Incorrect stats for Nadal-Federer (2007 RG final)

[krosero]

Last year after the 2007 RG final I noticed that Nadal and Federer were credited with only about half the number of winners that they got for their 2006 final.

I've counted up the winners in their 2007 match. The numbers at the Roland Garros site are definitely wrong -- but NBC's numbers look fine.

The page for the 2007 final at the Roland Garros site is here:
http://2007.rolandgarros.com/en_FR/scores/stats/day20/1127ms.html

The aces are fine, with Federer at 9 and Nadal at 2. The problem is with the total number of winners:

Winners (including service): Federer 18, Nadal 13.

Those numbers are much lower than in the previous year, when they played almost the same number of games but Federer was credited with 35 winners (including 8 aces) and Nadal 25 (including 3 aces). See http://2006.rolandgarros.com/en_FR/scores/stats/day20/1127ms.html.

Score for 2007: 6-3, 4-6, 6-3, 6-4 (38 games)
Score for 2006: 1-6, 6-1, 6-4, 7-6 (37 games)

This is my count for the 2007 final:

Federer had 28 winners apart from service: 13 FH, 9 BH, 3 FHV, 2 BHV, 1 overhead.

Nadal had 28 winners apart from service: 18 FH, 7 BH, 1 FHV and 1 overhead. Those numbers actually add up only to 27, because NBC didn't come back in time from commercial break for one of Nadal's points; but they did report it as "a return winner."

If you add the aces, then Federer should be credited at least 37 winners, and Nadal with at least 30.

On top of that, you'd have to add some service winners.

Federer got a service return error from Nadal 19 times, of which I judged 1 as a service winner.

Nadal got a service return error from Federer 28 times, of which I judged 2 as service winners.

So probably an official count would not include a lot of service winners.

Whatever the case, if Federer moves up at least to 37 and Nadal to 30, that's very comparable to their numbers the previous year.

NBC, by the way, already had Federer at 30 winners after three sets, and Nadal at 22 winners.

If NBC counted up as many clean winners as I did, then presumably they had given Federer 2 service winners up to that point, and Nadal 3.

Does anyone have different published stats for the 2007 final, other than the ones at the Roland Garros site?

 

[Moose Malloy]

Threads popped up about this last year, the stats at the Roland Garros site seems to exist in an alternate universe.

All throughout the tournament last year, they had drastically different stats from espn, bbc, reuters, you name it(and bbc, espn, etc all had the same stats, so you wonder where RG came up with their stats, since bbc, etc I assume got their stats from the same source)

I can understand the definition of unforced error varying event to event, but not the definition of winner(unless they don't include service winners, but even then there weren't a lot of them in most matches at the French, so that can't be why the counts were consistently lower than they should be)

I recall an early round Nadal match where they said he only had 5 or 6 winners over 3 sets, which is absurd. And that Andreev-Roddick match, where all reports mentioned that Andreev had 30+ winners from the forehand alone(I think), yet the RG site had a much lower count.

That's the only Grand Slam website where I wouldn't trust any of their stats for any match.

did you find any google news for this match?

It's funny you did this match, I was just re-watching it(didn't finish it)

 

[krosero]

Actually now that you mention it I vaguely recall those threads popping up, though I hardly paid attention to them at the time.

I ran a Google News search for the match, I don't know if something went wrong, but I didn't find a total count of winners for either player, though there were a ton of hits and I didn't look through all of them.

And particular searches for "13 winners" and "18 winners" (the RG numbers) came up empty.

What I'd like to know is why there would be a problem with the winners. Why this particular problem? In what way would winners be undercounted so drastically?

And is it only the winners that are a problem? Only this year, perhaps? The other stats for the final compare nicely with the stats for the '06 final.

Were there any problems that you remember from '06?

 

[krosero]

I recall an early round Nadal match where they said he only had 5 or 6 winners over 3 sets, which is absurd.

On the RG site, Nadal had only 1 winner in the second set against Federer.

 

[yellowoctopus]

wow, you guys must do this for a living...or enjoy collecting this type of stats very much.

Either way, thanks

 

[Nadal_Freak]

Whatever the stats are. It all adds up to Nadal owning Federer.

 

[Vision84]

As if such close matches can be considered ownage....

 

[Nadal_Freak]

As if such close matches can be considered ownage....

It was closer in 2006. The last 2 sets by Nadal were complete ownage. Fed was lucky not to get broken more.

 

[iamke55]

Whatever the stats are. It all adds up to Nadal owning Federer.

Especially on serve. People only look at aces, but you can tell from the stats here that Nadal has a much better serve than Federer on clay.

 

[krosero]

Especially on serve. People only look at aces, but you can tell from the stats here that Nadal has a much better serve than Federer on clay.

If you're referring to the return errors (29 committed by Fed, 19 by Nadal), that could also mean that Nadal returned better.

And including the aces, there's not much difference between the two: Federer won 28 points with a single swing of the racquet, Nadal 30.

At the RG site (and the ATP site), there's not much difference between them in the winning percentages on serve. They were each at 55% on points begun with a second serve. But on first serve, Nadal was a little higher than Federer, 60% to 55%.

What struck me was how Nadal's forehand got the most winners. Federer's forehand was not far back but it failed him in this match. I have no plans for doing the 2006 final (when his backhand failed him) but it would be interesting to see those winners, broken down by stroke.

 

[krosero]

wow, you guys must do this for a living...or enjoy collecting this type of stats very much.

Either way, thanks

I do enjoy it; I tend to be more alert when watching matches if I'm counting stats.

 

[Moose Malloy]

Were there any problems that you remember from '06?

from what I recall, the stats on that site have been weird for a few years now.

I think the way they count unforced errors also differed from espn, etc.

 

[krosero]

from what I recall, the stats on that site have been weird for a few years now.

At least the winners look okay, though, for the 2006 final. The numbers are very close to what I counted for 2007.

 

[Moose Malloy]

you should check out the Sony Ericcson website. They have winners separated into volleys, forehands, backhands, overheads, & a total winner column so you can figure out how many service winners.

This tournament should be interesting, I've never seen winners broken down like this on a tourney website before. There was a thread recently talking about what shots by what players have produced the most winners in the game, there is no way to find that out about the past, but its nice to have this info at least on current players.

I'm curious if there will be any matches this event where a player hits more winners on the backhand than the forehand.

here were the stats on Kevin Anderson vs Agustin Calleri, you can see how most of Calleri's winners were forehands, & most of Anderson's were service winners.

http://www.sonyericssonopen.com/stats/MS147.html

 

[my_forehand]

Whatever the stats are. It all adds up to Nadal owning Federer.

We shall see this year; who reaches the finals and wins it.

 

[saram]

from what I recall, the stats on that site have been weird for a few years now.

I think the way they count unforced errors also differed from espn, etc.

You are right. I cannot remember the commentator, but I recall one saying that the way the collect stats or give credit here and there is uniquely different than at other Slams--in that they are a little more stringent on giving credit.

Oh, and I love your sig!

 

[krosero]

you should check out the Sony Ericcson website. They have winners separated into volleys, forehands, backhands, overheads, & a total winner column so you can figure out how many service winners.

This tournament should be interesting, I've never seen winners broken down like this on a tourney website before. There was a thread recently talking about what shots by what players have produced the most winners in the game, there is no way to find that out about the past, but its nice to have this info at least on current players.

I'm curious if there will be any matches this event where a player hits more winners on the backhand than the forehand.

here were the stats on Kevin Anderson vs Agustin Calleri, you can see how most of Calleri's winners were forehands, & most of Anderson's were service winners.

http://www.sonyericssonopen.com/stats/MS147.html

Hey that's really interesting. It's curious that they don't list service winners as a separate category when they do that for everything else, but you can easily calculate them.

 

[crawl4]

Whatever the stats are. It all adds up to Nadal owning Federer.

yuk you
nadal is finished!

 

[krosero]

You are right. I cannot remember the commentator, but I recall one saying that the way the collect stats or give credit here and there is uniquely different than at other Slams--in that they are a little more stringent on giving credit.

That may be true with the unforced errors, but something else is going on with the winners. Rafa and Fed hit more clean winners than the site reports. I can't see how one clean winner would be credited while another is not.

 

[TheTruth]

I do enjoy it; I tend to be more alert when watching matches if I'm counting stats.

Sometimes I try to do that, but usually give up after about five or six stats. When I was a baseball fan I used to do it, but it takes a lot of concentration.

 

[Moose Malloy]

What I'd like to know is why there would be a problem with the winners. Why this particular problem? In what way would winners be undercounted so drastically?

I think I found out the reason why RG's stats seem so off compared to the other majors:

PARIS -- One of the wonderful things about tennis is that, unlike baseball and, to a lesser degree, football, the sport is not obsessed with statistics.

No one keeps track, for example, of how times a lefthander from South America commits a double-fault, on clay, at night, in the second set, against a right-handed opponent ranked in the top 20.

The statistics kept by the various tennis organizations (ATP, WTA, ITF) are relatively few and to the point. Like aces. People want to know how many aces players hit.

And last Wednesday, in a five-set match here, the 6-foot-10 Croatian Ivo Karlovic, who leads the ATP in aces, smacked a French Open record 39 of them. Or was it 35, which would not be a record?

For a couple of days, no one was certain how many he had hit because while FDE, the Paris company hired by the French Tennis Federation to keep statistics at the matches, gave Karlovic 39, the chair umpire, Louise Engzell of Sweden, recorded only 35 on her scorecard.

If FDE had given Karlovic 31 aces and Engzell had credited him with 27, no one would much care, despite the embarrassing discrepancy, and I wouldn't be wasting my time writing about this and you wouldn't be wasting your time reading it.

But there was a significant issue involved. Did Karlovic or did Karlovic not surpass Andy Roddick's French Open record of 37 aces, struck in 2001 against Michael Chang?

When it was pointed out to the tournament that their hired stat keepers were four aces off the chair umpire's scorecard, they initiated an investigation, of sorts, and came to the same conclusion I did -- that Engzell has a lot more credibility than some person that might have been hired off the street to keep stats.

So, no record, even though the tournament still hasn't made the correction on its website. If you look up Karlovic's stats for that match, he continues to be listed with a record 39 aces, not 35.

But that's not the end of this story, because if someone is so incompetent as to be four aces off, how many other "official" statistics kept at the French Open are inaccurate?

This isn't some Class Z tournament. This is a Grand Slam. Run it like a Grand Slam.

To get some answers, I tried to contact the person in charge of assigning volunteers to keep stats at the various matches in order to ask the following questions:

1. Who are these people and what makes them qualified to record official statistics at a Grand Slam?

2. How could anyone possibly be off by four aces?

3. If they can't get aces right, how many other statistics now in the tournament record book are wrong and how can players, reporters and coaches, who routinely depend on these statistics, trust what these official statistics report?

I spoke with a liaison to the FFT, asking her to set up an interview with Monsieur Jean Noel, who, I was told, supervises the stat volunteers. "Come back in 10 minutes," she said.

I did, and she looked quite nervous when I reappeared. "No one wants to talk about this," she said. I asked if that was Noel she had spoken with and she said, no, it was an executive with the FFT. That person had told her not to put reporters in touch with anyone who could comment on the Karlovic mess.

However, I did speak with someone who works for IBM, which does statistics at the three other Slams and which runs the radar guns here that gauge service speed. IBM has nothing to do with stats at the French Open.

"They have their own way of doing things here," said the IBM guy.

I can only conclude that the French Federation doesn't want to talk to reporters about the incompetency of their statisticians because they're pretty embarrassed by this screw-up and because, possibly, they already sense there could be statistical inaccuracies elsewhere.

In all fairness, it wouldn't be unusual to have a discrepancy of one ace between the chair umpire and the court statistician. The umpire, from a perch above the court, might see a serve glance off the tip of the racket and thus not give an ace while a statistician might not see the glance.

But a difference of four aces?

Someone isn't doing the job here. Maybe, as the IBM guy suggested, these people hired by FDE think any serve that glances off a racket is an ace.

If you go to the French Open website (rolandgarros.com) to look up statistics on a match, be forewarned. What you're reading may have no relationship to what actually happened on court.

The FFT sets a pretty plate here with its elegant on-site restaurants and mezzanine boxes on the Philippe Chatrier stadium court for the rich and famous. They pay some artist thousands just to create a logo for each tournament.

So why can't they pay attention to something as fundamental as how many aces a player hits in a match?

http://blogs.sun-sentinel.com/sports_tennisblog/2008/05/french-open-o-1.html

 

[crazylevity]

Hmmm...the plot thickens...

 

[krosero]

That's great, Moose. Have you noticed anything funny about their winner counts this year?

Or anyone else, notice something?

 

[Moose Malloy]

^yeah you can read about it in this thread:

http://tt.tennis-warehouse.com/showthread.php?t=201310

apparently they are just adding all service points won & listing it as the 'winner' total. which in a way at least makes more sense than last year, at least I can see what the numbers mean, even though they are still misleading(& confusing, since more than a few are relying on those stats for discussions here)

btw, I came across a rather high winner ratio(through 2 sets) in the '82 Ladies Wimbledon final by Martina(around 1.7)

will post a thread later