on Babolat Hurricane and many of the normally conservative pros jumped to that string.) Its not simple with Poly as some players took to it like a duck to water (Agassi) and then others eventually adpated very succesfully (Federer). The Poly strings favor hard hitting baseline play and disfavor net play. The relationship between serve and return is more complex as it benefits both.
For the main early 2000 players like Hewitt and others I don't think they moved to Poly until Fed started wiping them out and for a player like Hewitt Poly hurt him as his main strength was his ability to pass net rushers and baseline game. Poly closed the gap between Hewitt and the rest of the tour in this department plus generally the spinnier balls bounce a bit higher and Hewitt is not a tall player. I suspect many of the early 2000 players had more truncated careers because they didn't get as much bump to their game on poly and for some it may have been too physical a game with the extended baseline bashing. For me Baghdatas in 2006 was the last splash for a player with a pre-Poly type attacking game.
The one thing is clear that these players were not born and bred on Poly. Kuerten was in a way the first of the new breed on Poly and he had some success off clay, but he was not raised on Poly and ultimately succumbed to injury issues and I can't help but think that Poly in a way with the longer rallies, etc. hastened his and Agassi's demise (hip, etc.).
At the same time Poly might have extended the greatness of players like Courier and Bruguera and given them more of a chance against the Sampras's and other big players and on clay less of a chance of being knocked out by a big server at the French Open. I suspect Poly has concentrated power in the hands of the elite players allowing them to more consistently dominate. I'm not sure that this weakened 90's Clay relative to the years that followed, but it seems likely. Of course the 80's rate higher than the 90's but we are just looking at the top 8 showing up in majors. In the 90's perhaps the toll at the French Open from longer matches with a deeper field down further might have made it harder for players to consistently do well.
All of the above is background for the early 2000s. I believe that the clay courters went to Poly earlier (but don't know this for sure). Kuerten's success would have been noted, so it seems likely and I've gotten that feel from my discussions and research on Poly strings. Clay courters were likely the earliest Poly adopters. The early 2000's had Kuerten, Ferrero, and Coria. Coria was a phenomenal returner (better than Nadal even) who was a huge force from 2003-2005, but also very short and serve yips which likely had some physcial cause hastened his demise (Coria is younger than Federer.
) Kuerten was clearly a harbinger of the new clay game and his ELO of 7. Costa got on Poly in the late 1990s and I'm not sure what was behind his resurgence on clay in 2002 as he hadn't won in a couple years and had very strong first serve numbers in 2002 (Costa's conventional stats in 2002 are very weak for a French Open champion). Ferrero was on Poly for sure, but injuries took him out in 2004 and then the game passed the mosquito by. I expect the Mosquito was not quite tall enough and big enough to prosper in the evolving power baseline game too.Other than Costa, Ferrero, Coria, and Kuerten are clearly a cut above the pack of the 1990s players. Kuerten's peak years in 2000 and 2001 were mighty. Costa somehow slipped in for 2002, but Ferrero had great clay stats in 2003 and won the event. Ulitimately players like Coria and Ferrero did not have a big serve game like Kuerten so they did not have quite the success on the biggest stages, but they were still tremendous players whose careers were cut short. I would call the field very strong in this period. Nadal is the 800 pound gorilla on clay, so no use saying they weren't as good as no one has been even close (including Borg for that matter.) Kuerten's peak years were mighty while Coria and Ferrero won 53% of their points versus the 90's crew checking in at 52%; early 2000s had some high caliber players and that what is makes the field strength higher.
I think the strength on other surfaces has no direct impact on clay ELOs, but Poly strings were helping clay court players compete better on other surfaces. Euros have dominated the tour since 2005. Those who have not learned to embrace the clay game have been unable to be at the top of the rankings as the other top players are gaining solid points on clay. Poly favors upper body strength and stamina, so its not surprise that the average age on tour is going up and up as the youngsters are weak in this department.
Meles
Bionic Poster
Remember. The field strength in these graphs is based on the quarterfinalists at the French Open in a given year. Gaudio only affects 2004; the year he won. Gaudio is a small part of the equation. Gaudio won tournaments over a brief period starting at the French Open in 2004 and ending in 2005 clay season. Gaudio won 5 events in 2005 that did not boost his ELO, but do lend credibility to his French Open victory and results in 2004. Gaudio only affected one year and his ELO does not appear to be totally without merits.
Andre Agassi has good clay stats, but he was a green clay regular so I am lend a lot more weight to ELO downgrading him. Do we really think Agassi and Chang were great red clay players? There is no red clay to speak of in the US and their and Courier's amazing wins scream weak era on clay in the 1990s. Early 2000s had three great players whose careers were truncated due to injury issues (perhaps mental for Coria); Kuerten, Coria, and Ferrero were great clay court players. Guadio and Costa flashed briefly to score some wins. When I look at the list of quaterfinalists beginning in the early 2000s I see a host of fine clay court players. Some early Federer and late Agassi appearances may boost the results, but the middle 4 shows fine fields except for 2002 when Kuerten was down and it was early for the best of Ferrero and Coria.
I've been blasted far too many times on this sight for thinking Federer had it easy in his early years. Its true he did not have anothe ATG to deal with initially, but this kind of early poly/pre poly group should not be dismissed. Off clay, Hewitt and Roddick were quite impressive for a time. The early 2000s was not weak. It was not strong because Sampras and Agassi were fading and Federer was just emerging, but it was not weak. Late 1990s was weak accross the board and these supporting players from the early 2000s were a breath of fresh air.
Meles
Bionic Poster
ELO and the points stats really cry foul on this view; do we see the truth of the situation? ELO makes it clear and Kafelnikov and Gaudio are essentially tied. I'm sure if Coria had prevailed in 2004 he would have rightly been higher and Gaudio would have fallen back 50 points or something.
Kafelnikov has such weak points stats that his successes just scream weak era. He was 50.9% points won on clay for his career and that was probably boosted by his big 1996. Most years the guy was finning 50% of his points on clay. This is not greatness; just playing a bit above his head at the French in the five set format because of good serve and baseline play. Again this guy is a Russian and they don't have clay courts. This screams WEAK ERA!!!!
Meles
Bionic Poster
Gaudio is a dead horse here. Clearly ELO over rates him because Coria donated the French Open final to him. I really want to watch that one now! Gaudio followed up FO with 5 clay wins in 2005, so he was doing something right at that time. We cannot take down the whole ELO system because Coria choked away the 2004 French Open.
batz
G.O.A.T.
No confusion on this thread.
So no other Jeff Lynne fans on the board then?
http://www.stereogum.com/1850258/the-10-best-elo-songs/franchises/10-best-songs/
So no other Jeff Lynne fans on the board then?
http://www.stereogum.com/1850258/the-10-best-elo-songs/franchises/10-best-songs/
Chang won the French Open in 1989, in the process beating world #1 Ivan Lendl, who had won the French Open title 3 of the past 5 years. In 1995, he made it back to the final with a straight set victory over two time defending champion Sergi Bruguera (who would make another final in 1997). He also made two other French Open QFs.
Agassi won the French Open in 1999, beating defending champion Carlos Moya in the process. In addition to his final's loss to Gomez in 1990, he also reached the final in 1991, losing in 5 sets to peak Courier and might have won if not for weather stoppages. He also lost to Courier in the 1992 SF and peak Wilander (in 5 sets) in the 1988 SF. Andre also made 4 other French Open QFs and won the Italian Open in 2002, in the process beating Costa (6-2, 6-2), who would go on to win the French Open.
So, yes, I would say that Chang and Agassi were great red clay players. Peak clay ELO just seems way off for 1990s players. Here's just one example: You have Coria at #17 with 2749.76 points while Medvedev is presumably well outside the top 23, with 2604.4 points. But Medvedev had (1) better results at the French: F/SF/QF/4R/4R/4R/4R and a 29-10 record vs. F/SF/4R and 17-7 record; (2) more clay Masters Series titles: 4 vs. 2; and (3) more total clay titles: 9 vs. 8.
Now, was Coria at his very peak in 2003-2004 better than Medvedev at his very peak? Arguably. But Coria burned out really quickly while Medvedev was a very good clay court player throughout the 1990s.
I decided to do some 1990s vs. 2000s quality control and compared two Croats better known for their play on faster surfaces:
Peak ELO has Goran at 2435.96 and Mario at 2461.72. This is why I can't take these peak clay ELO rankings that seriously. Goran is clearly much better than Mario on clay and at the French Open and had a much better clay court career. And yet, peak clay ELO has Mario higher.
[Edit: I just took a quick look and also saw that Pioline is also below Ancic with a peak clay ELO of 2458.45. At the French Open, Cedric made a SF, a QF, and three fourth rounds. He also won Monte Carlo and made two other finals there. Again, he's a much better clay courter than Ancic.].
-Goran Ivanisevic primarily played in the 1990s and made it to the French Open QFs three times and the 4th round two other times. He also made a final and three SF in Rome and a final in Hamburg. Overall, he won three clay titles and made 6 other clay finals in his career.
-Mario Ancic primarily played in the 2000s and made it to 1 French Open QF, with no other result better than a 3rd round loss. He made 1 Masters Series SF on clay, at Hamburg in 2006. He won no clay titles in his career, and I don't think he ever made any clay finals (not sure about that latter fact).
-Mario Ancic primarily played in the 2000s and made it to 1 French Open QF, with no other result better than a 3rd round loss. He made 1 Masters Series SF on clay, at Hamburg in 2006. He won no clay titles in his career, and I don't think he ever made any clay finals (not sure about that latter fact).
Peak ELO has Goran at 2435.96 and Mario at 2461.72. This is why I can't take these peak clay ELO rankings that seriously. Goran is clearly much better than Mario on clay and at the French Open and had a much better clay court career. And yet, peak clay ELO has Mario higher.
[Edit: I just took a quick look and also saw that Pioline is also below Ancic with a peak clay ELO of 2458.45. At the French Open, Cedric made a SF, a QF, and three fourth rounds. He also won Monte Carlo and made two other finals there. Again, he's a much better clay courter than Ancic.].
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Meles
Bionic Poster
On convential stats Coria crushes Medvedev. 53.2% of points to 51.7%. I like Medvedev because he exemplifies a player who excelled with a strong first serve and first return game. For easy reference here are the clay leaders since 1991 from my handbook (please not any ommissions). I just got Stich on here because his horrible 2nd return game was blowing up my stats because he was not in top 200 where I pull the stats. He has a nice whole 49.0% in there now and generally if you see a lowish number with .0% it means I had to use the crude number to make rough points numbers. (This uses raw points for everything so the return points and total points won for Stich may be off 0.1 to 0.2%):
These are through the end of 2015.
Meles
Bionic Poster
Seperate reply for some of this because of the points graphic. The important thing on Agassis are the losses until 1999 where he prevailed in a weak field (remember Agassi wasn't even going to play the event until Brad Gilbert talked him into it). Agassi looks great in the points stat above but I'm calling that Green clay against lesser fields.
Peak is peak and Coria's peak was very, very high. It would be better to think of him as the 2004 French Open champ to put him in perspective. A ten year period doesn't matter for peak fo
The whole kind of Bruguera/Courier era seems a bit low. I'm looking for real problems with these ratings and I think that is the period that needs focus. Jose Luis Clerc at the same rating as Bruguera and Courier seems wrong on the surface somehow. The oldenheimers like Clerc were plugged in based on non-slam weight ELO and probably need a correction. It almost seems like there might have been some ELO deflation coming into Courier and Bruguera. Perhaps Wilander and Lendl failed to hand off the baton to these young players? That would deflate the first half of the 1990s. Lendl's grass obession.
Chang won one event on red clay, 1989 French Open. This backs up the view of that being a weak era win too. Agassi won Rome and Stuttgart on clay outside of FO; that's it. Sorry, this screams weak era French Open champs. Very good red clay players (not greatness.)
That's all fine and well, but Coria had 2 good French Opens, in 2003 and 2004, and 3 good clay years, from 2003-2005. Medvedev made the French Open SF in 1993 and made it to the final in 1999. In between, he had three separate years where he won a Masters Series title in clay, including 2 titles in 1994. He had better results than Coria at the French Open, more Masters Series titles on clay, and more titles on clay, period.
About the only thing that you can claim is that Coria had the better peak than Medvedev, but even that's debatable, given that Medvedev's straight set win over Kuerten at the 1999 French Open is better than any win Coria ever had at the French Open (Guga had won Monte Carlo and Rome in 1999 and of course would go on to win the French in 2000 and 2001).
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