It's over 2300!! Sinner the 12th man since Rod Laver to smash legendary Elo mark!

Rovesciarete

Rovesciarete

Hall of Fame
... and doing so at a younger age than Federer and Djokovic!


Bald buff Nappa screaming on behalf of some members of the TTW board ...

P.S: Inspired by the caption of 'Super-Sinner' by Jeff Sackmann, in his excellent 'Yes, Jannik Sinner is really that good!' with this great opening:

Don’t let Daniil Medvedev’s near-miss in the Australian Open final fool you: Jannik Sinner is the best player in the world right now. Like Sunday’s championship match, it’s close–but it might not be close for long.
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P.P.S: Guys, enjoy the short tennis break! I will be back later!
 
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Be careful OP, before someone comes along and tells you that there's no point in always opening threads on Sinner.

After all, what could he have done lately to receive all this attention?

Better to talk about other topics, such as the memorable edition of the 2005 ATP Finals where Federer, in order to reach the final trying to equal McEnroe's 1984 record, had to go through the terrible competition opposed by the various Gaudio, Coria and Ljubicic, names that just by pronouncing them shaking tennis courts around the world.
 
Winner Sinner said:
Better to talk about other topics, such as the memorable edition of the 2005 ATP Finals where Federer, in order to reach the final trying to equal McEnroe's 1984 record, had to go through the terrible competition opposed by the various Gaudio, Coria and Ljubicic, names that just by pronouncing them shaking tennis courts around the world.
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Thankfully everybody gets the right to open threads and everybody is free to comment on them, which goes both ways.

New stars can upset the old routines. I found the famous meme just strangely fitting :)
 
Single season winning percentage

6 PLAYERS—

In all of history only 6 players have done better than Sinner from this point of view in a single season: McEnroe, Connors, Borg, Djokovic Federer and Lendl. There are very, very few vintages better than the last 12 months of Sinner. John McEnroe's legendary 1984 which remains, to this day, the year with the highest percentage of victories, 96.47%, the result of 82 successes and only 3 defeats.
Next we find Jimmy Connors, who in 1974 achieved 93 victories and only 4 defeats. Federer's best season, on a percentage level, remains 2005, with 81 wins and 4 defeats (95.29%), but for example, many consider 2006 to be the golden year of the Swiss champion, when he won 92 games but losing 5 times (percentage of 94.85%).
Following the incredible 1979 signed by Bjorn Borg, 84 wins and 6 defeats (93.33%) and 2015 by Novak Djokovic (82-6 for a percentage of 93.18%). No one has won more than 70 games in a year since 2016, when Andy Murray did it (78), but the Scotsman was defeated 9 times, with a percentage therefore lower than that of Sinner 2024.

HARD—

Only Jannik, Federer and Djokovic have managed to win all three of the main hard court events of the season since 2000, namely the Australian Open, US Open and Finals.
The Swiss achieved it in 2004, 2005 and 2007, while the Serbian champion did so in 2015 and 2023. Furthermore, Jannik was the seventh player in history to win the Finals on home soil, the first since Andy Murray in 2016. Others who succeeded were Lleyton Hewitt in 2001 in Sydney, Boris Becker in 1992 and in 1995 in Frankfurt, Michael Stich in Frankfurt, John McEnroe in 1978, 1983 and 1984 in New York and Jimmy Connors in 1977 also in New York. Sinner has managed to win 53 matches on hard courts in 2024, he has won 29 of the last 30 matches (he only lost the one against Alcaraz in Beijing) and has an open streak of 14 consecutive matches.
 
Everything is a formula made by someone. The weightage given by atp for tournaments is just a formula made by a guy.

And that formula keeps changing.

Elo is very good statistic which in addition with other stats, show how dominant a player was an show difficult the competition was.
 
hulty.gif

'ELO... is it me you're looking for?'
 
And he played who? He lost all his matches to the only other good player on tour. Not trying to knock Sinner. He is TRULY good right now. He also doesn’t have any real competition outside of Alcaraz, both are true.
 
ELO is not part of chess, not tennis. Neither the ATP nor the ITF have any official stat about ELO. Only fanmade webpages such as Ultimate Tennis Statistics (made by Novak fans) and Tennis Abstract invent their own unofficial ELO ratings. Further proof they are unreliable is that the ELO ratings from UTS and Tennis Abstract throw different values. Anyhow, they are unofficial and thus not part of tennis. You cannot use ELO as an argument when there is no ELO in tennis. ELO is not an official stat.
 
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THE TOP 10 OF THE BEST SEASONS WINNING PERCENTAGE

1. John McEnroe 1984 (96.5% – 82V/3S)
2. Jimmy Connors 1974 (95.9% – 94V/4S)
3. Roger Federer 2005 (95.3% – 81W/4S)
4. Roger Federer 2006 (94.8% – 92V/5S)
5. Björn Borg 1979 (93.3% – 84V/6S)
6. Novak Djokovic 2015 (93.2% – 82V/6S)
7. Roger Federer 2004 (92.5% – 74V/6S)
8. Ivan Lendl 1986 (92.5% – 74V/6S)
9. Jannik Sinner 2024 (92.4% – 73V/6S)
10. Ivan Lendl 1985 (92.3% – 84V/7S)
 
TMF said:
ELO is garbage. Too many flaws and it's been debunked in the past
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'I told you that the scouter is broken' Nappa

Science on the other hand indicates that it works pretty well!

This paper seeks to compare and evaluate the performance of different metrics (official world rankings, Elo-based ratings and betting odds) against three indicators, i.e. prediction accuracy, calibration and model discrimination. For men’s tennis we find that the betting odds outperform the other metrics in terms of prediction accuracy and calibration. A weighted composite of overall and surface-specific Elo performs best in terms of model discrimination. For women’s tennis, we find that a weighted composite of overall and surface-specific Elo performs best in terms of prediction accuracy, while a weighted composite of the betting odds, overall Elo and surface-specific Elo performs best in terms of calibration and model discrimination. Consistently, therefore, we find that the official ranking system proved to be the worst performing measure, highlighting a case for a change in the method by which the official rankings are calculated (see also Reid et al., 2010).
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Elo is an very useful tool to rank players and to predict matches. As the algo can't know if player a is ill or that player b looked great, bookmakers are ,thanks to their considerable investment, better a forecasting single matches.

The findings of this paper complement those of earlier studies, notably Kovalchik (2016), who studied the predictive ability of previously published tennis prediction models. Kovalchik finds that no approach was able to match the predictive ability of the bookmaker, although the standard Elo was the closest competitor (the study did not include the combined Elo approach employed in this paper). Overall, the findings of this study add to the case for a wider use of Elo-based approaches within sports forecasting, as well as within the player rankings methodologies.
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Elo is kind of bad for comparing players across different eras due to how slow it is to adjust and its inflationary tendencies, but not a bad achievement from Sinner here
 
MichaelNadal said:
And he played who? He lost all his matches to the only other good player on tour. Not trying to knock Sinner. He is TRULY good right now. He also doesn’t have any real competition outside of Alcaraz, both are true.
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I agree with you! Until he conquers Carlos or any other player of similar ilk, he's very good but unknown in the clutch!
 
Winner Sinner said:
THE TOP 10 OF THE BEST SEASONS WINNING PERCENTAGE

1. John McEnroe 1984 (96.5% – 82V/3S)
2. Jimmy Connors 1974 (95.9% – 94V/4S)
3. Roger Federer 2005 (95.3% – 81W/4S)
4. Roger Federer 2006 (94.8% – 92V/5S)
5. Björn Borg 1979 (93.3% – 84V/6S)
6. Novak Djokovic 2015 (93.2% – 82V/6S)
7. Roger Federer 2004 (92.5% – 74V/6S)
8. Ivan Lendl 1986 (92.5% – 74V/6S)
9. Jannik Sinner 2024 (92.4% – 73V/6S)
10. Ivan Lendl 1985 (92.3% – 84V/7S)
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Players waiting in the wings
1. Lendl (24)
2. Borg (18)
3. Nadal (19), Djokovic (18)
4. Nadal (20), Djokovic (19)
5. McEnroe (20)
6. Federer (34), Nadal (29)
7. Nadal (18)
8. McEnroe (25), Edberg (18)
9. Alcaraz (21)
10. Edberg (19)

To see how much competition the field provided, the rivals with age in the parenthesis. # 2, 7 & 10, the rivals were still too young!
 
SonnyT said:
Players waiting in the wings
1. Lendl (24)
2. Borg (18)
3. Nadal (19), Djokovic (18)
4. Nadal (20), Djokovic (19)
5. McEnroe (20)
6. Federer (34), Nadal (29)
7. Nadal (18)
8. McEnroe (25), Edberg (18)
9. Alcaraz (21)
10. Edberg (19)

To see how much competition the field provided, the rivals with age in the parenthesis. # 2, 7 & 10, the rivals were still too young!
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What the the heck does “Players waiting in the wings” mean? Is this who finished number 2 that year? And their ages?
Talk about a confusing post.
 
Oh, and tennis isn’t chess. At the very least different conditions and surfaces make overall ELo rather useless, imo.

Funny to say this, since I’m an empiricist and believe in quantifying data, but I trust peoples eye test more than elo in this case.
 
Third Serve said:
Elo is kind of bad for comparing players across different eras due to how slow it is to adjust and its inflationary tendencies, but not a bad achievement from Sinner here
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Elo is a bit like democracy, the least bad way and still highly useful. People also seem to hate existing and perceived inflation so much that they can panic and cause a deflation by overreacting, just like in chess.
 
Rovesciarete said:
Elo is a bit like democracy, the least bad way and still highly useful. People also seem to hate existing and perceived inflation so much that they can panic and cause a deflation by overreacting, just like in chess.
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Elo’s use is mostly for assessing recent and competition-adjusted levels of players that don’t necessarily reveal themselves if you look at the ATP rankings. It can be an useful tool for predicting match outcomes in the same pool of players.

But I think its usefulness ends there. IMO without a solid grasp of individual matches and statistics to correct its myriad flaws, Elo is pretty useless for comparisons that go beyond players in an individual season or year. Like comparing Djokovic of one season to Fed in one season. Whenever someone brings it up in an argument I usually roll my eyes.

Murray in 2009 (not among his best seasons) put up a higher Elo than Sampras in almost all of his seasons as a player. When you have that kind of disconnect between what Elo says and what pretty much every other metric says it does invite questions.
 
Third Serve said:
Murray in 2009 (not among his best seasons) put up a higher Elo than Sampras in almost all of his seasons as a player. When you have that kind of disconnect between what Elo says and what pretty much every other metric says it does invite questions.
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It does invite me to the following questions:

1) Why was the Elo of the top 5 relatively low in many of the Sampras years?

2) Has racket+strings technology something to do with it?

3) Were new players due to this undervalued by their starting Elo?

4) Did such a combination deflate the Elo value of older players in a similar way to chess?*

5) Why wasn't Sampras able to dominate the tour more?

6) Which role did the surface split and heterogeneity play?


*Lower barriers of entry due to online chess, cheaper yet stronger engines, information revolution of the internet...
 
Rovesciarete said:
It does invite me to the following questions:

1) Why was the Elo of the top 5 relatively low in many of the Sampras years?

2) Has racket+strings technology something to do with it?

3) Were new players due to this undervalued by their starting Elo?

4) Did such a combination deflate the Elo value of older players in a similar way to chess?*

5) Why wasn't Sampras able to dominate the tour more?

6) Which role did the surface split and heterogeneity play?


*Lower barriers of entry due to online chess, cheaper yet stronger engines, information revolution of the internet...
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Jeff Sackman has written about it. The elo inflation or deflation. Now we can't compare eras 1 to 1. Sampras times there were surface specialists. So it makes sense.


But who are the 11 guys who entered 2300 before and what was their peak elo and when?
 
nolefam_2024 said:
Jeff Sackman has written about it. The elo inflation or deflation. Now we can't compare eras 1 to 1. Sampras times there were surface specialists. So it makes sense.


But who are the 11 guys who entered 2300 before and what was their peak elo and when?
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Actually there should be 12 men before Sinner, Wilander is a bit of a surprise there! Reached 2309 as a teenager, for such young guys the rankings can get a bit funky due to the small sample size. Great backhand and great movement already at that age. Becker is closest to him, getting his highest Elo ranking before becoming the number 1.

So Sinner should the 13th warrior, Kakarot or the just 'Carrot'.

13 got to 2300
7 over 2350
5 got to 2400
3 over 2450
1 reached 2571*


1. Rod Laver [AUS]
Peak rank: 1 (1961)
Peak Elo rating: 2,571 (1st place, 1970)

2. Novak Djokovic [SRB]
Peak rank: 1 (2011)
Peak Elo rating: 2,470 (1st place, 2016)

3. Roger Federer [SUI]
Peak rank: 1 (2004)
Peak Elo rating: 2,383 (1st place, 2007)

4. Rafael Nadal [ESP]
Peak rank: 1 (2008)
Peak Elo rating: 2,370 (1st place, 2009)

5. Björn Borg [SWE]
Peak rank: 1 (1977)
Peak Elo rating: 2,473 (1st place, 1980)

6. John McEnroe [USA]
Peak rank: 1 (1980)
Peak Elo rating: 2,442 (1st place, 1985)

7. Ivan Lendl [TCH/USA]
Peak rank: 1 (1983)
Peak Elo rating: 2,402 (1st place, 1986)

8. Pete Sampras [USA]
Peak rank: 1 (1993)
Peak Elo rating: 2,319 (1st place, 1994)

9. Jimmy Connors [USA]
Peak rank: 1 (1974)
Peak Elo rating: 2,364 (1st place, 1979)

10. Andy Murray [GBR]
Peak rank: 1 (2016)
Peak Elo rating: 2,347 (2nd place, 2017)

11. Boris Becker [GER]
Peak rank: 1 (1991)
Peak Elo rating: 2,324 (1st place, 1989)

-----

12. Mats Wilander [SWE]
Peak rank: 1 (1988)
Peak Elo rating: 2,309 (1st place, 1983)

*Laver had initially arguably the weakest international field, many European nations weren't that strong back then.
 
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After overtaking Wilander thanks to his performance in the Davis Cup, Sinner travels currently above the year-end ranking of Becker and Sampras!

Draper has achieved a new peak. Machac and Rune among the top 10 might surprise some. Old man Novak was and still is the second strongest player on the tour. Crazy to think that Grigor hit is peak more than a decade ago...

Updated weekly(ish). Last update: 2025-01-27
Elo Rank​
Player​
Age​
Elo​
​
​
Peak Elo​
Peak Month​
​
ATP Rank​
1​
Jannik Sinner
23.4​
2324.8​
2324.8​
2025-01​
1​
2​
Novak Djokovic
37.6​
2197.5​
2470.4​
2016-03​
6​
3​
Carlos Alcaraz
21.6​
2151.6​
2239.3​
2023-08​
3​
4​
Alexander Zverev
27.7​
2101.7​
2161.5​
2022-01​
2​
5​
Daniil Medvedev
28.9​
2027.7​
2191.6​
2022-01​
7​
6​
Taylor Fritz
27.2​
2027.3​
2040.8​
2023-04​
4​
7​
Grigor Dimitrov
33.6​
2022.9​
2091.0​
2014-08​
11​
8​
Jack Draper
23.0​
2021.0​
2021.0​
2025-01​
16​
9​
Tomas Machac
24.2​
1973.5​
1979.4​
2025-01​
25​
10​
Holger Rune
21.7​
1972.6​
2069.4​
2023-05​
12​
 
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Rovesciarete said:
After overtaking Wilander thanks to his performance in the Davis Cup, Sinner travels currently above the year-end ranking of Becker and Sampras!

Draper has achieved a new peak. Machac and Rune among the top 10 might surprise some. Old man Novak was and still is the second strongest player on the tour. Crazy to think that Grigor hit is peak more than a decade ago...

Updated weekly(ish). Last update: 2025-01-27
Elo Rank​
Player​
Age​
Elo​
​
​
Peak Elo​
Peak Month​
​
ATP Rank​
1​
Jannik Sinner
23.4​
2324.8​
2324.8​
2025-01​
1​
2​
Novak Djokovic
37.6​
2197.5​
2470.4​
2016-03​
6​
3​
Carlos Alcaraz
21.6​
2151.6​
2239.3​
2023-08​
3​
4​
Alexander Zverev
27.7​
2101.7​
2161.5​
2022-01​
2​
5​
Daniil Medvedev
28.9​
2027.7​
2191.6​
2022-01​
7​
6​
Taylor Fritz
27.2​
2027.3​
2040.8​
2023-04​
4​
7​
Grigor Dimitrov
33.6​
2022.9​
2091.0​
2014-08​
11​
8​
Jack Draper
23.0​
2021.0​
2021.0​
2025-01​
16​
9​
Tomas Machac
24.2​
1973.5​
1979.4​
2025-01​
25​
10​
Holger Rune
21.7​
1972.6​
2069.4​
2023-05​
12​
Click to expand...
Very close to peak nadal now
 
nolefam_2024 said:
And physicality. Clay needs supreme physicality. Sinner may never get it.
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Fair, maybe endurance to sustain movement + baseline power is the best term. So far I don't see a fixed athletic limit for Sinner, he continues to suffer but also keeps improving as an athlete.

As written before he and Draper had very late growth spurts which delays the athletic prime. Ironically Alcaraz at 19 seemed closer to it, despite being almost two years younger...
 
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