Peak/Prime Federer is greater than Djokovic at the Australian Open

[TheFifthSet]

Which is why the 2007 W final is now being reexamined and talked up. There isn't much of anything else. At the time in 2007, Nadal was just a dirt baller with an easy draw who got lucky in the final. In 2022, it's a classic, a masterpiece.

'07 Nadal was leading the points race heading into the Wimby final, would've taken over as #1 if he won the match...won IW without the loss of a set, beat 3-4 quality grass-courters to reach the final and played an incredible match, which was immediately heralded as an epic. Go listen to the NBC broadcast/post-match recap and you'll notice the effusive praise being heaped upon it.

The only revisionism here is you claiming that it's revisionism to call it a classic when it was rightly seen as one right after it concluded lol.

 

[The Guru]

I think one could make the argument that grass levels the playing field and thus requires the highest level to dominate as the average player is more of a threat

I'm fine with not comparing surfaces but I'd be interested in knowing why you think this way on more of a technical level?

Grass is the hardest to dominate in that posting equivalent dominance on grass as someone on clay would be more of an outlier but of course this does not happen.

https://imgur.com/a/nTNwDOq

Sorry I still haven't learned how to put in images I used to know but for some reason whenever I do it now it doesnt work. Anyway, what I'm thinking here is the distribution with the high peak is analogous to grass and the low peak is clay. In grass everyone is closer together there is less of a level gap. On clay the gap between the best and worst is much bigger. Like you said the average player is not a threat and the reason is the level gap is too big. Not so on grass.

I think the reason is less important than the abstract logic but as to why I think the distributions are this way is because on clay players have more opportunity to show their superiority. There's less noise and less "randomness" and yes a lot of that has to do with less emphasis on the serve. If you're Federer and you know you are the superior player when the balls in play the more shots there are in a rally the more opportunity there is for you to show that superiority and win the point. That's why as you would probably agree Fed would rather play someone (depends on the person obv but more often than not) who's worse than him on clay rather than grass. But wait Fed's supposed to be better on grass. Well maybe not at least not in an absolute sense. It's like the pace revolution in modern basketball. If you're the better team why play slow and have fewer possessions to show your superiority. You're just increasing the odds that with the smaller sample the unlikely result (the worse player/team winning) happens.

Now it's not quite that simple obviously as in tennis it's not just once the ball is in play that matters there is also serve/return to think about and if you have an elite serve/return combo and ****ty skills in play you will want fewer shots because you want to have as many shots as possible be the shots that you are superior at. But in general the great players will be better at basically everything than their opponents so as many chances to show superiority as possible is ideal.

@NatF fixed ... kinda

 

[alexio]

Sorry I still haven't learned how to put in images I used to know but for some reason whenever I do it now it doesnt work.

try this..go to imgur-->new post-->after downloading right button and open in a new tab-->copy link/url..and here we have

 

[NonP]

‘19 AO Nadal is a good one to reference because he was actually similarly dominant until the final—69.6% of games won (and no mid-match retirement to shorten the sample) which compares decently to Dre’s 70.5% in ‘03.

How can U ignore the F when U admit immediately below that '19 Bull isn't the only one who put up great #s before running into a superior opponent? As I keep saying U really can't look at GW%s piecemeal like this, and even if we assume the draws were roughly equal before the F you're talking about a Schuttler who had downed Blake, Nalby and A-Rod in 4 each in succession. Does that not count or are these guys indeed part of the weak '03-07 era which U Feddies are adamant it wasn't?

It was a great run and given Dre’s form holding up in the F and great play before/after at the AO coupled with the eye-test affirming his sturdiness, a deserving win. But it’s just hard to assess the true extent of its greatness given the lack of worthy challengers to test its staying power (especially since the talented-but-very-beatable Escude pushed Dre to 4 and was up a break late in the 4th).

Pistol was pushed to 5 by Hrbaty - who, BTW, was something of a GOAT killer like Ferreira - and Costa in '97 before finding his A game and winning the whole shebang. Ditto Marat vs. Pozzi and Grosjean (hey the name ring a bell?) at the '00 USO, Fred vs. unseeded Haas (and a tough 4-setter vs. Davy) at the '06 AO and for that matter '09 RG (plus vs. Delpo but that's more understandable), Bull vs. Haase and Petzschner at '10 Wimby, etc. Don't mean a thang if U can bring your best to the money rounds.

PS ‘19 Nadal ain’t the only notable example of an older player wrecking the field before hitting a wall once the competition ramps up, ‘15 USO Fed was 68% going into the final with only two breaks conceded (72% if you exclude the Isner match—almost no one notches high gw%’s against bots like that, and Fed won with aplomb anyway), ‘16 AO Fed was at 67.4% pre-Novak, etc.

even Djoko, a player known for lulls, had some great statistical runs that crashed and burned (in his broader prime no less), on the dominance-stingy grass in ‘12 he turned in 67% of games won before meeting Fed…suppose we swap Fed and Murray with Youz and Kohli, what happens? Possible he wins with the loss of only one set, and considering this was a prime Novak at a tournament he won 7 times IRL we’d probably give him the benefit of the doubt and call it an ATG run. How about his 70.4% in the lead-up to the ‘12 US Open final, with matches against Delpo and Ferrer? Sure the windy final throws a wrench into things, but even on a normal day Murray could plausibly brings those %’s down to the mid-to-high 60’s with a good showing. We can go on and on.

I've already said '12 Djoker quite possibly wins Wimby with a more favorable draw so you're just preaching to the Infallible One. I'm just saying, U can't dismiss Dre's '03 AO run so easily when he's the only one of the OE who has posted 70+% and 55+% in GW% and RGW% at a HC major. Maybe '19 Bull or those guys in their nearly successful runs match those eye-popping #s given the same draw, but I doubt it.

Edit: '13 Djoko at the USO is another good one, probably his '19 AO equivalent. 94/127 (74.0%) entering the Semi's, 118/166 entering the final (67.0%) after the dogfight with Stan cratered his #'s....capped off by a horrific outing against Rafa where he played his most error-prone GS final. '12-'14 Djoko has tons of these, also a s/o to '19 Djoko for adding another to the collection (69.0% heading into the RG Semi against Domi), granted it's on clay which blunts its' significance a tad.

Novak has yet to top 65% at RG and even that 64.9% in '16 came with a gimme draw of his own. He ain't touching 70% on terre battue no matter what. There's a reason why, barring the '77 USO on green clay (admittedly a great W for Vilas) and iffy ones like '73 and 77 RG, Borg, Lendl and Nadal are the only ones who have cracked the historic 70% ceiling at any major. ('93 Bruguera also joins 'em with a less formidable opponent in the F, but then we wouldn't have had the greatest CC match of the OE.)

@NonP

Curious what your thoughts are on my nonsense here in this thread

U were right to conclude comparing form/skill/whatever on different surfaces is a mug's game. Again it's no coincidence that all Slam runs of the OE where the champ won 70% or more of their games came on clay - all on the red variety if U exclude Vilas' '77 USO - and that's cuz U tend to win less when you're playing with less margin for error.

And we all know what works best on each surface: a great 1-2 punch, with at least an acceptable RoS, beats everything else on grass while U rely more on spin and defense on clay, with winning HC tennis somewhere in between (granted closer to the former). Makes zero sense to say there's a single skill set that works best everywhere.

That's why I suggest judging in terms of historical rivals. And by that infallible standard '84 Mac outshines everyone else. Again it doesn't necessarily means he'd get the better of Connors, Borg, Lendl, Becker, Sampras, Agassi and the (fake) Big 3 in that hypothetical series, but nobody has dominated his peers on all surfaces to the same extent and that's why I say Mac remains one of the GOATs even though he doesn't quite have the hardware to prove it.

 

[TheFifthSet]

How can U ignore the F when U admit immediately below that '19 Bull isn't the only one who put up great #s before running into a superior opponent? As I keep saying U really can't look at GW%s piecemeal like this, and even if we assume the draws were roughly equal before the F you're talking about a Schuttler who had downed Blake, Nalby and A-Rod in 4 each in succession. Does that not count or are these guys indeed part of the weak '03-07 era which U Feddies are adamant it wasn't?

Not ignoring it, it’s just tough to treat their #’s as like-for-like considering the disparity in opponent quality in the final. Swap Novak for Rainer, and what happens? I think it’s fair to assume it’s odds-on Rafa’s %’s don’t budge much, if at all, though can’t put it past Rainer entirely to put up a better showing.

Schutt’s had an awesome tourney, Nalby and Blake were pretty good wins but Rod was close to done-for after that 5-hour epic with El Aynaoui, more or less stated he was a spent force and arrived on to court with a bandaged wrist, taking an MTO early in the match.

Pistol was pushed to 5 by Hrbaty - who, BTW, was something of a GOAT killer like Ferreira - and Costa in '97 before finding his A game and winning the whole shebang. Ditto Marat vs. Pozzi and Grosjean (hey the name ring a bell?) at the '00 USO, Fred vs. unseeded Haas (and a tough 4-setter vs. Davy) at the '06 AO and for that matter '09 RG (plus vs. Delpo but that's more understandable), Bull vs. Haase and Petzschner at '10 Wimby, etc. Don't mean a thang if U can bring your best to the money rounds.

Which is all fine but again I’m not even disputing Agassi’s run was great - just that we’re not in the most optimal position to judge how great. Those are the perils of running through an underwhelming draw featuring players that don’t pose significant match-up problems. These players are generally R2-R4 or R3-QF caliber players rather than “money round” players — yes form matters more than name in these evaluations but neither Grosjean nor Ferreira were (save for Wayne’s turning-back-the-clock against JCF) terribly impressive leading up to their match with Agassi, Schuttler was a legit goodie and gets the requisite credit.

I’ve talked about this before and it bears repeating: there’s some survivorship bias being shown here, which is why I bothered to pore over the litany of other statistically similar runs that were dampened by the emergence of superior opposition. No credible reason to think campaigns like ‘13 Djoker’s/‘15 Fed’s at the US Open or Nadal’s at the AO in ‘19 end any differently than Agassi’s if they were matched up with a Schuttler-caliber player going through a purple patch, a point which undermines the importance of the stats we’re talking about.

Would Agassi have stayed the course if he didn’t receive a cushy draw? Very possible — maybe Escude was to ‘03 Agassi as Simon was to ‘16 Djoker — but I’ll stick to my agnosticism.

I've already said '12 Djoker quite possibly wins Wimby with a more favorable draw so you're just preaching to the Infallible One.

Lolz, too often we talk past each other. I’m not talking about winning, as it’s a given prime Djoker could be a contender even in a strong field, much less if he were in a position to vulture. I’m entertaining the distinct possibility that this Djoker would have ended ‘12 Wimby with historic grass #’s if we replaced Fed/Muzzah (the no-questions-asked best GC’ers of that year) with mid-tier players like Youz, Kohli or Cilic (unless we’re talking a 2014 USO Cilic). All of a sudden, in that scenario, a solid run by a guy that had yet to fully round out his GC game gets vaulted to one of the best Wimby wins of all time, by the metrics.

I'm just saying, U can't dismiss Dre's '03 AO run so easily when he's the only one of the OE who has posted 70+% and 55+% in GW% and RGW% at a HC major. Maybe '19 Bull or those guys in their nearly successful runs match those eye-popping #s given the same draw, but I doubt it.

It was great, and certainly hard to expect a whole lot better than what he came up with given the circumstances.

Novak has yet to top 65% at RG and even that 64.9% in '16 was with a gimme draw of his own. He ain't touching 70% on terre battue no matter what. There's a reason why, barring the '77 USO on green clay (admittedly a great W for Vilas) and iffy ones like '73 and 77 RG, Borg, Lendl and Nadal are the only ones who have cracked the historic 70% ceiling at any major. ('93 Bruguera also joins 'em with a less formidable opponent in the F, but then we wouldn't have had the greatest CC match of the OE.)

He was at 69% thru 5 rounds of ‘19 before running into serious clay-court competition, but the point is not to pit Djokovic with other first-order CC’ers like Nadal, Lendl and Borg, all of whom he trails historically, it’s to show that we often can’t make out as much as we think we can with regards to form until said form is tested.

 

[NonP]

Not ignoring it, it’s just tough to treat their #’s as like-for-like considering the disparity in opponent quality in the final. Swap Novak for Rainer, and what happens? I think it’s fair to assume it’s odds-on Rafa’s %’s don’t budge much, if at all, though can’t put it past Rainer entirely to put up a better showing.

Schutt’s had an awesome tourney, Nalby and Blake were pretty good wins but Rod was close to done-for after that 5-hour epic with El Aynaoui, more or less stated he was a spent force and arrived on to court with a bandaged wrist, taking an MTO early in the match.

Not moi. I wasn't paying close attention to the #s at the time - I don't do AO predictions, as U may know - but I saw what I saw and never once did I feel Djoker was in serious trouble vs. this Bull. For Rafa to maintain his 68% (102/150) he'd need to allow Rainer no more than 6-7 games tops. To give U an idea of what a rare feat that would be:

Agassi matched the most-lopsided victory ever at the Australian Open. By losing only five games, he tied the mark last done in 1926 when John Hawkes defeated Jim Willard 6-1, 6-3, 6-1.

Overall, it was the most-lopsided Grand Slam men's final since John McEnroe lost just four games to Jimmy Connors at Wimbledon in 1984.

And just think about it for a sec. This Bull could manage all of 8 games vs. Djoker... and yet he'd allow this Schuttler even less? That would mean, considering their similar playing styles, Novak would be threatening to triple-bagel Rainer.

So let's see how the German did in the actual F (these are much better than the AO channel's own highlights which are all Agassi):

Nice volleys by both! Anyhoo this Schuttler ain't scraping only 2 games a set vs. '19 Bull. Maybe Rafa still finishes him off in straights cuz TA does tell us Rainer made 34 UFEs that day, but U know that's cuz of how pressed he was by Dre's ridiculous positioning at or inside the baseline.

That's why I keep insisting you've gotta look at the whole run/season when you're comparing GW%s. Of course it's possible a Slam champ is virtually gifted the trophy and a single worthy opponent would've made a big difference, but such instances are almost nonexistent and even what seem to be clear cases like Dre's '03 AO or Bull's '17 USO aren't so obvious once U take a closer look.

Which is all fine but again I’m not even disputing Agassi’s run was great - just that we’re not in the most optimal position to judge how great. Those are the perils of running through an underwhelming draw featuring players that don’t pose significant match-up problems. These players are generally R2-R4 or R3-QF caliber players rather than “money round” players — yes form matters more than name in these evaluations but neither Grosjean nor Ferreira were (save for Wayne’s turning-back-the-clock against JCF) terribly impressive leading up to their match with Agassi, Schuttler was a legit goodie and gets the requisite credit.

I’ve talked about this before and it bears repeating: there’s some survivorship bias being shown here, which is why I bothered to pore over the litany of other statistically similar runs that were dampened by the emergence of superior opposition. No credible reason to think campaigns like ‘13 Djoker’s/‘15 Fed’s at the US Open or Nadal’s at the AO in ‘19 end any differently than Agassi’s if they were matched up with a Schuttler-caliber player going through a purple patch, a point which undermines the importance of the stats we’re talking about.

Would Agassi have stayed the course if he didn’t receive a cushy draw? Very possible — maybe Escude was to ‘03 Agassi as Simon was to ‘16 Djoker — but I’ll stick to my agnosticism.

The survivorship bias is there cuz these are the ones who ultimately emerged victorious. Again it's easy to stop at the SF or whatever and say the guy's #s were misleading, but we know whether he was an actual paper tiger or not.

And even if we gave '19 Bull, say, a 7-5, 6-4, 7-5 W in the F he'd still be left with 65.9% (120/182) of GW for the tourney, well below Dre's 71.6%. That's why I say that Dre or Lendl at '86 RG (71.1%) was no joke. Yes, the lackluster draw helped, but U don't win a truly rarefied 70+% of games by pure luck unless we're talking big absences a la some of the early FOs.

Lolz, too often we talk past each other. I’m not talking about winning, as it’s a given prime Djoker could be a contender even in a strong field, much less if he were in a position to vulture. I’m entertaining the distinct possibility that this Djoker would have ended ‘12 Wimby with historic grass #’s if we replaced Fed/Muzzah (the no-questions-asked best GC’ers of that year) with mid-tier players like Youz, Kohli or Cilic (unless we’re talking a 2014 USO Cilic). All of a sudden, in that scenario, a solid run by a guy that had yet to fully round out his GC game gets vaulted to one of the best Wimby wins of all time, by the metrics.

Other than '73 I'm aware of literally no Wimby (OE) where the champ didn't face at least one worthy opponent. (In fact the only OE tourney that's boasted a more consistently strong field is the USO.) Even at this year's edition it took a returning masterclass from Djoker to fend off Kyrgios of all people serving like a stud, and that's not counting Novak's escape vs. Sinner. So this is a hypothetical possibility, not a very plausible one.

He was at 69% thru 5 rounds of ‘19 before running into serious clay-court competition, but the point is not to pit Djokovic with other first-order CC’ers like Nadal, Lendl and Borg, all of whom he trails historically, it’s to show that we often can’t make out as much as we think we can with regards to form until said form is tested.

Except he's never come close to those guys in either seasonal or FO GW% while Dre had already put together 2 dominant AO runs. Like I said, look at the forest, not the trees.

 

[TheFifthSet]

I think it's evident that we approach these topics from different perspectives so I'll give it another go knowing that we're both unlikely to budge much, since I enjoy these non-hostile jousts.

Not moi. I wasn't paying close attention to the #s at the time - I don't do AO predictions, as U may know - but I saw what I saw and never once did I feel Djoker was in serious trouble vs. this Bull. For Rafa to maintain his 68% (102/150) he'd need to allow Rainer no more than 6-7 games tops. To give U an idea of what a rare feat that would be:

Your numbers are way off. Nadal was 110/158 heading into the final, 69.6%, which is not too far off from Agassi's (103/146) 70.5% at the same stage. The difference is the equivalent of an extra 7-5 set. Also, since we're getting this granular it's worth mentioning that the larger divisor means Nadal could've been equal to Dre in %'s yet still been behind if he posted an identical scoreline. Not a big sticking point for me but that's an extra 0.1-0.2% skew.


Even if he wins 6-4, 6-4, 6-4 he ends the tourney 128/188 (68.0%). If it's as lopsided as the actual final, he's in Agassi territory, but with no mid-match retirement (bigger samples are always nicer), and that's without losing a set or being seriously threatened (unlike Dre, against Escude**) I think that at least balances things out, if not swings it in Nadal's favour. At 6-3, 6-3, 6-2 he'd break 70% and some of us would be none the wiser about this guy being blown to pieces against a player like '19 Djokovic, thinking he'd stand a decent chance (maybe not you, but even I thought it would be a somewhat tight 4-setter).


+ we both know if you have two players with similar gw%'s on non-clay, a more serve-heavy split is usually a slightly better predictor of future form and Nadal got broken only twice going into the F compared to Dre's 8 times. All of which is to say that I believe I have good reason for maintaining that these stats on their own can’t really support the far-reaching claims we use them to make.

Necessary disclaimer, in case it was in doubt: no, I don't think Nadal was in better form than Agassi was in '03, nor do I believe he would have won in a direct match-up…which is yet more to my point.

**Rounds 2/3 against Lee and Escude offer another germane snapshot. Here Dre is at 71% across two matches, but he was seriously threatened in one. If he were to throw up routine 6-3, 6-2, 6-3’s his %’s would be lower (69.2%), yet there’d be no doubt that it’d be a more convincing string of matches (at least on the face of it). Seems a tad convenient to both hand-wave his struggles against Escude while simultaneously placing this much of an emphasis on tournament-wide GW %’s, which are invariably boosted by early round matches/duels against overmatched counterparts.

The survivorship bias is there cuz these are the ones who ultimately emerged victorious. Again it's easy to stop at the SF or whatever and say the guy's #s were misleading, but we know whether he was an actual paper tiger or not.

But that's my point and exactly why I invoke the dearth of competition here, contrasting it wit GS events where the top guys bullied their way through a series of non-challengers before eventually falling to a worthy foe (which wasn’t present in ‘03 for Andre). I don't believe Dre had that worthy adversary to put his feet to the fire so it's difficult for me to call it an ATG run in good faith.

There are even examples of Agassi himself running up his %'s before meeting his demise against his 1st/2nd dangerous opponent, which invites more skepticism. To wit:

1995 RG: 73/99 games won (73.8%) going into the QF's, loses tamely in straights to Kafelnikov...with a busted hip that was injured earlier in the event, yes, but if we're going down that rabbit hole then we have to puncture the heart of some of Dre's best AO wins, which were marred by injury to opponents (2000 + 2001 AO SF) or fatigue/mental walkabouts (1995 AO F).
1995 Wimby: 95/142 games won (66.9%) going into the SF (on grass no less), loses a big lead to Becker who by comparison wasn't even at 60% games won for the event.

That's 9 matches spanning consecutive GS events where he was at a combined 70% before running into two buzzsaws, not so coincidentally the first two that had punchers chances to beat him in that form.

Agassi in great form, on his best court vs 7 opponents against whom he’s 30-2 combined on HC makes for a perfect set of conditions to stat-pad. @Kralingen was right on with his initial point, though I’m sure even he’d acknowledge that Dre was still a tough customer.

And even if we gave '19 Bull, say, a 7-5, 6-4, 7-5 W in the F he'd still be left with 65.9% (120/182) of GW for the tourney, well below Dre's 71.6%. That's why I say that Dre or Lendl at '86 RG (71.1%) was no joke. Yes, the lackluster draw helped, but U don't win a truly rarefied 70+% of games by pure luck unless we're talking big absences a la some of the early FOs.

I don't think they won the tournament by luck as I suspect that even a series of reasonably strong opponents wouldn't have been enough to beat either. But 70%? Yes that's due in part to luck. 60-65% (high end of that in Lendl's case) would have been more appropriate against a tough draw.

Honestly think that '03 Aggz would be evenly-matched with '00 (under 61% GW but proved his mettle against Pete and YK) and '01 (64.6%) AA in a potential match, #'s be damned...with '95 Dre the best of all.

Other than '73 I'm aware of literally no Wimby (OE) where the champ didn't face at least one worthy opponent. (In fact the only OE tourney that's boasted a more consistently strong field is the USO.) Even at this year's edition it took a returning masterclass from Djoker to fend off Kyrgios of all people serving like a stud, and that's not counting Novak's escape vs. Sinner. So this is a hypothetical possibility, not a very plausible one.

True, but it doesn't have to be plausible or likely and it's entirely hypothetical; I'm speculating about what would have happened if '12 Djokovic received a draw similar in kind to Agassi's '03 AO draw, either at W or the USO. Of course it would be an outlier, but AA’s draw in ‘03 was a big outlier too.

 

[Roddickulous1]

Not ignoring it, it’s just tough to treat their #’s as like-for-like considering the disparity in opponent quality in the final. Swap Novak for Rainer, and what happens? I think it’s fair to assume it’s odds-on Rafa’s %’s don’t budge much, if at all, though can’t put it past Rainer entirely to put up a better showing.

Schutt’s had an awesome tourney, Nalby and Blake were pretty good wins but Rod was close to done-for after that 5-hour epic with El Aynaoui, more or less stated he was a spent force and arrived on to court with a bandaged wrist, taking an MTO early in the match.




Which is all fine but again I’m not even disputing Agassi’s run was great - just that we’re not in the most optimal position to judge how great. Those are the perils of running through an underwhelming draw featuring players that don’t pose significant match-up problems. These players are generally R2-R4 or R3-QF caliber players rather than “money round” players — yes form matters more than name in these evaluations but neither Grosjean nor Ferreira were (save for Wayne’s turning-back-the-clock against JCF) terribly impressive leading up to their match with Agassi, Schuttler was a legit goodie and gets the requisite credit.

I’ve talked about this before and it bears repeating: there’s some survivorship bias being shown here, which is why I bothered to pore over the litany of other statistically similar runs that were dampened by the emergence of superior opposition. No credible reason to think campaigns like ‘13 Djoker’s/‘15 Fed’s at the US Open or Nadal’s at the AO in ‘19 end any differently than Agassi’s if they were matched up with a Schuttler-caliber player going through a purple patch, a point which undermines the importance of the stats we’re talking about.

Would Agassi have stayed the course if he didn’t receive a cushy draw? Very possible — maybe Escude was to ‘03 Agassi as Simon was to ‘16 Djoker — but I’ll stick to my agnosticism.



Lolz, too often we talk past each other. I’m not talking about winning, as it’s a given prime Djoker could be a contender even in a strong field, much less if he were in a position to vulture. I’m entertaining the distinct possibility that this Djoker would have ended ‘12 Wimby with historic grass #’s if we replaced Fed/Muzzah (the no-questions-asked best GC’ers of that year) with mid-tier players like Youz, Kohli or Cilic (unless we’re talking a 2014 USO Cilic). All of a sudden, in that scenario, a solid run by a guy that had yet to fully round out his GC game gets vaulted to one of the best Wimby wins of all time, by the metrics.



It was great, and certainly hard to expect a whole lot better than what he came up with given the circumstances.


He was at 69% thru 5 rounds of ‘19 before running into serious clay-court competition, but the point is not to pit Djokovic with other first-order CC’ers like Nadal, Lendl and Borg, all of whom he trails historically, it’s to show that we often can’t make out as much as we think we can with regards to form until said form is tested.

Absolutely agree with your point in large.

Would just like to point out that Nalby was absolutely terrible in that Schuettler match. Not sure if it was fatigue from the Fed 5 setter in the previous round or maybe the heat but he played a poor match. I mean there's no way a well playing Nalby loses 12 out of 13 games the way he did in the last 2 sets.

Schuettler also benefited from Safin withdrawing with a wrist injury which gave him a walkover. Credit to him for reaching the final but he had a lot of luck his way that tournament.

 

[initialize]

Didn’t read the whole thread but the poll results suggest this is a case where people think more wins at a certain slam = higher peak there.

Fed very clearly has the higher peak there and arguably every other slam as well

 

[NonP]

Your numbers are way off. Nadal was 110/158 heading into the final, 69.6%, which is not too far off from Agassi's (103/146) 70.5% at the same stage. The difference is the equivalent of an extra 7-5 set. Also, since we're getting this granular it's worth mentioning that the larger divisor means Nadal could've been equal to Dre in %'s yet still been behind if he posted an identical scoreline. Not a big sticking point for me but that's an extra 0.1-0.2% skew.


Even if he wins 6-4, 6-4, 6-4 he ends the tourney 128/188 (68.0%). If it's as lopsided as the actual final, he's in Agassi territory, but with no mid-match retirement (bigger samples are always nicer), and that's without losing a set or being seriously threatened (unlike Dre, against Escude**) I think that at least balances things out, if not swings it in Nadal's favour. At 6-3, 6-3, 6-2 he'd break 70% and some of us would be none the wiser about this guy being blown to pieces against a player like '19 Djokovic, thinking he'd stand a decent chance (maybe not you, but even I thought it would be a somewhat tight 4-setter).

Looks like I subtracted Bull's 8 GW twice, but even so we're talking a 4.6% difference. And even if we assume he allows Schuttler or whomever the same # of 5 games we're still looking at 70.7% (128/181), about one point below Dre's 71.6%. How are my #s "way off" if Bull still loses the GW% race after having everything go right for him?

Also you're making way too much out of Coria's mid-match retirement. This is a guy who never advanced beyond the 4th round in his AO career, flamed out of IW and Miami in 3R and 4R respectively that year, and was unseeded to boot. If anything his retirement hurt Dre's overall GW% cuz the eventual champ couldn't put together another half match of emphatic dominance.

+ we both know if you have two players with similar gw%'s on non-clay, a more serve-heavy split is usually a slightly better predictor of future form and Nadal got broken only twice going into the F compared to Dre's 8 times. All of which is to say that I believe I have good reason for maintaining that these stats on their own can’t really support the far-reaching claims we use them to make.

That's actually backwards. For most top players SGW% changes little from season to season and it's in RGW% that they make or break the top grade. I see that Bull held serve 90.6% of the time at the HC majors in '17 vs. Dre's 84.7% in '03, but their seasonal %s on hard narrow down to 90.0% vs. 85.8% so the Slam %s actually sell Dre's form somewhat short.

Oh yeah and their seasonal RGW%s on HC are 28.3% vs. a whopping 36.3% in Dre's favor, or 30.4% vs. an even more stupendous 45.3% if we look at only the AO/USO. Doesn't look like Bull's SGW% Down Under is such a superior "predictor of future form" vs. Dre's now, does it?

**Rounds 2/3 against Lee and Escude offer another germane snapshot. Here Dre is at 71% across two matches, but he was seriously threatened in one. If he were to throw up routine 6-3, 6-2, 6-3’s his %’s would be lower (69.2%), yet there’d be no doubt that it’d be a more convincing string of matches (at least on the face of it). Seems a tad convenient to both hand-wave his struggles against Escude while simultaneously placing this much of an emphasis on tournament-wide GW %’s, which are invariably boosted by early round matches/duels against overmatched counterparts.

See above. It's just not helpful to focus on a handful of matches. Everyone has had uncharacteristic struggles even in his dominant runs/seasons, which is why U need to look at the big picture.

1995 RG: 73/99 games won (73.8%) going into the QF's, loses tamely in straights to Kafelnikov...with a busted hip that was injured earlier in the event, yes, but if we're going down that rabbit hole then we have to puncture the heart of some of Dre's best AO wins, which were marred by injury to opponents (2000 + 2001 AO SF) or fatigue/mental walkabouts (1995 AO F).

The injury makes this comparison rather moot, don't ya think? And I'm pretty sure Dre didn't consider Kafelnikov a "buzzsaw" anywhere, LOL.

Besides he wasn't beating Muster at '95 RG anyway. Could've been a 5-set classic, but Thomas was on a mission that year and wouldn't have let his better rival steal this one.

1995 Wimby: 95/142 games won (66.9%) going into the SF (on grass no less), loses a big lead to Becker who by comparison wasn't even at 60% games won for the event.

I've already pointed out that '95 Dre is only one of the 4 guys who won a rarefied 65% on grass in the OE (though U gotta round up 4 him) so you're again preaching to the Wise One. But that SF is considered one of Boris' clutchest performances and GW% is least indicative of form on this surface due to the 1-2 punch factor. Doesn't really tell us much about Dre's '03 AO outing.

I don't think they won the tournament by luck as I suspect that even a series of reasonably strong opponents wouldn't have been enough to beat either. But 70%? Yes that's due in part to luck. 60-65% (high end of that in Lendl's case) would have been more appropriate against a tough draw.

Honestly think that '03 Aggz would be evenly-matched with '00 (under 61% GW but proved his mettle against Pete and YK) and '01 (64.6%) AA in a potential match, #'s be damned...with '95 Dre the best of all.

Of course it's "due in part to luck"! There's a reason why no OE Slam champ but Borg and Nadal has won 70% of games in his run - again barring Vilas' '77 USO - by a comfortable enough margin to render any talk of a weak draw superfluous. I'm just saying, U still don't crack that uber-rare 70% without kicking all sorts of ass. Otherwise your tourney GW% would be more in the 60-65% range a la Bull's at the '17 USO (65.9%). His 67.0% at the '19 AO is a pretty extreme anomaly, and even that was closer to 65% than to the historic 70%.

No argument on your AO Dre matchups. '95 1st and '00/01/03 on par sounds about right. He might well have made it 4 in a row sans that wrist injury on the eve of the '02 edition, but luck works the other way, 2.

True, but it doesn't have to be plausible or likely and it's entirely hypothetical; I'm speculating about what would have happened if '12 Djokovic received a draw similar in kind to Agassi's '03 AO draw, either at W or the USO. Of course it would be an outlier, but AA’s draw in ‘03 was a big outlier too.

To moi hypos have to be at least somewhat plausible, otherwise they're idle chatter. And the fact that these "weak draws" have been so vanishingly rare at Wimby and the USO is indeed relevant if we're talking about substituting one opponent.

Also Novak at the '12 USO (66.5%) had to knock out Stan, Delpo and Ferru in succession before facing Muzz in the F. Even if you dismiss that 4th-rounder due to Stan's 'pre-'13 form/retirement that ain't a gimme draw by any means. Not so comparable to Bull's '19 AO run, especially cuz the '12 USO F went the distance unlike the '19 beatdown. I know which of these two I'd back to win another HC major with a less formidable final opponent.

 

[TheFifthSet]

Looks like I subtracted Bull's 8 GW twice, but even so we're talking a 4.6% difference. And even if we assume he allows Schuttler or whomever the same # of 5 games we're still looking at 70.7% (128/181), about one point below Dre's 71.6%. How are my #s "way off" if Bull still loses the GW% race after having everything go right for him?

Way off because the correction cuts Dre’s pre-final lead from 2.5% to 0.9%. When we’re quibbling over a couple of percentage points, how can that not make a big difference?

My point about Rafa possibly beating Schuttler to the loss of 5 games is that it even being a not-at-all-outlandish possibility (surely if you simulate that match 25 times, it doubtless happens on a few occasions) demonstrates why it’s not an airtight argument. Nadal shouldn’t be a hypothetical “blowout against a top 30 player” away from having his merely decent form catapulted to historic cuz he crossed that 70% threshold. Whether he actually matches Agassi to the letter is immaterial, especially since (for the umpteenth time LOL) I very much don’t think ‘19 Rafa was close to as good as ‘03 Dre…which only adds salience to my case that the #’s are obscuring the matter.


I also don’t think it’s equitable to scoff at things being tinkered for Nadal to entertain this exercise when everything actually DID go right for Agassi; the draw opened up and he played 7 matches against a group he had a 30-2 H2H with on HC. Even the most accomplished player on HC, Ferreira, was famously inept against Dre, having lost 21 of 22 sets coming into the match, all bar one match occurring outdoors. Doesn’t mean Dre wouldn’t have been pre-tourney fave all the same, but these things are significant.

Also you're making way too much out of Coria's mid-match retirement. This is a guy who never advanced beyond the 4th round in his AO career, flamed out of IW and Miami in 3R and 4R respectively that year, and was unseeded to boot. If anything his retirement hurt Dre's overall GW% cuz the eventual champ couldn't put together another half match of emphatic dominance.

Very possible…or we see regression to the mean and Coria soldiers on before retiring at something like 6-1 6-4 4-2…which to our feeble eyes wouldn’t register as changing much about the bottom line…except it would draw Agassi level with ‘19 Nadal in gw% before the final. When a mere 12 possibly-very-good-but-statistically-unspectacular games can break the house of cards, it’s not a stable house.

See above. It's just not helpful to focus on a handful of matches. Everyone has had uncharacteristic struggles even in his dominant runs/seasons, which is why U need to look at the big picture

In these discussions I look at the big picture by weighing on-paper dominance (#’s and the like) against observed quality of play and other intangibles, main one being whether the player was tested against game-bred comp or would have held up against such comp.

I believe Agassi would have. However, the fact that he didn’t get the chance to means him standing alone in OE individual slam gw% on non-clay loses its shine. Especially since other players in non-historic forms could have plausibly stood-in and either replicated or come close to replicating those #’s….I’m not ripping on what I saw from Dre, I’m agreeing with @Kralingen ’s implied point that we can’t take such gaudy numbers at face value.

And you missed my original point here. I’m saying that these two highlighted matches against Lee and Escude would look brutally dominant if viewed through the prism of gw%…when in fact few would argue that they’d be far less dominant than two 6-3, 6-2, 6-3 scorelines in succession, despite the latter trailing by that metric (69.2% - 71%). Its a very…***gasp*** bean-count-y way of assessing tennis matches (please don’t hate me D: ).

The injury makes this comparison rather moot, don't ya think? And I'm pretty sure Dre didn't consider Kafelnikov a "buzzsaw" anywhere, LOL.

Besides he wasn't beating Muster at '95 RG anyway. Could've been a 5-set classic, but Thomas was on a mission that year and wouldn't have let his better rival steal this one.

Right, but firstly if we’re giving Dre the benefit of the doubt in ‘03 based partially on established AO cred, those three matches aren’t kind to him. AA was two points from defeat in ‘00 against a Pete that got injured late in the match and outright admitted he would have defaulted the final. ‘01 Patty punched himself out and the match was anyone’s guess after the third. ‘95 Pete was eggzo from all the five-setters, the bad news about his coach and yet Dre was still a 2011 USO Djoko return away from going down 2 sets to 1.

(Something I’ve never disclosed: I always felt your boy wasn’t really that far behind Dre in peak level at the AO within the confines of the match-up. Against the field Dre wins out, but I’m pretty bullheaded in my belief that Pete’s O when firing on all cylinders could at least wrestle Agassi to a draw on ANY type of HC.)

Secondly, even that 74% figure pre-injury says a lot when no one thinks Dre was much more than third-tier (all time) at his peak on the dirt.

U still don't crack that uber-rare 70% without kicking all sorts of ass.

Absolutely, but I didn’t say anything to the contrary. Agassi did about as well as he could have reasonably been expected to do with what he had lined up for him.

To moi hypos have to be at least somewhat plausible, otherwise they're idle chatter. And the fact that these "weak draws" have been so vanishingly rare at Wimby and the USO is indeed relevant if we're talking about substituting one opponent.

But the entire objective here is not to examine whether these scenarios are likely, it’s to try to make sure this variable-ridden comparison is at least somewhat fair in theory. Otherwise, what good are these leaderboards if they’re barely even crude proxies for how great the players on them were? The topic of opponent quality features ubiquitously in these convos and always will.

No argument on your AO Dre matchups. '95 1st and '00/01/03 on par sounds about right.

Then we’re sorta on the same page and the chief difference is framing?

If we agree Dre’s form in ‘00 (60.8%) is at least roughly on par with his form in ‘03 (71.6%), how authoritative are these figures when a 10.8% difference can be made negligible by what our eyes saw and surrounding context revealed? It’s not that Agassi couldn’t have been or wasn’t great. It’s that these numbers, amassed against lesser players, depict him as being close to unbeatable if they’re assigned the importance you seem to place on them. The fact that ‘00 and ‘03 are close to us regardless of the yawning statistical chasm separating them speaks volumes.

As always, I’m phone-posting before bedtime so I’ll get to the rest later (as well as last weeks post that I left you hanging on). Serious self-loathing kicks in when I notice myself sounding this repetitive, best I call it a night LOL. Toodles.

 

[NonP]

Way off because the correction cuts Dre’s pre-final lead from 2.5% to 0.9%. When we’re quibbling over a couple of percentage points, how can that not make a big difference?

My point about Rafa possibly beating Schuttler to the loss of 5 games is that it even being a not-at-all-outlandish possibility (surely if you simulate that match 25 times, it doubtless happens on a few occasions) demonstrates why it’s not an airtight argument. Nadal shouldn’t be a hypothetical “blowout against a top 30 player” away from having his merely decent form catapulted to historic cuz he crossed that 70% threshold. Whether he actually matches Agassi to the letter is immaterial, especially since (for the umpteenth time LOL) I very much don’t think ‘19 Rafa was close to as good as ‘03 Dre…which only adds salience to my case that the #’s are obscuring the matter.


I also don’t think it’s equitable to scoff at things being tinkered for Nadal to entertain this exercise when everything actually DID go right for Agassi; the draw opened up and he played 7 matches against a group he had a 30-2 H2H with on HC. Even the most accomplished player on HC, Ferreira, was famously inept against Dre, having lost 21 of 22 sets coming into the match, all bar one match occurring outdoors. Doesn’t mean Dre wouldn’t have been pre-tourney fave all the same, but these things are significant.

Again I just don't see the point of this piecemeal approach when we know for a fact that this or that runner-up was a paper tiger after all. So '03 Dre's advantage over Bull's decreases by all of 1.1% when U correct the mistake I made earlier, which is hardly "significant." A 4.6% difference OTOH is still a BFD.

And of course Nadal allowing Schuttler only 5 games is a possibility. It's just a rather remote one from anybody who gets his ass violated so thoroughly by a great but not transcendent Djoker. Again even if we assume a 7-5, 6-4, 7-5 W for Rafa we'd be looking at an overall 67.7% (130/192), still well below Dre's 71.6%. I can see Novak laying a more brutal beatdown on Rainer, but not this mauled Bull.

Also I don't count matchup advantages as luck. That's just being better or more complete than your opponents. I mean Davy was crap vs. Fed too, but he's still a tough opponent for most other guys.

Very possible…or we see regression to the mean and Coria soldiers on before retiring at something like 6-1 6-4 4-2…which to our feeble eyes wouldn’t register as changing much about the bottom line…except it would draw Agassi level with ‘19 Nadal in gw% before the final. When a mere 12 possibly-very-good-but-statistically-unspectacular games can break the house of cards, it’s not a stable house.

But this works the other way, 2. The '19 AO was just Berdych's 2nd event after missing half of '18 due to a back injury and of course he'd retire that very season. How can you tell Bull didn't benefit from bageling and breaksticking that Tomas at least as much as Dre from Coria's early retirement?

You can quibble about draws like this all day long, which is why it's best to work with what we do have.

In these discussions I look at the big picture by weighing on-paper dominance (#’s and the like) against observed quality of play and other intangibles, main one being whether the player was tested against game-bred comp or would have held up against such comp.

I believe Agassi would have. However, the fact that he didn’t get the chance to means him standing alone in OE individual slam gw% on non-clay loses its shine. Especially since other players in non-historic forms could have plausibly stood-in and either replicated or come close to replicating those #’s….I’m not ripping on what I saw from Dre, I’m agreeing with @Kralingen ’s implied point that we can’t take such gaudy numbers at face value.

And you missed my original point here. I’m saying that these two highlighted matches against Lee and Escude would look brutally dominant if viewed through the prism of gw%…when in fact few would argue that they’d be far less dominant than two 6-3, 6-2, 6-3 scorelines in succession, despite the latter trailing by that metric (69.2% - 71%). Its a very…***gasp*** bean-count-y way of assessing tennis matches (please don’t hate me D: ).

And you're not getting my point, either. I'm not saying Dre's '03 AO run gets automatic props simply cuz he's the only Slammer who won over 70% outside RG, but rather that nobody dominates a full field like that unless he's in serious good form. To me those early rounders with journeymen are irrelevant in light of that bigger picture. Things usually even out and I don't care whether Dre or another champ plays a loose set/game here and there if he can tear thru his draw at a historic clip.

Right, but firstly if we’re giving Dre the benefit of the doubt in ‘03 based partially on established AO cred, those three matches aren’t kind to him. AA was two points from defeat in ‘00 against a Pete that got injured late in the match and outright admitted he would have defaulted the final. ‘01 Patty punched himself out and the match was anyone’s guess after the third. ‘95 Pete was eggzo from all the five-setters, the bad news about his coach and yet Dre was still a 2011 USO Djoko return away from going down 2 sets to 1.

(Something I’ve never disclosed: I always felt your boy wasn’t really that far behind Dre in peak level at the AO within the confines of the match-up. Against the field Dre wins out, but I’m pretty bullheaded in my belief that Pete’s O when firing on all cylinders could at least wrestle Agassi to a draw on ANY type of HC.)

Secondly, even that 74% figure pre-injury says a lot when no one thinks Dre was much more than third-tier (all time) at his peak on the dirt.

See above. You're actually putting more stock in those early-round GW%s than I am. Barring a few notable examples (U know which one I'm talking about) anything before the QF is usually too early to tell us much about upcoming showdowns vs. tougher opponents.

Also Dre's "low" GW% at the '00 AO wasn't just due to that 5-setter w/Pistol serving at full throttle, but also the classic slugfest vs. Kafelnikov, another tight 4-setter vs. Scud in 4R and a potentially tricky QF vs. Arazi the Magician (damn I miss the guy). 60.8% vs. that opposition arguably more than makes up for the 10% gap vs. the OE high of 71.6% in '03. And Rafter was a stud in '97-01, period, save a brief injury-forced hiatus in '99.

As for the peak-level comparison, I actually think Pete's peak > Dre's on any type of HC. But much like with Djoker the AO's early timing would work to Dre's advantage. Put another way, in a 10-match series I could see, say, '94 or '97 (or even '95 sans the off-court drama) Pistol coming out ahead, but over a 5-yr period the %s would shift in Dre's favor. The guy, after all, could've been the only one to win 4 AOs in a row if not for his wrist injury in '02.

Then we’re sorta on the same page and the chief difference is framing?

If we agree Dre’s form in ‘00 (60.8%) is at least roughly on par with his form in ‘03 (71.6%), how authoritative are these figures when a 10.8% difference can be made negligible by what our eyes saw and surrounding context revealed? It’s not that Agassi couldn’t have been or wasn’t great. It’s that these numbers, amassed against lesser players, depict him as being close to unbeatable if they’re assigned the importance you seem to place on them. The fact that ‘00 and ‘03 are close to us regardless of the yawning statistical chasm separating them speaks volumes.

See above. I'm not judging these runs only by GW%, be it tournament or seasonal. I'm just saying U can't chalk up a historic 70% purely to a weak draw barring a depleted field a la '73 Wimby or even '77 RG. Put '00, '01 or even '95 Dre in '03 and chances are they don't get near 75%. Only Borg and Nadal have topped that superhuman ceiling and even they've done it only twice each ('78/80 and '08/17) at RG. No way Dre, Novak or anyone else approaches that on hard. Maybe '84 Mac whose '84 USO run would've come damn close with 74.3% (127/171) if you replaced the classic SF vs. Jimbo with a 5-game allowance, but I suspect Ferreira w/his big FH and top-notch passing shots would offer a little more resistance.

 

[TheFifthSet]

Again I just don't see the point of this piecemeal approach when we know for a fact that this or that runner-up was a paper tiger after all.

The point is that it's not good for a confirmed paper tiger in ‘19 Rafa to be so close in GW% before the final to a guy on an all-time great run. It's an indictment on the criteria more so than the player.

So '03 Dre's advantage over Bull's decreases by all of 1.1% when U correct the mistake I made earlier, which is hardly "significant." A 4.6% difference OTOH is still a BFD.

And of course Nadal allowing Schuttler only 5 games is a possibility. It's just a rather remote one from anybody who gets his ass violated so thoroughly by a great but not transcendent Djoker.

I was focusing on pre-final stats cuz it's nigh impossible to meaningfully capture the difference between Djoko and Rainman as opponents, so I think this additional 1.6% is indeed significant and closes the gap pretty well wrt performance against non-DjokerMan opponents (70.5-69.6--a one game difference or thereabouts, can't get closer than that can we?). But on these semantic issues we won't make much headway so let's agree to disagree on our definitions of 'significant'.

The fact that it's even a possibility is important cuz it follows that it's a possibility for a player in merely decent form (and that's not a hypothetical, we both believe '19 Nadal was in good/decent form at best) to cross the threshold. That simply shouldn't be the case if we want to hold up gw% as more than trivia over such a small spread (qualifying that cuz I think year-long gw %'s can be pretty useful).

Also I don't count matchup advantages as luck. That's just being better or more complete than your opponents. I mean Davy was crap vs. Fed too, but he's still a tough opponent for most other guys.

Agassi's success against Ferreira, in isolation, isn't lucky. What's lucky is that arguably the most threatening guy (on paper) in a very non-threatening draw happened to be a player against whom he enjoyed a pronounced match-up advantage, creating the best set of conditions to go on a stat rampage. Getting a uniquely favourable match-up when we're trying to draw conclusions about general form based on gw% is as confounding a variable as you can come across.

Think of it this way: outside of some truly bananas stuff that never happens (a 300-ranked qualie in the final), you almost could not have hand-picked a better draw than this one for Dre.

But this works the other way, 2. The '19 AO was just Berdych's 2nd event after missing half of '18 due to a back injury and of course he'd retire that very season. How can you tell Bull didn't benefit from bageling and breaksticking that Tomas at least as much as Dre from Coria's early retirement?

It doesn't work the other way tho...I'm talking about sample sizes being shortened, not comparing their opponent quality (which, if I were to do, probably favours Nadal by a hair, even pre-final...or I'd focus on the Lee match, which shot up his ##'s up a whopping 3%, from 68.6 to 71.6). We've already got tiny datasets at our disposal to derive conclusions from, so cutting off an additional 8% (min. 9 less games to win to reach the final) only leaves it more susceptible to aberrant outcomes. Something I'd forgive if the opponent quality was better (like Fed at the '04 USO, the beneficiary of a walkover but he beat 'gassi, Henman and Hewitt in succession so the smaller sample is less relevant).

You can quibble about draws like this all day long, which is why it's best to work with what we do have.

What we do have invites too many questions. For me it's like a minimum threshold of competition, similar to your 60% GW cut-off on clay courts (albeit, much more subjective). If a minimum threshold of competition isn't met I can't see it as eligible, even if I do concede the form that WAS shown could have been ATG-caliber if the threshold WAS met. '03 AO is one of the few casualties of the kind for me, where the minimum threshold isn’t met.

But even so, if you wanna call it an all-timer, I can see where you're coming fron. What's really not up for debate is what was initially said by Krali and agreed upon by me, which is what sparked the discussion in the first place: that the #'s do not (or are in no position to) accurately gauge the level with any sort of precision.

And you're not getting my point, either. I'm not saying Dre's '03 AO run gets automatic props simply cuz he's the only Slammer who won over 70% outside RG, but rather that nobody dominates a full field like that unless he's in serious good form.

A full field where most of the top seeds and dangerous floaters flop is functionally equivalent to a depleted field, in the context of this convo. Andre's not contesting matches against 127 other players, just those 7. It's not like I'm claiming he wasn't a worthy champ.

See above. You're actually putting more stock in those early-round GW%s than I am. Barring a few notable examples (U know which one I'm talking about) anything before the QF is usually too early to tell us much about upcoming showdowns vs. tougher opponents.

I'm not, I've been lampooning the method altogether. But since early round matches make up over half of the sample, it's self-defeating to tout tournament-wide %'s without being mindful of this fact.

Also Dre's "low" GW% at the '00 AO wasn't just due to that 5-setter w/Pistol serving at full throttle, but also the classic slugfest vs. Kafelnikov, another tight 4-setter vs. Scud in 4R and a potentially tricky QF vs. Arazi the Magician (damn I miss the guy). 60.8% vs. that opposition arguably more than makes up for the 10% gap vs. the OE high of 71.6% in '03. And Rafter was a stud in '97-01, period, save a brief injury-forced hiatus in '99.

More areas of overlap then. '00 was a tough draw (though the last set against Pete was a gimme what with his injury), which illustrates how stark the difference can be if you give two comparable iterations of the same player wildly different draws (in this case a tough one vs a laugher). '00 Dre, I reckon, doesn't even crack the Top 75 in the Open Era in gw%, yet was more than a match for '03 'gassi. What it tells?

As for the peak-level comparison, I actually think Pete's peak > Dre's on any type of HC. But much like with Djoker the AO's early timing would work to Dre's advantage. Put another way, in a 10-match series I could see, say, '94 or '97 (or even '95 sans the off-court drama) Pistol coming out ahead, but over a 5-yr period the %s would shift in Dre's favor. The guy, after all, could've been the only one to win 4 AOs in a row if not for his wrist injury in '02.

Agreed on all dis.

See above. I'm not judging these runs only by GW%, be it tournament or seasonal. I'm just saying U can't chalk up a historic 70% purely to a weak draw barring a depleted field a la '73 Wimby or even '77 RG. Put '00, '01 or even '95 Dre in '03 and chances are they don't get near 75%. Only Borg and Nadal have topped that superhuman ceiling and even they've done it only twice each ('78/80 and '08/17) at RG. No way Dre, Novak or anyone else approaches that on hard. Maybe '84 Mac whose '84 USO run would've come damn close with 74.3% (127/171) if you replaced the classic SF vs. Jimbo with a 5-game allowance, but I suspect Ferreira w/his big FH and top-notch passing shots would offer a little more resistance.

A player certainly has to have, at minimum, a high base level in order to run roughshod over any draw featuring tour players, but that says little of the kind of top-drawer stuff necessary to elevate a good run into an all-time one. I maintain '19 AO Nadal, '12-'13 USO Djoker/'12 Wimby Djoker (a cut above that Nadal but also not an all-timer) and others could have approached that threshold despite not being in all-time great form, and that says enough for me.

 

[NonP]

The point is that it's not good for a confirmed paper tiger in ‘19 Rafa to be so close in GW% before the final to a guy on an all-time great run. It's an indictment on the criteria more so than the player.

But you're looking at the tourney GW%s in isolation. I'm saying it makes no sense to do so when we've got other relevant info. That's why I keep telling y'all to start with seasonal GW% instead.

I was focusing on pre-final stats cuz it's nigh impossible to meaningfully capture the difference between Djoko and Rainman as opponents, so I think this additional 1.6% is indeed significant and closes the gap pretty well wrt performance against non-DjokerMan opponents (70.5-69.6--a one game difference or thereabouts, can't get closer than that can we?). But on these semantic issues we won't make much headway so let's agree to disagree on our definitions of 'significant'.

The fact that it's even a possibility is important cuz it follows that it's a possibility for a player in merely decent form (and that's not a hypothetical, we both believe '19 Nadal was in good/decent form at best) to cross the threshold. That simply shouldn't be the case if we want to hold up gw% as more than trivia over such a small spread (qualifying that cuz I think year-long gw %'s can be pretty useful).

U can't tout a 1.6% difference as "significant" while insisting the gap "can't get any closer than" 0.9%. Either such a small differential counts or it doesn't.

And we've already gone over your 2nd point. To me it's a remote possibility not worth discussing and I've explained why. No need to keep rehashing it.

Agassi's success against Ferreira, in isolation, isn't lucky. What's lucky is that arguably the most threatening guy (on paper) in a very non-threatening draw happened to be a player against whom he enjoyed a pronounced match-up advantage, creating the best set of conditions to go on a stat rampage. Getting a uniquely favourable match-up when we're trying to draw conclusions about general form based on gw% is as confounding a variable as you can come across.

Think of it this way: outside of some truly bananas stuff that never happens (a 300-ranked qualie in the final), you almost could not have hand-picked a better draw than this one for Dre.

That's really a distinction without a difference, isn't it? Wayne was "non-threatening" to Dre cuz the eventual champ's game had few holes for the loser to exploit. That's not "luck" but a benefit of having a more complete game than your opponents. Put another way Dre had a lower chance of running into a bad matchup, and he didn't.

Also I never said Ferreira was "the most threatening guy" in Dre's '03 AO draw. I'd go with Schuttler, given his form and confidence at the time.

It doesn't work the other way tho...I'm talking about sample sizes being shortened, not comparing their opponent quality (which, if I were to do, probably favours Nadal by a hair, even pre-final...or I'd focus on the Lee match, which shot up his ##'s up a whopping 3%, from 68.6 to 71.6). We've already got tiny datasets at our disposal to derive conclusions from, so cutting off an additional 8% (min. 9 less games to win to reach the final) only leaves it more susceptible to aberrant outcomes. Something I'd forgive if the opponent quality was better (like Fed at the '04 USO, the beneficiary of a walkover but he beat 'gassi, Henman and Hewitt in succession so the smaller sample is less relevant).

Yeah it does. Bull played all of 7 more games than Dre in their respective runs (176 vs. 169), and that Coria match would've had no effect on Dre's event GW% if he were simply able to maintain a similar match %.

Besides why are you even quibbling about "sample sizes" when U say up front that this GW% method is fallible for that very reason? Time to retire this red herring.

What we do have invites too many questions. For me it's like a minimum threshold of competition, similar to your 60% GW cut-off on clay courts (albeit, much more subjective). If a minimum threshold of competition isn't met I can't see it as eligible, even if I do concede the form that WAS shown could have been ATG-caliber if the threshold WAS met. '03 AO is one of the few casualties of the kind for me, where the minimum threshold isn’t met.

But even so, if you wanna call it an all-timer, I can see where you're coming fron. What's really not up for debate is what was initially said by Krali and agreed upon by me, which is what sparked the discussion in the first place: that the #'s do not (or are in no position to) accurately gauge the level with any sort of precision.

And this is a straw man. I dare U to find a single post of mine where I said GW% at a Slam alone can serve as an accurate barometer of the player's form, and even in my original reply I simply said you don't win 71.6% at a major without kicking some serious ass.

A full field where most of the top seeds and dangerous flotters flop is functionally equivalent to a depleted field, in the context of this convo. Andre's not contesting matches against 127 other players, just those 7. It's not like I'm claiming he wasn't a worthy champ.

U know what I meant by "a full field." Luck of the draw is part of the game, yes, but your chances of getting "lucky" decrease as the # of top players increases. U sure you know this stat thing inside out?

I'm not, I've been lampooning the method altogether. But since early round matches make up over half of the sample, it's self-defeating to tout tournament-wide %'s without being mindful of this fact.

You're not "lampooning" anything, just showing your lack of understanding about a subject you were foolish to challenge me on. I mean I could lampoon U jokers' fetish with DM all day long because it'd be so easy: nobody I know outside TTW takes this thing seriously, whereas GW% has been a historical benchmark almost from the game's inception. But I also know it'd be a complete waste of time cuz DM tends to favor the server and thus give U Feddies more results U prefer, so I don't bother.

More areas of overlap then. '00 was a tough draw (though the last set against Pete was a gimme what with his injury), which illustrates how stark the difference can be if you give two comparable iterations of the same player wildly different draws (in this case a tough one vs a laugher). '00 Dre, I reckon, doesn't even crack the Top 75 in the Open Era in gw%, yet was more than a match for '03 'gassi. What it tells?

That I fully acknowledge GW% depends on the draw and you've been splitting hairs about nothing?

A player certainly has to have, at minimum, a high base level in order to run roughshod over any draw featuring tour players, but that says little of the kind of top-drawer stuff necessary to elevate a good run into an all-time one. I maintain '19 AO Nadal, '12-'13 USO Djoker/'12 Wimby Djoker (a cut above that Nadal but also not an all-timer) and others could have approached that threshold despite not being in all-time great form, and that says enough for me.

Not really interested in what constitutes "an all-timer" cuz that'd lead to another useless hairsplitting "joust." I'll just add, relatively speaking, '12 Djoker (either one) > '19 Bull so I reject that particular comparison.

 

[TheFifthSet]

That I fully acknowledge GW% depends on the draw and you've been splitting hairs about nothing?

I’ll respond to the rest (you’re basically asking me to take off the kid gloves with some of the digs you’re delivering ) but you really gotta pay attn to the progression of this convo before calling me the hair-splitter here lol. It started with my response to KL who rightly pointed out that, by some objective measures, ‘03 Agassi is the most dominant OE run on non-clay………yet even you agree it’s not even his own best run, and not even definitively his 2nd or 3rd best. My initial response to him didn’t even deny Agassi’s greatness, just that the draw makes the eye-popping stats hard to take at face value. Points to how murky the numbers can be. Nothing too heterodox and again I agree the form shown from Agassi was impressive and likely holds up to scrutiny, just doesn’t meet my subjective standard of what constitutes an ATG run (which you’re not interested in talking about, and that’s fine).

 

[Federev]

As a Federer and Nadal fan, I will sincerely prefer these two over other players. I think they both changed the game in their own ways. We may never see the tension, anticipation and quality of hitting like Wimbledon 2008 again.

I think it can’t be disputed that peak Federer, say 2007 at the Australian Open, is a greater player than the best version of Djokovic.

This is probably the highest level seen in a grand slam outside of Nadal 2008 at RG.

Djokovic is a greater player overall at the Australian due to his records and consistency but the 2007 version of Federer is another level.

Of course, he is. Peak Federer has one and only one clear weakness - Nadal on clay hammering his backhand to oblivion and chasing down everything w interest. He'd never beat peak Rafa at RG. But everywhere else, I think peak/prime Fed (2004-2007) lays waste to any and all comers.

 

[TheFifthSet]

But you're looking at the tourney GW%s in isolation. I'm saying it makes no sense to do so when we've got other relevant info. That's why I keep telling y'all to start with seasonal GW% instead.

Addressed way below.**

U can't tout a 1.6% difference as "significant" while insisting the gap "can't get any closer than" 0.9%. Either such a small differential counts or it doesn't.

Sigh, remember:

“Way off because the correction cuts Dre’s pre-final lead from 2.5% to 0.9%. When we’re quibbling over a couple of percentage points, how can that not make a big difference?”

I don’t think it makes a big difference in a practical sense, but I’m indulging your criteria here, under which specific thresholds and percentage points apparently DO merit heavy consideration (and if you say they don’t, congrats, you’ve been splitting hairs all along).

I can say all of this and still be consistent in arguing that I think gw% isn’t, in actuality, all that important…in fact I’ve been saying it this whole time. Follow the convo better before deploying “the persona”,, plz.

That's really a distinction without a difference, isn't it?

Not at all, because an unfavourable match-up basically by definition requires specific quirks of the superior players game to cause more problems against the opponent in question than that same game would against an opponent of equal caliber (against the field) but differently configured parts. That matters when talking about this sorta stuff.

Here’s one of my typical puerile thought experiments: picture two draws for two eventual winners, equal in caliber against the field but one has a +ve match-up skew while the other does not. All else being equal, which one would be likelier to have a higher GW%?

Put another way Dre had a lower chance of running into a bad matchup, and he didn't.

Last part is putting it far too mildly. Those guys had a 2-31 record against Dre on non-clay, with barely over half of those matches taking place on Dre’s preferred slow HC.

Hewitt, Safin, JCF, Nalby, Moya, heck even a fresh Roddick or ‘03 Fed (‘01 USO was a blowout, yes, but ‘02 Miami was a deceptively-close BO5) would have been likelier to mount a serious challenge, even if they fell short of winning.

Heck even a Blake, Kafelnikov or Gonzo could have made it interesting for a few sets and all of these guys played Agassi as tough or tougher on HC than anyone he played. All 8 were top 25 seeds.

Also I never said Ferreira was "the most threatening guy" in Dre's '03 AO draw. I'd go with Schuttler, given his form and confidence at the time.

I said arguably, but reasonable enough.

And this is a straw man. I dare U to find a single post of mine where I said GW% at a Slam alone can serve as an accurate barometer of the player's form, and even in my original reply I simply said you don't win 71.6% at a major without kicking some serious ass.

It’s not a straw man cuz the initial post I referenced (the reply to Krali) wasn’t even addressed to you. Your trigger-happiness is causing you to miss the point, as I made clear in the very passage you’re quoting that this assessment was made before you ever entered the thread—so, talk about splitting hairs and not understanding stuff some more.

Besides why are you even quibbling about "sample sizes" when U say up front that this GW% method is fallible for that very reason? Time to retire this red herring.

You’ve abandoned Hair-Splitter’s benevolent cousin, Nuance.

There are degrees of fallibility. The smaller the sample the more fallible it is. **This is something something I implicitly acknowledge by saying I find season-wide %’s useful. You’re looking for contradictions when there are none.

U know what I meant by "a full field." Luck of the draw is part of the game, yes, but your chances of getting "lucky" decrease as the # of top players increases.

Of course they decrease, which is why you could redo that exact tourney 25, 50 or however many times and still perhaps fail to stumble upon an eventual winner with that weak of a draw. Problem is, the unlikely did happen here, as it is generally supposed to when we select for weakest Open Era GS draws. It’s hard for a draw to this be weak without the unlikely happening.

U sure you know this stat thing inside out?

Not in the least, but a few 1st/2nd year courses and common sense has gotten me far enough on here lol.

You're not "lampooning" anything, just showing your lack of understanding about a subject you were foolish to challenge me on.

If you’re looking to embarrass me, you’ve succeeded. Only it’s of the second-hand variety.

 

[Djokovic2011]

lets take their 3 best runs (focus on SF/F for level):
Djokovic : 11,13,16
fed AO 11, stan AO 13, murray AO 13

Federer: 04,05,07
hewitt AO 04, nalby AO 04, agassi AO 05, gonzo AO 07

difference only comes with djoko defeating stan AO 13 and fed losing to AO 05 safin. if draws were reversed, djoko loses to Safin AO 05 and fed wins vs AO 13 Stan, IMO.
so that's not a conclusive test.

over a longer prime period, djoko definitely has the edge with these additions:
tsonga AO 08, fed AO 08,Murray AO 12, Nadal AO 12, murray AO 15

fed has:
davy AO 06, baggy AO 06, davy AO 10, nadal AO 17, wawa AO 17, Cilic AO 18

in the end, for extended prime (like 6-7 years):
Murray AO 12 ~ Nalby AO 04
Wawa AO 13 and Nadal AO 12 give djoko the edge.

Is there any version of Djokovic that could defeat the scary 2005 version of Safin?

 

[Djokovic2011]

Sorry got it mixed up with another one. Yeah he was amazing there. I think doing best win at the YEC is difficult tho as the RR format lends itself to misleading wins that don’t come against motivated opponents, so on and so forth.

for me I’d pick Fed there but that’s mainly eye test and level stuff, I don’t think he beat noticeably better competition than Djok or anything. He does have more high level wins given that his 30+ year old seasons were played in ‘11-15 and Djoko’s were played in ‘18-21 lol.

but regardless, it was the way he did it moreso than the players he beat that really stands out. He was truly phenomenal in ‘03/04/06/07, still very very very good 2010/11 and in my eyes clearly better at the YEC than Djoker.

He was still very very good in 2012 as well.

 

[msc886]

Rebound Ace probably but definitely not the slower plexicushion

 

[NonP]

Sigh, remember:

“Way off because the correction cuts Dre’s pre-final lead from 2.5% to 0.9%. When we’re quibbling over a couple of percentage points, how can that not make a big difference?”

I don’t think it makes a big difference in a practical sense, but I’m indulging your criteria here, under which specific thresholds and percentage points apparently DO merit heavy consideration (and if you say they don’t, congrats, you’ve been splitting hairs all along).

I can all say of this and still be consistent in arguing that I think gw% isn’t, in actuality, all that important…in fact I’ve been saying it this whole time. Follow the convo better before deploying “the persona”,, plz.

If U cared to focus on the actual convo instead of going for silly lolz I've been attacking your own counterpoint that 1.6% or anything under 4-5% makes a "significant" difference. You're the one who's been "quibbling over a couple of percentage points" when I said in the very post you replied to that I was still looking at a corrected 4.6% difference. There's no "we" here. I couldn't give a crap about such a small differential.

Not at all, because an unfavourable match-up basically by definition requires specific quirks of the superior players game to cause more problems against the opponent in question than that same game would against an opponent of equal caliber (against the field) but differently configured parts. That matters when talking about this sorta stuff.

Here’s one of my typical puerile thought experiments: picture two draws for two eventual winners, equal in caliber against the field but one has a +ve match-up skew while the other does not. All else being equal, which one would be likelier to have a higher GW%?

That's your spin. Matchups can be due to "specific quirks" or simply one skill set neutralizing another. There's no reason to believe Dre got "lucky" unless U can show that players with a similar game as Wayne's had a considerably better record against him.

Last part is putting it far too mildly. Those guys had a 2-31 record against Dre on non-clay, with barely over half of those matches taking place on Dre’s preferred slow HC.

Hewitt, Safin, JCF, Nalby, Moya, heck even a fresh Roddick or ‘03 Fed (‘01 USO was a blowout, yes, but ‘02 Miami was a deceptive close BO5) would have been likelier to mount a serious challenge, even if they fell short of winning.

Heck even a Blake, Kafelnikov or Gonzo could have made it interesting for a few sets and all of these guys played Agassi as tough or tougher on HC than anyone he played. All 8 were top 25 seeds.

The only good match Blake played vs. Dre was that '05 QF when the vet had further declined. Otherwise his record vs. Dre is hardly better than that of Ferreira who didn't have the luxury of facing post-'03 Dre in his own prime.

Hell, even A-Rod was 1-5 vs. Dre, his only W coming in a tight 3-setter at Queen's. And Kafelnikov was pretty much irrelevant in singles after '01. Maybe these guys still would've done much better than Ferreira or Schuttler, but Dre is almost certainly ending up with another 65+% AO regardless.

Also among this group only Rusty, Nalby, Yevgeny and maybe Marat can be said to have been somewhat similar to Wayne or Rainer, so at least half of your comparisons are moot from a matchup POV.

It’s not a straw man cuz the initial post I referenced (the reply to Krali) wasn’t even addressed to you. Your trigger-happiness is causing you to miss the point, as I made clear in the very passage you’re quoting that this assessment was made before you ever entered the thread—so, talk about splitting hairs and not understanding stuff some more.

That's not what I'm referring to. You've been repeating throughout this convo that the GW%s "do not (or are in no position to) accurately gauge the level with any sort of precision" even after I've clarified multiple times that I'm not just looking at event GW%s Call it whatever U want, but it's got nothing to do with my actual position.

You’ve abandoned Hair-Splitter’s benevolent cousin, Nuance.

There are degrees of fallibility. The smaller the sample the more fallible it is. **This is something something I implicitly acknowledge by saying I find season-wide %’s useful. You’re looking for contradictions when there are none.

You're the one who droned on about that Coria retirement at least twice while insisting on a sufficient sample size, not me. There's no reason to believe playing an extra 2 sets vs. Coria or anyone else would significantly impact Dre's average GW% for a 7-match event unless we're talking a drastic turnaround either way, or that this is somehow more significant than drubbing a former floater who had just come back from a long hiatus and would retire that very season. So yeah, this was indeed a big fat red herring.

Of course they decrease, which is why you could redo that exact tourney 25, 50 or however many times and still perhaps fail to stumble upon an eventual winner with that weak of a draw. Problem is, the unlikely did happen here, as it is generally supposed to when we select for weakest Open Era GS draws. It’s hard for a draw to be weak without the unlikely happening.

For the umpteenth time I concede that Dre's '03 AO draw was on the weak side. U just can't say that was a "depleted field" when every top contender was in the draw and failed to play up to their expectations.

If you’re looking to embarrass me, you’ve succeeded. Only it’s of the second-hand variety.

Cute, but no more than your idea of "jousting."

 

[TheFifthSet]

If U cared to focus on the actual convo instead of going for silly lolz I've been attacking your own counterpoint that 1.6% or anything under 4-5% makes a "significant" difference. You're the one who's been "quibbling over a couple of percentage points" when I said in the very post you replied to that I was still looking at a corrected 4.6% difference. There's no "we" here. I couldn't give a crap about such a small differential.

What 4.6% difference are you even referring to if i was talking about pre-finals statistics? The final count after the hypothetical 6-4, 6-4, 6-4 mid-case scenario? That’s 3.6% (71.6-68.0). Not sure what else it could be.

I digress tho, as that’s not too important (lest you think I’m being pedantic here, too). Let’s scroll back some more, to get to the heart of it:

“How are my #s "way off" if Bull still loses the GW% race after having everything go right for him?”

^After being confronted with a simple (and harmless) error, you made note of Nadal losing the GW% battle by extremely small margins in a scenario that by your own admission isn’t unthinkable (“And of course Nadal allowing Schuttler only 5 games is a possibility”), as if Nadal even getting close to Agassi while in that ‘meh’ form wouldn’t undermine the importance of the %’s. If that’s not quibbling (notice I made no mention until then), what is?


“Going for silly lolz” - Pls, I’m fine with playing it straight and not being a d!ck but the typical grandstanding on your end invites these responses.

That's your spin. Matchups can be due to "specific quirks" or simply one skill set neutralizing another. There's no reason to believe Dre got "lucky" unless U can show that players with a similar game as Wayne's had a considerably better record against him.

A match-up skew tends to become evident when the margins over an adequate sample of matches (preferably spanning multiple years, as forms fluctuate) are significantly closer or further apart than their respective skill-sets and performance against the rest of the field would predict (see: that run of 7 BO5 matches between Djokorinka from ‘13-‘19, of which Stan won 4 and lost the remaining 3 in a deciding set…..Fedal’s H2H til 2017…Pete and Krajicek, particularly the first 8……and so on). I’ve never heard anyone define match-up issues in a significantly different way, and I distinguish them from conventional skill gaps.

Under this definition, Agassi-Ferreira is an example of a match-up issue. Dre is clearly head-and-shoulders better on any surface, but he’s not “21 of 22 sets” better, especially considering his (relative to this rivalry) struggles with lesser players. Ferreira of all people acknowledged this and claimed (paraphrasing, but tightly, just can’t be assed to find it) that something about Dre’s game brought out the worst in him.

Alas, the favourable match-up(s) merely compound things. The draw is extremely weak even without factoring that in, but a combined 2 wins in 33 tries is the cherry on top.

That's not what I'm referring to. You've been repeating throughout this convo that the GW%s "do not (or are in no position to) accurately gauge the level with any sort of precision" even after I've clarified multiple times that I'm not just looking at event GW%s Call it whatever U want, but it's got nothing to do with my actual position.

Except I didn’t say you’re just looking at event GW’s%, only overemphasizing their importance.

Remember that your OP was a complete non sequitur, as this is what I originally argued: a big focus on GW% overrates Agassi’s run and his draw makes it difficult to rank alongside the other great runs. That’s a pretty lukewarm take. If you misread my OP and saw subtext where there was none, just say so.

Afterward, I conceded (not reluctantly at that) your point about “[Agassi] kicking ass”, remarking that he did about as well as could have been reasonably been expected of him.

Heck, I even clarified later ITT that I don’t even believe his GW% wouldn’t be high against a tough draw ffs (though nowhere near 71.6%). It’s just that I don’t think a minimum threshold of competition was met which would allow me to put his performance in the pantheon of other historical great ones…in much the same way I wouldn’t support awarding a batting title to a player that didn’t have enough at-bats to qualify (very imperfect analogy, but I trust you won’t be too literal-minded).

The great irony of this unfortunate usage of that idiom is that your clearly expressed positions (in the OP) are ones I didn’t and still don’t disagree with, outside of the contention that the draw wasn’t chopped liver (in so far as any GS-winning draw can be, this one was IMO). So, who is splitting hairs when your first reply featured a whole lot of stuff I didn’t even disagree with or argue to the contrary?

You're the one who droned on about that Coria retirement at least twice while insisting on a sufficient sample size, not me. There's no reason to believe playing an extra 2 sets vs. Coria or anyone else would significantly impact Dre's average GW% for a 7-match event unless we're talking a drastic turnaround either way, or that this is somehow more significant than drubbing a former floater who had just come back from a long hiatus and would retire that very season. So yeah, this was indeed a big fat red herring.

The sample size will be slender no matter what, which is why I’m wary of using single-tournament GW %’s to begin with. With the retirement, though, Agassi is relieved of the responsibility of having to win an extra 9 games, where even a run of 58% GW brings him level with Nadal pre-finals. That’s 8-9% less than an already small sample.

At the same stage of the tourney, Nadal was facing a Berdych that got pasted in the first two sets (1-12 in games) before rebounding to take the third to a TB. Nobody, based on their respective forms and match patterns, could have predicted a close third. Which, if Berdych didn’t bother to contest (all else remaining unchanged) would put Nadal ahead in GW%’s. Yet, unlike Coria, Berdych didn’t take his ball and go home. Such are the perils of expecting single-tourney stats to ebb and flow in a linear fashion based on preceding events.

Still nothing internally inconsistent here.

The only good match Blake played vs. Dre was that '05 QF when the vet had further declined. Otherwise his record vs. Dre is hardly better than that of Ferreira who didn't have the luxury of facing post-'03 Dre in his own prime.

Firstly, the bar isn’t very high here so (I mention 2-31?), and I said “as good or better”, so even ‘hardly better’ would suffice.

Secondly, that’s not true at all lol. Blake routined Dre 6-3, 6-4 the previous summer (‘02) in Washington, winning twice as many return points, then took him to a deciding set the next year…I could beat home the point by talkin’ match stats but that would be overkill. Sure, Dre clearly got the better of him in the rivalry (4-1 as an older man against a dangerous guy like JB is nothing to be ashamed of), but he clearly played more than only one good match. ‘Hardly better than that of Ferreira’ is extremely inaccurate.

Hell, even A-Rod was 1-5 vs. Dre, his only W coming in a tight 3-setter at Queen's.

Yes, he is among the least likely of the bunch to challenge AA, hence “even”.

And Kafelnikov was pretty much irrelevant in singles after '01.

As opposed to Ferreira? At the very least he played him tough on HC, rarely losing handily like WF. That said I’m under no illusion that Yeev’s would be a tough late-stage opponent. He’d be a more-dangerous-than-avg early round opponent, but that’s it.

For the umpteenth time I concede that Dre's '03 AO draw was on the weak side. U just can't say that was a "depleted field" when every top contender was in the draw and failed to play up to their expectations.

Goodness me. I explicitly stated the field was full, NOT depleted. It’s just that it opened up to such a degree that it had about the same influence on Agassi’s GW% as if it were…hence “functionally equivalent”. Not simply an academic difference…it would be one if I were arguing Agassi didn’t deserve to win the title, but I’m not.

If we’ve actually reached a point where you’re going to quote me saying the opposite of what I said, I’m not long for this thread.

Cute, but no more than your idea of "jousting."

Well I’m still having fun, tho for different reasons.

 

[abmk]

Is there any version of Djokovic that could defeat the scary 2005 version of Safin?

yes, best versions of djoko (AO 08 SF, AO 11 QF-F, AO 13 SF, AO 16 SF etc) could definitely beat 05 AO Safin. But I'd give safin the small edge

 

[NonP]

What 4.6% difference are you even referring to if i was talking about pre-finals statistics? The final count after the hypothetical 6-4, 6-4, 6-4 mid-case scenario? That’s 3.6% (71.6-68.0). Not sure what else it could be....

This hairsplitting is getting beyond ridiculous so I'm addressing it for the last time.

I was referring to the actual difference between Dre's and Bull's runs - I've told you umpteenth times I don't do piecemeal GW% and explained why - but I forgot to update my GW% column and made another mistake though in Bull's favor this time: 64.1% as opposed to 67.0%. So we're looking at 7.5% rather than 4.6%.

And that Q was in response to your claim that my #s were "way off." By your own correction I underestimated Bull's pre-F GW% by all of 1.6%. We're not comparing seasons/careers, but two tourneys where one set could make a bigger difference, let alone a whole match. To quibble about 1.6% in this context is the height of pedantry.

“Going for silly lolz” - Pls, I’m fine with playing it straight and not being a d!ck but the typical grandstanding on your end invites these responses.

I don't mind occasional lolz, like quoting your own reply that illustrates the other guy's point.

A match-up skew tends to become evident when the margins over an adequate sample of matches (preferably spanning multiple years, as forms fluctuate) are significantly closer or further apart than their respective skill-sets and performance against the rest of the field would predict (see: that run of 7 BO5 matches between Djokorinka from ‘13-‘19, of which Stan won 4 and lost the remaining 3 in a deciding set…..Fedal’s H2H til 2017…Pete and Krajicek, particularly the first 8……and so on). I’ve never heard anyone define match-up issues in a significantly different way, and I distinguish them from conventional skill gaps.

Under this definition, Agassi-Ferreira is an example of a match-up issue. Dre is clearly head-and-shoulders better on any surface, but he’s not “21 of 22 sets” better, especially considering his (relative to this rivalry) struggles with lesser players. Ferreira of all people acknowledged this and claimed (paraphrasing, but tightly, just can’t be assed to find it) that something about Dre’s game brought out the worst in him.

Alas, the favourable match-up(s) merely compound things. The draw is extremely weak even without factoring that in, but a combined 2 wins in 33 tries is the cherry on top.

Again name these other guys of Wayne's caliber with a similar game and a fair # of matches vs. Dre. Shouldn't be too hard to narrow down cuz by your own definition the gap in skill level doesn't count as a matchup issue. Until then this is pointless parsing.

Also you keep citing that sneaky 2/33 (it's actually 2/32 off clay) which now includes 2 non-HC matches. Of course it's specious bunk. Let's break it down by each round:

F - 3-1 on hard vs. Schuttler, and all were outdoor matches. No beef here.
SF - 11-0 vs. Ferreira, but 1 was indoors. Should be 10-0.
QF - 4-1 vs. Grosjean, but 1 W was due to his retirement which U insist is iffy while he and Dre split their 2 indoor meetings. Which leaves us 2-0 which is too small a sample to begin with. Call this 0-0.
4R - On paper it's 5-0 vs. Coria but you've been playing up his retirement early in the 2nd set. Then it seems rather disingenuous to count this matchup at all. Another 0-0.
3R - This is where U got especially creative, with 1 W each on grass and carpet for Dre. Rather I see 3 Ws on outdoor hard. 3-0.
2R - Again 2 matches ain't enough to tell us much about any H2H, and one of 'em was indoors to boot. And a Slam contender is supposed to clear the 2nd round with ease. Pass.
1R - Ditto, except both matches took place outdoors. Doesn't matter as it's another irrelevant matchup.

So we're looking at 1/17 instead, which is hardly worse than Davy's career H2H vs. Fred or just a hair better than Gerulaitis' vs. Borg. And the H2Hs vs. Schuttler, Ferreira and maybe Escude are the only ones that might tell us anything useful about these particular matchups.

If anything Schuttler looks like a worthy final opponent for Dre after all. So the real important H2H here is 3-1, not this collective 17-1 most of which is just one possibly favorable matchup to begin with.

Except I didn’t say you’re just looking at event GW’s%, only overemphasizing their importance.

Remember that your OP was a complete non sequitur, as this is what I originally argued: a big focus on GW% overrates Agassi’s run and his draw makes it difficult to rank alongside the other great runs. That’s a pretty lukewarm take. If you misread my OP and saw subtext where there was none, just say so....

I'll make a deal with U and your DR-infatuated ilk: stop pretending I'm "overemphasizing" the importance of GW% when I never refer to it as the alpha and omega of playing level by itself and while y'all push a fringe stat which unlike the historical GW% nobody outside this nursery gives a crap about. Until then U have no business whining about "bean counting."

And U sure U know what a non sequitur is? U made a claim about Dre padding his #s in his run and I merely pointed out it ain't that simple, which got U to respond with a bunch of mostly irrelevant examples and you're still at it. I don't care whether U think it was an "all-timer" or what U think it is. That was never my point of contention.

The sample size will be slender no matter what, which is why I’m wary of using single-tournament GW %’s to begin with. With the retirement, though, Agassi is relieved of the responsibility of having to win an extra 9 games, where even a run of 58% GW brings him level with Nadal pre-finals. That’s 8-9% less than an already small sample.

At the same stage of the tourney, Nadal was facing a Berdych that got pasted in the first two sets (1-12 in games) before rebounding to take the third to a TB. Nobody, based on their respective forms and match patterns, could have predicted a close third. Which, if Berdych didn’t bother to contest (all else remaining unchanged) would put Nadal ahead in GW%’s. Yet, unlike Coria, Berdych didn’t take his ball and go home. Such are the perils of expecting single-tourney stats to ebb and flow in a linear fashion based on preceding events.

Still nothing internally inconsistent here.

U should clean up your own act before accusing anyone of "misreading." I never said you were being "internally inconsistent." I said you were making a big fat red herring out of nothing.

And since U refuse to address the other side of the Berdych match I'll leave U with this clincher: sans each match vs. Coria and Berdych Dre's GW% falls by all of 0.7% to 70.9% (112/158) and Bull's by double that % to 62.7% (99/158), which means Nadal benefited more from his own 4th-rounder. Oh yeah and both now have 158 games in total. So much for "sample size" being behind Dre's superiority.

Firstly, the bar isn’t very high here so (I mention 2-31?), and I said “as good or better”, so even ‘hardly better’ would suffice.

Secondly, that’s not true at all lol. Blake routined Dre 6-3, 6-4 the previous summer (‘02) in Washington, winning twice as many return points, then took him to a deciding set the next year…I could beat home the point by talkin’ match stats but that would be overkill. Sure, Dre clearly got the better of him in the rivalry (4-1 as an older man against a dangerous guy like JB is nothing to be ashamed of), but he clearly played more than only one good match. ‘Hardly better than that of Ferreira’ is extremely inaccurate.

U left out the "in his own prime" part. Wayne had a lull in the late '90s before a brief resurgence in the aughts, and if U look at their earlier matches he had mostly competitive sets vs. Dre despite the lopsided set W-L.

Not to mention 5 matches vs. 11 isn't a fair comparison to begin with. After all "sample size" does matter, right?

As opposed to Ferreira? At the very least he played him tough on HC, rarely losing handily like WF. That said I’m under no illusion that Yeev’s would be a tough late-stage opponent. He’d be a more-dangerous-than-avg early round opponent, but that’s it.

We're talking about '03 Kafelnikov, the same has-been who didn't clear 3R (singles only) at any major or Masters in his last season except Rome where he reached the SF. You're welcome to think that Yevgeny who couldn't even get past Nieminen would've pushed Dre harder than Wayne, but that's unlikely.

Goodness me. I explicitly stated the field was full, NOT depleted. It’s just that it opened up to such a degree that it had about the same influence on Agassi’s GW% as if it were…hence “functionally equivalent”. Not simply an academic difference…it would be one if I were arguing Agassi didn’t deserve to win the title, but I’m not.

If we’ve actually reached a point where you’re going to quote me saying the opposite of what I said, I’m not long for this thread.

You're the one who raised a stink about my harmless description of "a full field" which U explicitly said "is functionally equivalent to a depleted field, in the context of this convo." If U don't wanna waste time on such silly parsing games don't start one in the 1st place.

Well I’m still having fun, tho for different reasons.

Unlike U I've got better things to do. Stop wasting time on useless trivia and get to the point about the big picture instead.

 

[Sephiroth]

prime for prime

AO - Djokovic
RG - 50/50
Wimbledon - Federer
USO - Federer

Give Djokovic something at least guys, come on

 

[Kralingen]

prime for prime

AO - Djokovic
RG - 50/50
Wimbledon - Federer
USO - Federer

Give Djokovic something at least guys, come on

Sadly Djokovic has more than just 'something' - he's got the superior achievements and more Slams/weeks at #1 in reality now.

Why not say peak Fed beats him everywhere, even daytime Miami. After all, the long-suffering Fed fanbase deserves something too.

 

[Sephiroth]

Sadly Djokovic has more than just 'something' - he's got the superior achievements and more Slams/weeks at #1 in reality now.

Why not say peak Fed beats him everywhere, even daytime Miami. After all, the long-suffering Fed fanbase deserves something too.

this is the crux of it lol

too much suffering in the 2010s, man should've bowed out after 2012

i'd be devastated too if Nadal lost 3 RG finals or something and probably be talking about peak/prime too lol

 

[martinezownsclay]

It’s fine, we can accept Federer peaked higher than Djokovic - you can see this in the videos comparing to 2011 Djokovic. It happens in tennis. Like peak Wawrinka probably beats peak Djokovic at the French but Wawrinka can’t tap into that kind of level often. Same for Federer, the 2007 level was just during that year. All the other years fall below Djokovic 2011 for me.

If the bolded part is true, it would only be due to the match up. Against the field peak Djokovic easily does better than peak Wawrinka at the French. Which one would be more troublesome for Nadal for instance is obvious by a country mile. And against nearly everyone else Djokovic still has the higher success rate there even compared to peak Wawrinka. I know off topic to your main point but I just wanted to point that out.

 

[TheFifthSet]

I'll make a deal with U and your DR-infatuated ilk: stop pretending I'm "overemphasizing" the importance of GW% when I never refer to it as the alpha and omega of playing level by itself and while y'all push a fringe stat which unlike the historical GW% nobody outside this nursery gives a crap about. Until then U have no business whining about "bean counting

Never said you “refer to it as the alpha and the omega” — however, you entered the thread to lecture me about GW% as it relates to Agassi’s run and the holes were immediately exposed. The comparison to “my ilk’s” fascination with DR is fantasy-talk. I don’t have a comparable list charting single tournament DR’s of eventual GS winners, and if I did I would see it as little more than trivia lol.

I use GW%, DR and what-have-you sparingly, to make specific points, but I’ve at almost every turn caveated them by highlighting the limitations of said metrics (in general, but especially as applied to shorter spans of time). If you cared to fact-check your statements instead of windmilling random accusations you’d find the almost page-long exchange between Guru and I from April where I protested what I felt was his over-reliance on DR to call the ‘07 AO Final a “historic beatdown”. Some “infatuation”.

It’s like you’re a battered pugilist behind on points, fishing for a flash KO in the final rounds.

U made a claim about Dre padding his #s in his run and I merely pointed out it ain't that simple,

Nah mate, it’s pretty simple that GW% overrates Agassi’s run and I explained my rationale in painstaking detail. It’s not a lofty claim: it’s statistically #1 in the last 50 years on non-clay but isn’t even Agassi’s best run (subjectively, but you agree), and we should be cautious on that basis about grouping it with other statistically robust runs that featured great opponents.

You even indulged this by admitting that the form shown during his 71.6% run can be argued to be as good as the form during his 60.8% run (which makes a 4.6% gap look like child’s play). If you wish to counter by stating it’s only an occasionally useful proxy and not a be-all end-all (which I did not accuse you of using it as) I’m with you…but that make your incursion into the thread even more pointless.

We both agree his form was great, that it was an impressive tournament and I’ve now said over a handful of times that even in the face of great competition Agassi’s form probably holds up (though interesting to note he almost got straight-settled the following year by Safin before rebounding to lose in 5, despite being at 69.8% before the semi). You are the one that elevated what is in essence a minor disagreement by trying (and failing) to NuanceBrigade a truism with stats and lists that you claim aren’t that particularly important yet have brandished in multiple threads at the drop of a hat.

That they overrate some and underrate others (if held as even moderately important) is as easy as A-B-C.

U should clean up your own act before accusing anyone of "misreading." I never said you were being "internally inconsistent." I said you were making a big fat red herring out of nothing.

Sheesh, THIS is what you said before pointing out the “red herring”:

“Besides why are you even quibbling about "sample sizes" when U say up front that this GW% method is fallible for that very reason?”

^To which I explained why there’s no inconsistency in stating all single-tournament GW %’s are fallible w/shorter samples among them being that much more fallible. You don’t need to explicitly say you think I was being inconsistent, you demonstrated you thought so RIGHT THERE.

And since U refuse to address the other side of the Berdych match I'll leave U with this clincher: sans each match vs. Coria and Berdych Dre's GW% falls by all of 0.7% to 70.9% (112/158) and Bull's by double that % to 62.7% (99/158), which means Nadal benefited more from his own 4th-rounder. Oh yeah and both now have 158 games in total. So much for "sample size" being behind Dre's superiority.

Hilariously sneaky sleight of hand when I’ve consistently omitted the final round cuz Djoker and Rainer are so far apart as opponents that the statistical comparison, which is already on shaky ground, becomes totally farcical if we included them under the guise of fair-mindedness. This would be a “clincher” if I argued their overall (finals included) campaigns were statistically close, but…we know the drill by now…I haven’t.

Omitting both from the pre-final tally actually closes the gap, 0.9% to 0.7%.

We're talking about '03 Kafelnikov, the same has-been who didn't clear 3R (singles only) at any major or Masters in his last season except Rome where he reached the SF. You're welcome to think that Yevgeny who couldn't even get past Nieminen would've pushed Dre harder than Wayne, but that's unlikely.

And I made clear that I don’t think he’d be a particularly challenging late-round opponent, just a potentially dangerous early round floater..as semifinal opponents they’re equally “weak”.

Not to mention 5 matches vs. 11 isn't a fair comparison to begin with. After all "sample size" does matter, right?

It’s almost impossible to amass a large enough sample size for each opponent; that said, the collective samples are large enough (and not random, as these were at worst 8 of the 10 most dangerous Top 25 seeds in the draw, all of which Agassi avoided) to be compared.

the initial statement, that each of them played Agassi about as tough or tougher on HC than each of his actual opponents remains the most important point (though I could walk back including Roddick among those 8, as Schuttler and Escude played Agassi tougher if we don’t put much stock in their cracker ‘04 Cincy match with both in great form)

U left out the "in his own prime" part. Wayne had a lull in the late '90s before a brief resurgence in the aughts, and if U look at their earlier matches he had mostly competitive sets vs. Dre despite the lopsided set W-L.

Blake’s “own prime” didn’t occur until well after (apart from the ‘05 match), and included matches from the tail end of Agassi’s prime.

Still no admission that you were wrong about Blake only playing one great match, as at least 3 of the 5 were competitive and one was a beatdown.

Telling to call any extended part of one of the more lopsided 10+ match rivalries ever “competitive” when not only did Ferreira win a single set in 11 matches, he could only take one of his 23 lost sets to a tiebreak.

You're the one who raised a stink about my harmless description of "a full field" which U explicitly said "is functionally equivalent to a depleted field, in the context of this convo." If U don't wanna waste time on such silly parsing games don't start one in the 1st place.

That’s not a silly parsing game, and your “harmless description” was a red herring that downplayed the quality of Agassi’s draw, directing the attention to the fullness (which, if you’ll remember, is where the “depleted”/“functionally equivalent to depleted” squabble started) of the field at the start. What good is its fullness if, as you say, the great players didn’t live up to their billing? The “parsing game” was quite literally initiated by you here….to say nothing of the ridiculousness of making a fuss about someone wanting to actually be quoted correctly…

I’ll take apart the rest in a few hours.

 

[NonP]

Never said you “refer to it as the alpha and the omega” — however, you entered the thread to lecture me about GW% as it relates to Agassi’s run and the holes were immediately exposed. The comparison to “my ilk’s” fascination with DR is fantasy-talk. I don’t have a comparable list charting single tournament DR’s of eventual GS winners, and if I did I would see it as little more than trivia lol.

I use GW%, DR and what-have-you sparingly, to make specific points, but I’ve at almost every turn caveated them by highlighting the limitations of said metrics (in general, but especially as applied to shorter spans of time). If you cared to fact-check your statements instead of windmilling random accusations you’d find the almost page-long exchange between Guru and I from April where I protested what I felt was his over-reliance on DR to call the ‘07 AO Final a “historic beatdown”. Some “infatuation”.

It’s like you’re a battered pugilist behind on points, fishing for a flash KO in the final rounds.

LOL, you're getting desperate now. For U to think you've been "jousting" with me is amusing in itself. And confident debaters certainly don't pull this infantile "I'm winning and you're getting battered" schtick.

All I said in my OP is that you were downplaying the historic nature of Dre's GW% and RGW%. Some "lecture" it was. But then at least you're no longer calling it a "non sequitur," which I guess is an improvement.

Nah mate, it’s pretty simple that GW% overrates Agassi’s run and I explained my rationale in painstaking detail. It’s not a lofty claim: it’s statistically #1 in the last 50 years on non-clay but isn’t even Agassi’s best run (subjectively, but you agree), and we should be cautious on that basis about grouping it with other statistically robust runs that featured great opponents.

You even indulged this by admitting that the form shown during his 71.6% run can be argued to be as good as the form during his 60.8% run (which makes a 4.6% gap look like child’s play). If you wish to counter by stating it’s only an occasionally useful proxy and not a be-all end-all (which I did not accuse you of using it as) I’m with you…but that make your incursion into the thread even more pointless.

We both agree his form was great, that it was an impressive tournament and I’ve now said over a handful of times that even in the face of great competition Agassi’s form probably holds up. You are the one that elevated what is in essence a minor disagreement by trying (and failing) to NuanceBrigade a truism with stats and lists that you claim aren’t that particularly important yet have brandished in multiple threads at the drop of a hat.

That they overrate some and underrate others (if held as even moderately important) is as easy as A-B-C.

A lot of inane word salad to say the same thing over and over. My main point is that Dre at the '03 AO was not a paper tiger while Bull at the '19 edition or post-'03 Wimby Coria on dirt was, which U still don't seem to have grasped. Dre at the '00 AO was the opposite side of the same coin.

And you're the one that replied to my brief OP with a 5-paragraph "NuanceBrigade" essay that U thought and still think was a successful refutation of my point. Well, no, you haven't done jack crap and repeating it over and over won't make it any more of a reality. Stop fooling yourself about your cranium capacity and stick to the main points instead.

Sheesh, THIS is what you said before pointing out the “red herring”:

“Besides why are you even quibbling about "sample sizes" when U say up front that this GW% method is fallible for that very reason?”

^To which I explained why there’s no inconsistency in stating all single-tournament GW %’s are fallible w/shorter samples among them being that much more fallible. You don’t need to explicitly say you think I was being inconsistent, you demonstrated you thought so RIGHT THERE.

Uh, that was in response to your initial nonstarter about Coria's retirement and sample size. I couldn't care less about your "internal consistency." I just told U to drop the red herring, which I see you're still clinging to:

Hilariously sneaky sleight of hand when I’ve consistently omitted the final round cuz Djoker and Rainer are so far apart as opponents that the statistical comparison, which is already on shaky ground, becomes totally farcical if we included them under the guise of fair-mindedness. This would be a “clincher” if I argued their overall (finals included) campaigns were statistically close, but…we know the drill by now…I haven’t.

Omitting both from the pre-final tally actually closes the gap, 0.9% to 0.7%.

In other words, still irrelevant aka a red herring, unless you're willing to make an Everest out of that 0.2% "gap." And of course you've got nothing to say about Dre's and Bull's equal pre-final sample size.

I don't need any "sneaky sleight of hand" to prove my point when you're doing it 4 moi. Again stop taking this so personally and stick to the biggies instead.

It’s almost impossible to amass a large enough sample size for each opponent; that said, the collective samples are large enough (and not random, as these were at worst 8 of the 10 most dangerous Top 25 seeds in the draw, all of which Agassi avoided) to be compared.

the initial statement, that each of them played Agassi about as tough or tougher on HC than each of his actual opponents remains the most important point (though I could walk back including Roddick among those 8, as Schuttler and Escude played Agassi tougher if we don’t put much stock in their cracker ‘04 Cincy match with both in great form)

I've already explained why your collective H2H is useless crap. It's no more useful than Dre's GW%, that's for sure.

And I've said Dre's draw was among the weaker ones like 48587 times. I'm just debunking your specious attempts to make it look even weaker.

Blake’s “own prime” didn’t occur until well after (apart from the ‘05 match), and included matches from the tail end of Agassi’s prime.

Still no admission that you were wrong about Blake only playing one great match, as at least 3 of the 5 were competitive and one was a beatdown.

Telling to call any extended part of one of the more lopsided 10+ match rivalries ever “competitive” when not only did Ferreira win a single set in 11 matches, he could only take one of his 23 lost sets to a tiebreak.

Unlike U I look beyond the mere #s. Dre was feeling the feeling the effects of his tough QF vs. Enqvist the previous day and Blake went on to win the whole thing. To say this was non-prime Blake and leave it at that is misleading on several fronts, especially with the age factor in play. And the only match where James took Dre to a TB before that '05 USO QF also saw the upstart get bageled by the vet.

Plus I was looking at the biggies when I said Blake played just one "good match" vs. Dre. Not interested in another parsing game about what that entails.

That’s not a silly parsing game, and your “harmless description” was a red herring that downplayed the quality of Agassi’s draw, directing the attention to the fullness (which, if you’ll remember, is where the “depleted”/“functionally equivalent to depleted” squabble started) of the field at the start. What good is its fullness if, as you say, the great players didn’t live up to their billing? The “parsing game” was quite literally initiated by you here….to say nothing of the ridiculousness of making a fuss about someone wanting to actually be quoted correctly…

U really should learn what these terms actually mean before throwing them out. I was talking in terms of probabilities and that was in response to your attempt(s) to make light of the fact that Dre began the tourney with more or less a full field of contenders. You're still fixated on star power when IRL top contenders sometimes bow out early while their lower-ranked peers outdo themselves and play like an actual finalist a la Schuttler or Kyrgios for that matter.

For the umpteenth time U don't clear the rarefied 70% of GW at a major without kicking serious ass, no matter what the draw. The fact that Ivan and Dre are the only champs to pull this off on a traditional surface outside Borg and Nadal (plus Nastase and Vilas vs. actually depleted fields) at RG ain't just "luck."

I’ll take apart the rest in a few hours.

All you're doing is demonstrating your dubious talent at repeating yourself, which U at least recognize enough to admit to "self-loathing." Time to do something about it, eh?

 

[TheFifthSet]

LOL, you're getting desperate now. For U to think you've been "jousting" with me is amusing in itself. And confident debaters certainly don't pull this infantile "I'm winning and you're getting battered" shtick.

So, your MO thrown back at you is bothersome?

The jousting comment was a playful remark, not a LARP. The rest is rich coming from someone whose entire shtick revolves around mockery and arrogance (we’re a few months removed from “smackdown”-gate, but I take it you don’t wish to acknowledge this).

When your patience is tested you frequently abandon civility—recall that YOU were the one that became insulting, and I only responded in kind—something even the other chat members you hand-picked also say, in droves (and will be sure to recognize here). Feel free to ask for second, third and fourth opinions, then disregard them as you’re known to do (“cuz I am the infallible one” - or whatever).

All I said in my OP is that you were downplaying the historic nature of Dre's GW% and RGW%

Where, exactly, do I downplay it? Specifically.

A lot of inane word salad to say the same thing over and over.

Typically the last resort when talking to somebody that either can’t grasp simple concepts or in your case chooses not to.

My main point is that Dre at the '03 AO was not a paper tiger while Bull at the '19 edition or post-'03 Wimby Coria on dirt was, which U still don't seem to have grasped. Dre at the '00 AO was the opposite side of the same coin.

So, still things I neither said in my OP nor claimed thereafter? Your main points have been acknowledged several times over by now, which reinforces why ur the one that split hairs to begin with.

And you're the one that replied to my brief OP with a 5-paragraph "NuanceBrigade" essay that U thought and still think was a successful refutation of my point. Well, no, you haven't done jack crap and repeating it over and over won't make it any more of a reality. Stop fooling yourself about your cranium capacity and stick to the main points instead.

Mm, none of which were responded to.

If you keep misrepresenting my positions, I’ll keep repeating them regardless of how much it bothers you.

Uh, that was in response to your initial nonstarter about Coria's retirement and sample size. I couldn't care less about your "internal consistency." I just told U to drop the red herring, which I see you're still clinging to:

The bolded passage is as clear an attempt at a “gotcha” as you’ll find, yet you’re still maintaining the follow-up justification came out of nowhere and you never challenged the consistency of the argument. Kind of laughable when it’s right there in front of us.

In other words, still irrelevant aka a red herring, unless you're willing to make an Everest out of that 0.2% "gap." And of course you've got nothing to say about Dre's and Bull's equal pre-final sample size.

Irrelevant how? If you disagree with it it’s fine, but I’ve explained multiple times why I believe comparing their pre-finals runs is fairer. The first six rounds were close to equal, competition-wise, and then go in opposite directions with a very formidable Djoker being compared to a solid tour player who falls just short of being elite, who you’ve even said could possibly lose to ‘19 Rafa by the same margin he lost to Dre.

Not “making an Everest” out of the 0.2% narrowing of the gap, simply pointing out that under the examining criteria I use, the gap would go from 0.9% to 0.7%. You know full well I haven’t been comparing their total event stats.

And I already addressed that Coria’s retirement meant Agassi had to win 9 fewer games, or about 8.5% less.

I've already explained why your collective H2H is useless crap. It's no more useful than Dre's GW%, that's for sure.

I’ll get to all of that, but no it isn’t “useless crap” when even a pretty good draw like ‘00 (which, I repeat, YOU even say can be regarded as equal despite being 11% lower than ‘03) swings the %’s the other way, my whole point here. If a good draw can influence the #’s to that degree it calls into question just how much we can rely on them for single-tourney samples—you apparently believe it’s not too much (yet look for every other opp to adduce the figures lmao), I think it’s even less than that—no harm no foul, but don’t act like I’m the one prolonging this convo or being childish when we can verify that you set the tempo with the insulting behaviour.

And I've said Dre's draw was among the weaker ones like 48587 times. I'm just debunking your specious attempts to make it look even weaker.

That’s downplaying it when it’s actually one of the weakest slam-winning draws of the OE (naturally exempting the Aussie-only AO’s). His opposition was dreadfully weak on paper (by cumulative accomplishments, you’d be hard-pressed to find many that are weaker), in practice and also specifically with how they matched up with Dre (which I’ll still get to after I sift through this current gish gallop).

Unlike U I look beyond the mere #s. Dre was feeling the feeling the effects of his tough QF vs. Enqvist the previous day and Blake went on to win the whole thing.

Not what you said. You stated in plain language that the ‘05 USO was the only good match Blake played against Dre. Agassi being knackered doesn’t take away from Blake playing a good match. I’m sure me not being able to read your damn mind will be explained away as needless parsing yet again.

And LOL, wow. So, Agassi feeling a bit of fatigue is enough to throw out Blake’s effort altogether? From the article you linked:

"I had plenty of fight, I just didn't have the goods," Agassi said. "He just played better than I did in every department."

-

"I needed to come out here and play two great matches in a row, and I just couldn't do it," he said”

-
Then Blake’s assessment:

"To actually win that match -- you never really think it's possible when you're a kid, watching him win the French Open, watching him win Wimbledon, watching him win every single tournament. It's amazing. To know that I can play on that level, it's big."

w/complimentary comments interspersed from the author about Blake’s level.

So, do you think Agassi being fatigued and Blake playing a great match are mutually exclusive, or is this more pedantry? He wasn’t even injured, played a 2h23m match the previous day (on a hot day, yes, but that’s not exactly a marathon) and rebounded the next event to make the US Open final.

And then the next year, he pushes Dre to 3 once more at DC.

“One good match”.

Your biggest reach yet, by far.

To say this was non-prime Blake and leave it at that is misleading on several fronts, especially with the age factor in play.

You’re the one that mentioned “primes” despite Agassi still being in his broader prime from ‘99-‘03 (and certainly at his most consistent).

The age factor is important but we’re talkin’ bout one of the fittest players on tour, even then.

Plus I was looking at the biggies when I said Blake played just one "good match" vs. Dre. Not interested in another parsing game about what that entails.

And now a confirmed instance of me not being able to freaking read your mind (a simple “I’m gonna limit it to BO5’s” would’ve sufficed) being called “parsing”.

U really should learn what these terms actually mean before throwing them out. I was talking in terms of probabilities and that was in response to your attempt(s) to make light of the fact that Dre began the tourney with more or less a full field of contenders.

I both correctly used them and acknowledged your banal point about probabilities— “but your chances of getting "lucky" decrease as the # of top players increases”—which was at best only tangentially related to the topic.

You’re speaking in abstractions when it’s clear from what DID happen that Agassi WAS fortunate that the draw played out the way it did. Not fortunate in the sense that it renders him a weak champ, or for us speculate that he’d be mincemeat if it didn’t. Lucky purely in terms of how it affected his match stats.

For the umpteenth time U don't clear the rarefied 70% of GW at a major without kicking serious ass, no matter what the draw.

Cool, never said otherwise, but the draws often swing the %’s by enough (I’d say occasionally even up to 10-15% or more) to make the stats pretty damn useless past certain evaluations (“he played great”) that we can make with our own eyes. If the thing we can derive from these stats is that Agassi played a great event and was a worthy champ, I’m with you. All I was saying is that they exaggerate the extent of his greatness (well, also it being called an “all-timer” cuz it doesn’t meet my admittedly subjective minmumum competition threshold) , especially considering I’ve even witnessed a fair few posters over the years call it his best run on the basis of the stats.

All you're doing is demonstrating your dubious talent at repeating yourself, which U at least recognize enough to admit to "self-loathing." Time to do something about it, eh?

LOL, if you wish to weaponize self-deprecating jokes I make to those I like (there’s a reason I treat you with kid gloves despite the overbearing self-promotion and random cheap shots) I think you’re the one that should take some initiative re: examining crappy personal habits.

 

[NonP]

So, your MO thrown back at you is bothersome?

The jousting comment was a playful remark, not a LARP. The rest is rich coming from someone whose entire shtick revolves around mockery and arrogance (we’re a few months removed from “smackdown”-gate, but I take it you don’t wish to acknowledge this).

When your patience is tested you frequently abandon civility—recall that YOU were the one that became insulting, and I only responded in kind—something even the other chat members you hand-picked also say, in droves (and will be sure to recognize here). Feel free to ask for second, third and fourth opinions, then disregard them as you’re known to do (“cuz I am the infallible one” - or whatever).

The "smackdown" quip was also a "playful remark." Why the hell would I not wish to acknowledge it when you're trying to spin it as something less innocent? Your "jousting" comment didn't bother moi at first. I'm just throwing back at U after, yes, U exhausted my patience. Sue me.

Not interested in litigating who "started it." Again stick to the biggies instead.

Where, exactly, do I downplay it? Specifically.

R U seriously trying to play another he-said-(s)he-said? See #277 which I specifically replied to in light of another Coria comparison of yours in #291.

Typically the last resort when talking to somebody that either can’t grasp simple concepts or in your case chooses not to.

Which was followed by a much more concise summary of the point of contention. If there's anyone dodging here it ain't moi.

So, still things I neither said in my OP nor claimed thereafter? Your main points have been acknowledged several times over by now, which reinforces why ur the one that split hairs to begin with.

Uh, no. If you think anything implicit in my comments is fair game U don't get to play the "But I never said it!" card. See your original reply in #314 and start from there.

Also I don't think '12 Novak (again either one) was a paper tiger, either, so whatever quibbling about post hoc rationalization doesn't hold water.

Mm, none of which were responded to.

If you keep misrepresenting my positions, I’ll keep repeating them regardless of how much it bothers you.

If my thorough replies to your repetitious walls of text don't count as direct ones you're the one having trouble with reading, not me.

The bolded passage is as clear an attempt at a “gotcha” as you’ll find, yet you’re still maintaining the follow-up justification came out of nowhere and you never challenged the consistency of the argument. Kind of laughable when it’s right there in front of us.

Nope, my criticism has been all about your amplifying the Coria retirement all along, not about your "internal consistency." You're throwing out that one aside to deflect from your red herring but it's obvious to any half-awake moron what my focus was.

Nice of U to broadcast your real intention, though. At least everyone can see where you were coming from.

Irrelevant how? If you disagree with it it’s fine, but I’ve explained multiple times why I believe comparing their pre-finals runs is fairer. The first six rounds were close to equal, competition-wise, and then go in opposite directions with a very formidable Djoker being compared to a solid tour player who falls just short of being elite, who you’ve even said could possibly lose to ‘19 Rafa by the same margin he lost to Dre.

Not “making an Everest” out of the 0.2% narrowing of the gap, simply pointing out that under the examining criteria I use, the gap would go from 0.9% to 0.7%. You know full well I haven’t been comparing their total event stats.

And I already addressed that Coria’s retirement meant Agassi had to win 9 fewer games, or about 8.5% less.

By your own admission Dre still suffers a bigger drop than Coria in pre-F GW% (0.9% vs. 0.7%) sans 4R. To cling to this as another "gotcha" about my "sneaky sleight of hand" reeks of desperation, especially since you've yet to acknowledge '03 Dre and '19 Bull played an equal # of games before the F and sans 4R. Your "sample size" fixation re: the Coria retirement is irrelevant, period.

I’ll get to all of that, but no it isn’t “useless crap” when even a pretty good draw like ‘00 (which, I repeat, YOU even say can be regarded as equal despite being 11% lower than ‘03) swings the %’s the other way, my whole point here....

Your collective H2H is specious not because a good draw wouldn't have had a significant impact on Dre's GW%, but cuz you're grouping all the matchups together to arrive at this meaningless win-loss ratio that tells us zilch about each individual matchup. U don't get to say Dre got lucky avoiding tough individual opponents and then lump all his actual opponents together as a single entity.

That’s downplaying it when it’s actually one of the weakest slam-winning draws of the OE (naturally exempting the Aussie-only AO’s). His opposition was dreadfully weak on paper (by cumulative accomplishments, you’d be hard-pressed to find many that are weaker), in practice and also specifically with how they matched up with Dre (which I’ll still get to after I sift through this current gish gallop).

More of the same. Get back to me what U got your bullet points ready about the specific matchups.

Not what you said. You stated in plain language that the ‘05 USO was the only good match Blake played against Dre. Agassi being knackered doesn’t take away from Blake playing a good match. I’m sure me not being able to read your damn mind will be explained away as needless parsing yet again.

And LOL, wow. So, Agassi feeling a bit of fatigue is enough to throw out Blake’s effort altogether? From the article you linked....

So U admit to "not being able to read your mind" and yet think U know exactly what I meant. Why the hell do U think I focused on the famous USO showdown which Dre won when there's one match he did lose?

The rest of your reply is indeed "needless parsing." Again not interested in defining what counts as a "good win."

You’re the one that mentioned “primes” despite Agassi still being in his broader prime from ‘99-‘03 (and certainly at his most consistent).

The age factor is important but we’re talkin’ bout one of the fittest players on tour, even then.

I said "in his own prime," which in this case referred to Ferreira's. And everyone knows Dre was dealing with all sorts of injuries in his final years.

You're welcome to argue, all things considered, Wayne's pre-'98 matches w/Dre were still less impressive than James', but you aren't even doing that. Not to mention these two play rather differently to begin with.

I both correctly used them and acknowledged your banal point about probabilities— “but your chances of getting "lucky" decrease as the # of top players increases”—which was at best only tangentially related to the topic.

You’re speaking in abstractions when it’s clear from what DID happen that Agassi WAS fortunate that the draw played out the way it did. Not fortunate in the sense that it renders him a weak champ, or for us speculate that he’d be mincemeat if it didn’t. Lucky purely in terms of how it affected his match stats.

For the umpteenth time that was in response to your quibbling about the "full field" remark, which was 100% accurate. Even in this GW% context that fact is relevant cuz, again, players often play above or below expectations. Would '19 Bull have done better than '03 Schuttler vs. that GOATing Dre? Yeah, most likely, but not IMO to the extent Dre would fail to cap off his 3rd 65+% AO run.

Which, if true, would mean it's indeed relevant that his 71.6% came vs. a full field of contenders. Of course that's no guarantee that he'd bulldoze thru an actually depleted one a la '77 Vilas' or even '70 Nastase's at RG or at least its rough HC equivalent at a faster or similar clip, but it does make this scenario more likely, aka a greater probability.

So you're the one who's speaking in abstractions, not moi. My point has real-life implications and your nonstop repetition of the same tired point about Dre's weak draw won't change that.

Cool, never said otherwise, but the draws often swing the %’s by enough (I’d say occasionally even up to 10-15% or more) to make the stats pretty damn useless past certain evaluations (“he played great”) that we can make with our own eyes. If the thing we can derive from these stats is that Agassi played a great event and was a worthy champ, I’m with you. All I was saying is that they exaggerate the extent of his greatness (well, also it being called an “all-timer” cuz it doesn’t meet my admittedly subjective minmumum competition threshold) , especially considering I’ve even witnessed a fair few posters over the years call it his best run on the basis of the stats.

See above. I'm not disputing your point that Dre's draw has a lot to do with his dominant GW%. What I'm disputing is the degree to which U think it does, and how predictive (or not) such a historic GW% is.

LOL, if you wish to weaponize self-deprecating jokes I make to those I like (there’s a reason I treat you with kid gloves despite the overbearing self-promotion and random cheap shots) I think you’re the one that should take some initiative re: examining crappy personal habits.

U know that joke of yours wasn't the real target of my "suggestion." The only thing I'm "weaponiz[ing]" is your "jousting" comment, cuz I do whatever I damn plz.

 

[TheFifthSet]

Two more to correct before the more thorough response:

Nice of U to broadcast your real intention, though. At least everyone can see where you were coming from.

I meant that was a gotcha attempt on your part (noting the apparent disconnect between those two things, where there was none), not mine. Hard to see where there’s ambiguity, but okay, could have been more specific for your benefit.

and:

So U admit to "not being able to read your mind" and yet think U know exactly what I meant.

What you meant for sure is anyone’s guess, but there’s absolutely no way one would infer that from “that’s the only great match he played”, you REALLY meant “that’s the only great match he played [in a BO5/“biggie”, and matches where his opponent didn’t play well themselves]”.

Me not being able to do so and calling out your 23rd hour qualification is not “parsing”.

 

[NonP]

I meant that was a gotcha attempt on your part (noting the apparent disconnect between those two things, where there was none), not mine. Hard to see where there’s ambiguity, but okay, could have been more specific for your benefit.

K, so I did misunderstand U this time. Congratulations. In any case that original point of mine was a fair one, not a "gotcha." And my overall point about the Coria retirement stands.

What you meant for sure is anyone’s guess, but there’s absolutely no way one would infer that from “that’s the only great match he played”, you REALLY meant “that’s the only great match he played [in a BO5/“biggie”, and matches where his opponent didn’t play well themselves]”.

Me not being able to do so and calling out your 23rd hour qualification is not “parsing”.

I specifically singled out that remark and your response to it before dismissing the rest as parsing, so you're conflating it with the whole thing. I get that it's Saturday nite but let's at least try to be accurate, m'kay?

 

[MichaelNadal]

Which is why the 2007 W final is now being reexamined and talked up. There isn't much of anything else. At the time in 2007, Nadal was just a dirt baller with an easy draw who got lucky in the final. In 2022, it's a classic, a masterpiece.

It is a classic, and a great match, but it is definitely not on 2008 level. In recent years, Maestronians have definitely tried to act like it is

 

[TheFifthSet]

The "smackdown" quip was also a "playful remark."

Your "jousting" comment didn't bother moi at first. I'm just throwing back at U after, yes, U exhausted my patience. Sue me.

Except very few seemed to be in on the joke (which was another instance of superfluous grandstanding), including the poster it was directed at. I understood it as one (albeit a pretty tasteless joke, unlike the jousting one, though similar to the pugilist quip), but many didn’t.

This is a common theme when you go that route, people will apparently misunderstand your intentions (another example of us being too dim to read your mind?), and then you will fall back on the “it’s my shtick” card. Somewhat tolerable in small doses, but have you ever thought that by making faux-arrogance and dickishness your regular personality, it actually IS pretty dickish?

Note that when someone else even momentarily throws that back at you (namely me, here), you call it infantile. Never mind the fact that I only started with the roasts after you got insulting. Regardless of my “pedantry”, I addressed you respectfully before that and would have continued to do so. When you consistently can’t even treat our more genial TTW denizens (like Wasp and HS, among others) with respect I can be pretty bullish about not being the problem here.

Not interested in litigating who "started it." Again stick to the biggies instead.

Then it’s ridiculous to call out my supposed immaturity if we’ve now established i was civil and only deviated from civility to be “infantile” after you chose to be insulting—a real paragon of maturity you are.

R U seriously trying to play another he-said-(s)he-said? See #277 which I specifically replied to in light of another Coria comparison of yours in #291.

Been over this…your points in the initial reply aren’t even ones I disagree with outside of what actually does amount to quibbling on your end: you’re confident that Agassi’s GW% would stick to around 65%+ even with a tough draw (though even a single very tough opponent in ‘04 brought his pre-SF 69.8% down to 64.1%).

I, OTOH, would say a range of 60-65% is reasonable to expect even with a normal-to-fairly-tough draw…like ‘00 (which was very tough but tempered by Pete’s injury when on the brink of victory, the 5th was a gimme as a result).

We both think 71.6% is higher than it would be in a tougher draw (which is why the central point Krali and I focus on—that his statistical dominance distorts our evaluation—is valid).

So, in the end, you really did begin splitting hairs over a few % points since my OP never said anything remotely unflattering about Agassi’s actual level of play and I clarified my stance on just how well I think Agassi would do in later posts.

Nope, my criticism has been all about your amplifying the Coria retirement all along, not about your "internal consistency."

For the last time:

“Besides why are you even quibbling about "sample sizes" when U say up front that this GW% method is fallible for that very reason?”

Is a clear indication that you thought I was being inconsistent about the sample size difference in these two instances (“why are you quibbling”) given that I also maintain they’re crappy to begin with (“when you say this GW% method is fallible for that very reason?”). And there’s no contradiction between thinking they’re all fallible but some are more than others - that’s it.

By your own admission Dre still suffers a bigger drop than Coria in pre-F GW% (0.9% vs. 0.7%) sans 4R. To cling to this as another "gotcha" about my "sneaky sleight of hand" reeks of desperation,

That was in DIRECT RESPONSE to you using a sample that was separate from my own and then positioning your move (removing Coria/Berdych) as some kind of “clincher” in the argument we WERE having. It can’t be cuz I’ve said til I was blue in the face that I’m NOT comparing their overall event stats.

especially since you've yet to acknowledge '03 Dre and '19 Bull played an equal # of games before the F and sans 4R.

Lol, I made it crystal-clear that the drop from 0.9% to 0.7% isn’t a sticking point, it’s just how it plays out with us omitting Cordych under the selected sample I focus on (pre-final), so the big gap you allude to once they’re removed is under the sample you use.

Your collective H2H is specious not because a good draw wouldn't have had a significant impact on Dre's GW%, but cuz you're grouping all the matchups together to arrive at this meaningless win-loss ratio that tells us zilch about each individual matchup

Would be nearly impossible to draw conclusions with high degrees of confidence from EACH match-up given some of the small samples, so there’s no other choice but to take it as a collective…otherwise we’d practically never be able to argue that some draws appear to have positive or negative match-up skews lol. From the disproportionately lopsided H2H of 31-2 we can conclude that the collective draw was weak from a match-up perspective.

What IS clear wrt to individual match-ups is that there isn’t one player from his draw that demonstrated they were at any point tough match-ups (based on what we have)… collectively, though, we can confidently say thwre was underperformance; relevant cuz we’re discussing GW%’s against the collective.

Again not interested in defining what counts as a "good win."

Yet you were interested enough to poke holes in Blake’s win by citing garden-variety fatigue from Agassi??

U don't get to say Dre got lucky avoiding tough individual opponents and then lump all his actual opponents together as a single entity.

Except I’m comparing a series of match-ups that were confirmed toughies (Hewitt, Safin who beat “70% GW before the semi Agassi” the following year, JCF who beat him at the USO, etc). to those that were either not tough or could not prove it either individually or especially not as a collective over 30+ total matches. We’ve got 7 opponents and not one of them could show any significant mettle against Agassi (on non-clay) in any of the H2H’s. Sure, that COULD HAVE changed (zero indication though, not even clues), but we KNOW the ones that slipped through the cracks had a history of challenging Dre.

I said "in his own prime," which in this case referred to Ferreira's. And everyone knows Dre was dealing with all sorts of injuries in his final years.

And my point was that if you’re going to focus on primes it’s not fair to totally disregard matches from ‘99-‘03 (arguably even ‘04 when he suited up) where Blake had success in Agassi’s broad prime despite being even further removed from his prime than Dre was. Age difference or not, it wasn’t until later that JB started living up to his promise.

You're welcome to argue, all things considered, Wayne's pre-'98 matches w/Dre were still less impressive than James', but you aren't even doing that.

Not being snarky when I say I genuinely didn’t think I needed to spend much time on that considering how self-evident it is lol.

‘98 WF wasn’t ranked as high as from 94-96 but he had 5 top 10 wins (2nd most of any year in his career: two scalps over Pete, two over peak Rafter and one on clay against Rios). In ‘00 he had an “Indian Summer” and won a Masters. Yet, even just in those two years Dre was 37-11 in GW (77.0%) in 3 matches, and ‘98 Dre, tho resurgent, wasn’t exactly a world-beater.

It’s clear that Ferreira did worse in the H2H than the gap in respective achievements would predict.

Even in this GW% context that fact is relevant cuz, again, players often play above or below expectations. Would '19 Bull have done better than '03 Schuttler vs. that GOATing Dre? Yeah, most likely, but not IMO to the extent Dre would fail to cap off his 3rd 65+% AO run.

What’s ‘19 Nadal vs ‘03 Dre have to do with it? I fully admit the latter would be a huge favourite, which bolsters the line of thinking that Dull’s own hypo statistical dominance (whether he breaks 70% or not , sub Djoker in with Rainer and it’s likely it goes down as an EXTREMELY dominant statistical campaign) means little.

As I’ve been saying all along it’s not a slight against Agassi, it’s a criticism of the gauge, which we both agree is flawed.

The fact that the field was full but the threatening players therein folded like a house of cards can’t be anything but lucky, and it IS essentially the same as a depleted field from th POV.

What I'm disputing is the degree to which U think it does

No idea the exact degree to which it does, only speculating, but it would be enough to NOT have it stand out in these discussions to the degree that it does (with numerous postings over the years calling it his best run based on stats, something we’re **confirmed** to agree is dubious), which again is a pretty darn mild take for an OP.

It’s very possible ‘03 AO is still a comfortably dominant statcamp (though nowhere near 70%) even with good/great comp. Again, my hunch is that with a typical-to-tough draw he’d be in the 60-65% range, and still be a plump favourite. IMO not a whole lot changed from ‘03 to early ‘04 and Agassi was comparably excellent at the ‘04 AO, winning 69.8% of his games going into the SF, where Safin brought it down to 64.1%, ultimately beating him (even almost straight-setted him before having a lull from 5-5 0-30 onward in the third).

My general fence-sitting isn’t about him playing great. I’ve told you my wariness about anointing certain runs as historic if they don’t meet that (yes, subjective) threshold of comp. On that specific point I understand why we diverge…but not why you’d hair-split when it’s clear our starting criteria is far too different to find common-ground.

 

[TheFifthSet]

con’t:

I specifically singled out that remark and your response to it before dismissing the rest as parsing, so you're conflating it with the whole thing. I get that it's Saturday nite

You’re right that I conflated them here, have a nasty habit of occasionally skimming when my own patience is lost. That said, my main point about there being absolutely no way a normal person could have inferred what you meant based on what you said (which you pushed back on) still stands—if you want to talk only BO5’s that’s one thing, but that came when I cornered you about the unambiguous statement that Blake only played one great match with Agassi lol. Nothing was said about only using BO5’s, before or after, and if you say “well you should’ve known something something I’m infallible” - yes yes, but the infallible one made math errors and misunderstood me various times in this thread alone lol.

Not admitting it was unreasonable to expect me to know your true meaning is cartoonishly stubborn.

but let's at least try to be accurate, m'kay?

Lol, please. Misreads do happen, which is why I’ve shown you an exhausting amount of leniency here and threads past, even making light of it instead of turning to hostility. That’s a far cry from careless distortion (like randomly saying I’m part of a “DR-infatuated ilk” when I have called into Q the explanatory scope of DR many times, sometimes to an incessant degree).

U know that joke of yours wasn't the real target of my "suggestion."

For the sake of avoiding another pedantry-fest I’ll take your word for it, but how can you not see that your oblique suggestion immediately following the quote doesn’t indicate otherwise?

Scratch the part about poring over each match-up, this exchange was instructive enough and the weirdly unprompted descent into antagonism took the initial fun out of it. Feel free to have the last word.

 

[RS]

Is there any version of Djokovic that could defeat the scary 2005 version of Safin?

Many.

 

[jackson vile]

Federer is best at USO and the O2 arena

 

[NonP]

Except very few seemed to be in on the joke (which was another instance of superfluous grandstanding), including the poster it was directed at. I understood it as one (albeit a pretty tasteless joke, unlike the jousting one, though similar to the pugilist quip), but many didn’t....

U go to such lengths to prove I'm the dick who started it all but can't see why I'm not interested in rehashing this? I'll just add that joke backfired not necessarily cuz it was "tasteless" but cuz of what had transpired before it, and at least a third of chat members "seemed to be in on the joke" (I'd actually say about half but most didn't speak out for fear of offending or inflaming).

If you're that eager to hash this out follow up on the PM U sent moi just a few days ago. No need to bore others with details they aren't even familiar with.

Been over this….

It ain't "splitting hairs" if U think Dre's GW% could fall as low as 60% "even with a normal to fairly tough draw" and that description could be applied to his '00 AO draw as well. I say that's too low and reaching respectively, hence our difference of "degree."

For the last time:

Again that was a last aside added to my main criticism about your uber-focus on "sample size." Nobody could read our exchanges and conclude your consistency or lack thereof was what I was interested in exposing.

That was in DIRECT RESPONSE to you using a sample that was separate from my own and then positioning your move (removing Coria/Berdych) as some kind of “clincher” in the argument we WERE having. It can’t be cuz I’ve said til I was blue in the face that I’m NOT comparing their overall event stats.

The point is that removing the 4th-rounder vs. Coria or Berdych would make no meaningful difference in terms of either GW% or sample size. That's why I called it a red herring.

Would be nearly impossible to draw conclusions with high degrees of confidence from EACH match-up given some of the small samples, so there’s no other choice but to take it as a collective…otherwise we’d practically never be able to argue that some draws appear to have positive or negative match-up skews lol. From the disproportionately lopsided H2H of 31-2 we can conclude that the collective draw was weak from a match-up perspective.

Again a legit Slam contender is supposed to clear early rounds with ease and by your own contention that Coria match is a ?, so even if I budge on Grosjean we're still looking at 1-18 unless you insist on counting retirements and indoor matches. And even that's being generous cuz we're assuming, say, Grosjean's straight-set L in '98 USO 1R counts the same as Schuttler's 3-setter in the '03 YEC SF (which was outdoors, as U know).

Yet you were interested enough to poke holes in Blake’s win by citing garden-variety fatigue from Agassi??

That was to show that simply relying on the years/rankings is misleading. I've already explained why I focused on the '05 USO QF.

Except I’m comparing a series of match-ups that were confirmed toughies (Hewitt, Safin who beat “70% GW before the semi Agassi” the following year, JCF who beat him at the USO, etc). to those that were either not tough or could not prove it either individually or especially not as a collective over 30+ total matches. We’ve got 7 opponents and not one of them could show any significant mettle against Agassi (on non-clay) in any of the H2H’s. Sure, that COULD HAVE changed (zero indication though, not even clues), but we KNOW the ones that slipped through the cracks had a history of challenging Dre.

U know full well having to go thru guys of that caliber in a "series" is extremely rare. Pistol did come close at the '01 USO, but fell short in the F as we all know. In fact the only successful example I can think of is Edberg's '92 USO run, which is rightly regarded as one of the toughest ever. (One could add Jim's at RG that same year, but I say still a notch below Stefan's.)

So no, grouping 'em together as one big collective series of matchups makes no sense unless U can show that Dre's '03 AO draw is as big an anomaly. I say such uber-tough "draws" are rarer, especially in light of recent seasons.

And my point was that if you’re going to focus on primes it’s not fair to totally disregard matches from ‘99-‘03 (arguably even ‘04 when he suited up) where Blake had success in Agassi’s broad prime despite being even further removed from his prime than Dre was. Age difference or not, it wasn’t until later that JB started living up to his promise.

I know it's a selective overview. I'm just saying it's still a legit one cuz Wayne's decline happened to coincide with Dre's resurgence. Of course WF would look like a bigger punching bag in those years.

Not being snarky when I say I genuinely didn’t think I needed to spend much time on that considering how self-evident it is lol....

Remember, all this sub-talk began when we disagreed on what defines a bad matchup. Based on the scores it's fair to assume James matched up better vs. Dre than Wayne and the '03 AO champ did have an easy draw, and I'm saying that's the wrong way to look at it. We know WF and JB are roughly equal players - Wayne's trophy collection, tennis IQ and I say overall game are more complete, but James was the more explosive athlete - and the fact that Dre handled his contemporary better than the upstart tells moi he had something of an Achilles' heel vs. those who could impose their superior athleticism to counter his baseline hugging.

That's why I'm not convinced that Blake would have such an easier time than Ferreira vs. Agassi in his own physical prime. U should know Dre actually used to be known as one of the faster/quicker guys and this caricature of a lumbering if preternaturally gifted ball-striker with a pigeon walk is a fairly recent meme. It's no coincidence that the only times he seemed to be able to hang with on-fire Pistol were '95 and (early) '00 to a lesser extent when he had yet to lose a full step, and once he did he was in trouble vs. not only Blake but Bull, Rusty and of course Fred. (The same more or less applies to Hewitt, in fact.)

Would JB still have been as successful (relatively speaking, of course) vs. '95 or even '00 Dre? Possible, but I doubt it.

What’s ‘19 Nadal vs ‘03 Dre have to do with it? I fully admit the latter would be a huge favourite, which bolsters the line of thinking that Dull’s own hypo statistical dominance (whether he breaks 70% or not aside, sub Djoker in with Rainer and it’s likely it goes down as an EXTREMELY dominant statistical campaign) means little.

As I’ve been saying all along it’s not a slight against Agassi, it’s a criticism of the gauge, which we both agree is flawed.

The fact that the field was full but the threatening players therein folded like a house of cards can’t be anything but lucky, and it IS essentially the same as a depleted field from th POV.

It's not out of the question that '03 Dre drubs '19 Bull a la Djoker in that year's F who a fair # of my fellow fans would agree wasn't quite as commanding as his '11 or '13 self despite the GW%s. Which means, again, that Dre would still end up near 70%. IOW still historic.

Also you're still not getting my point about the "full field." Before the start of the tourney nobody would've picked Escude to give Dre the toughest fight en route to his 4th AO, but that's exactly what happened. So if the top guys underperformed the Frenchman did the very opposite, without which Dre might have flirted with topping a Borg/Nadalian 75%. On hard.

But that's just one match, U say? Correct, but that's also why it's relevant that the '03 AO had a full field of contenders. Otherwise Dre might not even have had to deal with that Escude or a rough equivalent at all, and there's always a chance a non-star plays like a top 10 stud a la Andreev at the '08 USO (or '10 AO, for that matter), Rosol and Benneteau at '12 Wimby, Kyrgios pretty much everywhere, ditto Hrbaty, etc. Escude is but one link in that long linage of workmen outdoing themselves.

Hence my insistence that '03 Dre would still put up dominant #s barring exceptionally tough opposition. To call his draw "depleted" fails to take into account the other side of the probabilistic coin.

No idea the exact degree to which it does, only speculating, but it would be enough to NOT have it stand out in these discussions to the degree that it does (with numerous postings over the years calling it his best run based on stats, something we’re **confirmed** to agree is dubious), which again is a pretty darn mild take for an OP....

To moi 1-2% is hairsplitting (except maybe if we're comparing whole careers), 5+% is not. YMMV.

You’re right that I conflated them here, have a nasty habit of occasionally skimming when my own patience is lost....

Your pointing out this ambiguity was fine, but not making such a big deal of it.

Lol, please....

I'll chalk this up 2 a long weekend. That was quite clearly harmless ribbing.

Scratch the part about poring over each match-up, this exchange was instructive enough and the weirdly unprompted descent into antagonism took the initial fun out of it. Feel free to have the last word.

I actually don't care about having the last word unless it leads to some sort of a resolution. To moi U underrate Dre's 03 AO run and the significance of his historic GW% and to U I do the opposite. That's the gist of our disagreement.

 

[TheFifthSet]

k, just read this over. Was told by another member I should give you another chance, so I’ll ignore the obnoxious stuff and see if it continues. Any more unprompted dickishness to simple disagreements and it’ll be best for my own sake to hit ‘Ignore’. Not intended as an ultimatum, simply setting boundaries. I can handle even worse mudslinging with trolls, but I could really go without these sorts of squabbles with non-trolls that I have a positive history with. I’ll take your word here that you’re not opposed to reaching a resolution.

U know full well having to go thru guys of that caliber in a "series" is extremely rare.

Indeed, but I never said he needed to do that. I said all of the tough opponents were avoided, not that he’d need to face all (or even 3-4) of them to validate the run. Both more depth and top-heaviness would make his statistical dominance easier to assess and would meet that minimum threshold for me. An ‘01 USO equivalent draw is not necessary and don’t think I implied it was.

Rest of the paragraph covered by above.

That was to show that simply relying on the years/rankings is misleading.

That works both ways cuz it’s just as misleading to offhandedly disregard matches occurring from 02-03, as if Dre wasn’t still in his broader prime then. Throwing out matches on account of them not approximating prime-for-prime conditions is how we got here. I could understand assigning them lower degrees of importance, but not throwing them out totally.

If you're that eager to hash this out follow up on the PM U sent moi just a few days ago. No need to bore others with details they aren't even familiar with.

Generally fine with that, but I’m not too keen about hashing out a public disagreement privately if I did nothing to initiate the conflict publicly. Doesn’t do as much to deter future public beefs as a simple “my bad, went too far” in the thread. Nonetheless, my line is open.

It ain't "splitting hairs" if U think Dre's GW% could fall as low as 60% "even with a normal to fairly tough draw" and that description could be applied to his '00 AO draw as well. I say that's too low and reaching respectively, hence our difference of "degree."

So, is it mainly the lower end that you object to here?

Cuz ‘00 AO is already on the lower end (60.8%) of the range I gave to ‘03 AO in a decently tough draw. If it’s “too tough” to be haphazardly characterized as only decently tough or in the normal range of difficulty, then let’s give Dre some leniency and remove Pete.

He’s now at 62.7%. That’s against a draw consisting of:

Puerta
Schalken
Zabaleta
Scud
Arazi
Kafelnikov

Pretty normal one, no? If we swap Pete with, say, a well-playing Rusedski and let Dre slap together a 6-3, 6-4, 6-4, his numbers don’t budge.

Or, forget swapping SF opponents and let’s just make the Pete-less draw ever so slightly tougher (say by replacing Zabaleta with a low-tier serve-bot like Arthurs), and it could conceivably drop to 61% (not saying it’s likely—that’s why there’s a range—but it being conceivable is enough to validate the range). Even that wouldn’t be an impossibly tough draw.

And that is all despite you not being opposed to the idea that ‘00 was better than ‘03.

If 62-63% is acceptable for you on the lower end, that’s fine. I still maintain 60-65% is a good range, with 62-3ish% being the median outcome (again refer to an arguably better-playing Dre in a hypothetical Pete-less draw in ‘00).

Bottom line is that the main point from my OP (that the 71.6% greatly overstates his brilliance) stands regardless. Disagreeing about the lower end of an estimate is pretty hair-splitty from my vantage point.

To moi 1-2% is hairsplitting (except maybe if we're comparing whole careers), 5+% is not. YMMV.

Covered above, 5% is the most pessimistic estimate. He was better in ‘00/just as good in ‘01 and hit 60.8%/63.7% those years (and if ‘00 was on the tougher side of normal, ‘01 was on the easier side).

I know it's a selective overview. I'm just saying it's still a legit one cuz Wayne's decline happened to coincide with Dre's resurgence. Of course WF would look like a bigger punching bag in those years.

That’s why I focused on ‘98 and ‘00. WF was a gatekeeper even at his best, in ‘98 and ‘00 he was less consistent but hit similar heights (those 5 aforementioned Top 10 wins in ‘98, the MS in ‘00).
‘98 was a massive improvement from ‘97 for Dre, but he didn’t see a true resurgence at the big tournaments til ‘99. ‘98 Dre was crap at big tournaments, didn’t even make a slam QF. ‘98 Ferreira was less consistent than at his peak but beat Sampras 2x and Rafter 2x in a peak year (as well as a solid Rios on his worst surface), which means he was every bit as dangerous against the best. ‘00 WF posted prime-level showings at majors and won a Masters. Yet even just in those three years, the 3 matches produced a 77% GW from Dre.


The fact that their primes didn’t overlap perfectly in those years doesn’t mean only pre-‘98 merits a look, and outside of those two you just have have ‘02/‘03 matches at SJ and AO. Not a lot of opportunities for AA to truly run up the count against post-prime Ferreira like you imply.

Again that was a last aside added to my main criticism about your uber-focus on "sample size." Nobody could read our exchanges and conclude your consistency or lack thereof was what I was interested in exposing.

Your aside was followed by a simple retort from me—which bookended a paragraph—that was all of five or so words. That’s not me fixating on anything…I just pointed out it’s not actually inconsistent. You responded to that by saying that you never said I was being inconsistent, but the wording indicated you thought I was—so it doesn’t matter if it was explicitly said. That’s the extent of it. The initial disagreement wasn’t major for either of us lol, just took on a life of its own afterward.

The point is that removing the 4th-rounder vs. Coria or Berdych would make no meaningful difference in terms of either GW% or sample size. That's why I called it a red herring.

I never said this on its own would make a meaningful difference for either. The original comparison between Coria and Berdych at the same stage of the tourney for Aggdal was meant to demonstrate that it’s problematic to assume based on antecedent events that Coria-Agassi remains straightforward. Berdych-Nadal was shaping up to be laughably lopsided til Berd recovered in the third, something few would have thought likely if he retired at the start of of the set.

The idea is to try to account for variance when comparing single-tournament runs (which is hard to do with any exactitude to begin with), and that extra 8% less games required to reach the final is another variable that, in a bigger pool of data, would be a needle in a statistical haystack. But anything more than a supporting point, it is not and wasn’t intended to be seen as

Again a legit Slam contender is supposed to clear early rounds with ease

The problem is that every opponent Agassi faced could have passed for an early-round opponent in another draw, save for maybe Escude.

 

[TheFifthSet]

Con’t:

looking at 1-18 unless you insist on counting retirements and indoor matches.

If we’re to focus only on completed outdoor HC matches, that doesn’t look much better: 25-1 for Agassi across 7 opponents (and since freshness matters to you, I should point out that Agassi mentioned his fatigue in the press conference following the lone loss, against Schuttler in Canada). In the 25 matches he won, a combined 3 sets were dropped.


That’s an extremely non-threatening group of opponents that didn’t have ‘name’ (I.e achievements), match-up OR form to distinguish themselves as dangerous or really anything other than sitting ducks here. As much as we try, we’ll struggle to find a big list of slam-winning draws on HC that are easier than this one.

If you disagree with my estimated range of 60-65% (or the low end of it at least) due to ‘degree’, then I think it’s more than fair for me to roundly disagree with the degree to which you think this draw was weak.

Remember, all this sub-talk began when we disagreed on what defines a bad matchup. Based on the scores it's fair to assume James matched up better vs. Dre than Wayne and the '03 AO champ did have an easy draw, and I'm saying that's the wrong way to look at it. We know WF and JB are roughly equal players - Wayne's trophy collection, tennis IQ and I say overall game are more complete, but James was the more explosive athlete - and the fact that Dre handled his contemporary better than the upstart tells moi he had something of an Achilles' heel vs. those who could impose their superior athleticism to counter his baseline hugging.

That's why I'm not convinced that Blake would have such an easier time than Ferreira vs. Agassi in his own physical prime. U should know Dre actually used to be known as one of the faster/quicker guys and this caricature of a lumbering if preternaturally gifted ball-striker with a pigeon walk is a fairly recent meme. It's no coincidence that the only times he seemed to be able to hang with on-fire Pistol were '95 and (early) '00 to a lesser extent when he had yet to lose a full step, and once he did he was in trouble vs. not only Blake but Bull, Rusty and of course Fred. (The same more or less applies to Hewitt, in fact.)

Would JB still have been as successful (relatively speaking, of course) vs. '95 or even '00 Dre? Possible, but I doubt it.

Agree to disagree here. I could vibe with us being more charitable to Ferreira if he didn’t have a history of complete futility against Dre that wasn’t present in AA’s other long H2H’s. You can filter for >5, 8 or however many min. matches you want on TA and see that it basically stands alone unless we wish to compare WF to the Gaudenzi’s of the world.

I think almost any version of AA is a heavy favourite against JB, and yes ‘95 AA surely does even better than ‘02-‘03 Dre.But I don’t agree with the lengths you go to narrow the gap and I’ll leave it at that.

Also you're still not getting my point about the "full field." Before the start of the tourney nobody would've picked Escude to give Dre the toughest fight en route to his 4th AO, but that's exactly what happened. So if the top guys underperformed the Frenchman did the very opposite, without which Dre might have flirted with topping a Borg/Nadalian 75%. On hard.

But that's just one match, U say? Correct, but that's also why it's relevant that the '03 AO had a full field of contenders. Otherwise Dre might not even have had to deal with that Escude or a rough equivalent at all, and there's always a chance a non-star plays like a top 10 stud a la Andreev at the '08 USO (or '10 AO, for that matter), Rosol and Benneteau at '12 Wimby, Kyrgios pretty much everywhere, ditto Hrbaty, etc. Escude is but one link in that long linage of workmen outdoing themselves.

To call his draw "depleted" fails to take into account the other side of the probabilistic coin.

I get where you’re trying to go, but I disagree with the significance of it. All erasing Escude’s effort would do is make an already historically cushy (IMV) slam-winning draw that much cushier. Not quite the same as tinkering to make this draw at least somewhat level with other slam-winning draws.

Just as importantly, Escude played decently on the whole but from what I watched online (believe it was most of set 2 and parts of 3-4, too long ago to speak with conviction) it was as much about Dre’s looseness as his own great play. One could argue that he challenged Dre despite having a mediocre serving day (47.6% 1st serves in), a recipe for disaster on Dre’s fave court. So even saying he outdid himself is an assumption that can be challenged.

 

[NonP]

Indeed, but I never said he needed to do that. I said all of the tough opponents were avoided, not that he’d need to face all (or even 3-4) of them to validate the run. Both more depth and top-heaviness would make his statistical dominance easier to assess and would meet that minimum threshold for me. An ‘01 USO equivalent draw is not necessary and don’t think I implied it was.

If your idea of a "series" does not include at least 3 of those guys in the same draw then it makes no sense to talk of a collective H2H. When you're a legit Slam contender like Dre your chances of meeting any top player in a 128-player draw remain the same at the start of the tournament, and with the exception of Wayne all of Dre's post-2R opponents were seeded or on the way up (Coria).

And I've already noted Escude of all people exceeded expectations. There's no reason to think that given their form and eventual results a Hewitt, Safin, Ferrero or Roddick could've done much better against Agassi - that is, for all intents and purposes, Dre did face a de facto top 10 player. Hence my point about the "full field."

That's still on the weak side, yes, but to say everything went Dre's way just isn't accurate.

That works both ways cuz it’s just as misleading to offhandedly disregard matches occurring from 02-03, as if Dre wasn’t still in his broader prime then. Throwing out matches on account of them not approximating prime-for-prime conditions is how we got here. I could understand assigning them lower degrees of importance, but not throwing them out totally.

I wasn't "throwing out" those later matches between Dre and Wayne, just noting that it makes more sense to look at their earlier ones. Either way Dre's dominance in % of sets won is indisputable. I was talking more in terms of how competitive they were.

Generally fine with that, but I’m not too keen about hashing out a public disagreement privately if I did nothing to initiate the conflict publicly. Doesn’t do as much to deter future public beefs as a simple “my bad, went too far” in the thread. Nonetheless, my line is open.

I've already said I dispute your characterization of this dustup as "unprompted," and now you're framing this follow-up as a generous gesture on your part while broadcasting your intention to put me on ignore. All this after airing (and I say distorting) a (semi-)private matter in public, but I'm the one who's supposed to extend the olive branch?

I can count literally on the fingers of one hand the # of TTW members (all former unless U count krosero) I've exchanged emails with, and I initiated none of these 4-5 exchanges myself. I'm not here to make friends. I'm here to have fun, and if you don't care to acknowledge your own part in this matter that's really the end of it. Not interested in sorting this out just to maintain "public" peace.

So, is it mainly the lower end that you object to here?

That and your rating of Dre's '00 AO draw as "normal to fairly tough." The dogfight vs. Pistol alone raises it above "normal."

Cuz ‘00 AO is already on the lower end (60.8%) of the range I gave to ‘03 AO in a decently tough draw. If it’s “too tough” to be haphazardly characterized as only decently tough or in the normal range of difficulty, then let’s give Dre some leniency and remove Pete.

He’s now at 62.7%. That’s against a draw consisting of:

Puerta
Schalken
Zabaleta
Scud
Arazi
Kafelnikov

Pretty normal one, no? If we swap Pete with, say, a well-playing Rusedski and let Dre slap together a 6-3, 6-4, 6-4, his numbers don’t budge.

Or, forget swapping SF opponents and let’s just make the Pete-less draw ever so slightly tougher (say by replacing Zabaleta with a low-tier serve-bot like Arthurs), and it could conceivably drop to 61% (not saying it’s likely—that’s why there’s a range—but it being conceivable is enough to validate the range). Even that wouldn’t be an impossibly tough draw.

And that is all despite you not being opposed to the idea that ‘00 was better than ‘03.

If 62-63% is acceptable for you on the lower end, that’s fine. I still maintain 60-65% is a good range, with 62-3ish% being the median outcome (again refer to an arguably better-playing Dre in a hypothetical Pete-less draw in ‘00).

Bottom line is that the main point from my OP (that the 71.6% greatly overstates his brilliance) stands regardless. Disagreeing about the lower end of an estimate is pretty hair-splitty from my vantage point.

I'd say that's "fairly tough" for the slugfest vs. Kafelnikov. Throw in the SF vs. Pistol and it rises well above that.

Anyhoo this is just semantics. The point is that even replacing '03 Dre's easiest match (where he gave up all of 1 game vs. Lee) with a razor-thin 5-setter a la that showdown vs. Pistol would bring his event GW% down to just 65% (64.9% or 131/202, if U want the exact #s). That's why I say 62-3-ish% is still too low for him barring exceptional opposition.

Covered above, 5% is the most pessimistic estimate. He was better in ‘00/just as good in ‘01 and hit 60.8%/63.7% those years (and if ‘00 was on the tougher side of normal, ‘01 was on the easier side).

He actually won 64.6% in '01, hence my earlier description of '03 as his 3rd (rounded) 65% AO run. And I don't consider Martin, Rafter and Clement in succession "on the easier side." The 5-set SF alone (which he might well have lost if not for Pat cramping) rules that out.

That’s why I focused on ‘98 and ‘00. WF was a gatekeeper even at his best, in ‘98 and ‘00 he was less consistent but hit similar heights (those 5 aforementioned Top 10 wins in ‘98, the MS in ‘00).
‘98 was a massive improvement from ‘97 for Dre, but he didn’t see a true resurgence at the big tournaments til ‘99. ‘98 Dre was crap at big tournaments, didn’t even make a slam QF. ‘98 Ferreira was less consistent than at his peak but beat Sampras 2x and Rafter 2x in a peak year (as well as a solid Rios on his worst surface), which means he was every bit as dangerous against the best. ‘00 WF posted prime-level showings at majors and won a Masters. Yet even just in those three years, the 3 matches produced a 77% GW from Dre.


The fact that their primes didn’t overlap perfectly in those years doesn’t mean only pre-‘98 merits a look, and outside of those two you just have have ‘02/‘03 matches at SJ and AO. Not a lot of opportunities for AA to truly run up the count against post-prime Ferreira like you imply.

We've already agreed to disagree on this so I'll just add Dre still finished '98 as #6 while Wayne took a big drop from 10th in '96 to 42nd in '97 and would never make the top 10 again (though he came close at #13 in '00). Also that '03 AO SF was their only Slam match in the later years so Dre's Slam results in '98 aren't very relevant here.

Your aside was followed by a simple retort from me—which bookended a paragraph—that was all of five or so words. That’s not me fixating on anything…I just pointed out it’s not actually inconsistent. You responded to that by saying that you never said I was being inconsistent, but the wording indicated you thought I was—so it doesn’t matter if it was explicitly said. That’s the extent of it. The initial disagreement wasn’t major for either of us lol, just took on a life of its own afterward.

But U made it look like that was the gist of my criticism. It wasn't. No need to drag this out if U agree it was nothing major.

I never said this on its own would make a meaningful difference for either. The original comparison between Coria and Berdych at the same stage of the tourney for Aggdal was meant to demonstrate that it’s problematic to assume based on antecedent events that Coria-Agassi remains straightforward. Berdych-Nadal was shaping up to be laughably lopsided til Berd recovered in the third, something few would have thought likely if he retired at the start of of the set.

The idea is to try to account for variance when comparing single-tournament runs (which is hard to do with any exactitude to begin with), and that extra 8% less games required to reach the final is another variable that, in a bigger pool of data, would be a needle in a statistical haystack. But anything more than a supporting point, it is not and wasn’t intended to be seen as

I just don't see the point of focusing on that match and bringing up sample size when Aggdal played the same # of pre-F games sans each 4R. Anyhoo this thing ran its course a long time ago.

The problem is that every opponent Agassi faced could have passed for an early-round opponent in another draw, save for maybe Escude.

This is post hoc. There's nothing to suggest that in another draw Escude would challenge Dre more than Grosjean or Schuttler who, again, pushed him to 3 at the YEC later that very year.

 

[NonP]

If we’re to focus only on completed outdoor HC matches, that doesn’t look much better: 25-1 for Agassi across 7 opponents (and since freshness matters to you, I should point out that Agassi mentioned his fatigue in the press conference following the lone loss, against Schuttler in Canada). In the 25 matches he won, a combined 3 sets were dropped.


That’s an extremely non-threatening group of opponents that didn’t have ‘name’ (I.e achievements), match-up OR form to distinguish themselves as dangerous or really anything other than sitting ducks here. As much as we try, we’ll struggle to find a big list of slam-winning draws on HC that are easier than this one.

If you disagree with my estimated range of 60-65% (or the low end of it at least) due to ‘degree’, then I think it’s more than fair for me to roundly disagree with the degree to which you think this draw was weak.

Already addressed. And '03 Schuttler proved his AO F was no fluke by posting consistent results all season long and making the YEC SF on outdoor hard.

Agree to disagree here. I could vibe with us being more charitable to Ferreira if he didn’t have a history of complete futility against Dre that wasn’t present in AA’s other long H2H’s. You can filter for >5, 8 or however many min. matches you want on TA and see that it basically stands alone unless we wish to compare WF to the Gaudenzi’s of the world.

I think almost any version of AA is a heavy favourite against JB, and yes ‘95 AA surely does even better than ‘02-‘03 Dre.But I don’t agree with the lengths you go to narrow the gap and I’ll leave it at that.

It's not about how much WF closes the gap - again his futility vs. Dre is not in question - but about how young AA would handle JB. I say well enough to make Ferreira look not so completely helpless compared to Blake.

I get where you’re trying to go, but I disagree with the significance of it. All erasing Escude’s effort would do is make an already historically cushy (IMV) slam-winning draw that much cushier. Not quite the same as tinkering to make this draw at least somewhat level with other slam-winning draws.

Just as importantly, Escude played decently on the whole but from what I watched online (believe it was most of set 2 and parts of 3-4, too long ago to speak with conviction) it was as much about Dre’s looseness as his own great play. One could argue that he challenged Dre despite having a mediocre serving day (47.6% 1st serves in), a recipe for disaster on Dre’s fave court. So even saying he outdid himself is an assumption that can be challenged.

Nobody would mistake Escude for a servebot and his career SGW% (79%) and RGW% (25%) reflect that. To break this GOATing Dre 4 times when he serves 69% and 8 aces is pretty damn good.

See above for the rest. There are many Slam draws that would look significantly weaker with one competitive round removed. We just focus on this more cuz it came at the hands of a relative nobody.

 

[TheFifthSet]

That's still on the weak side, yes,

Let’s expose the double standard once and for all: this mealy-mouthed stuff is coming from the same guy that singled out ‘17 USO and ‘21 Wimby as “truly weak” (which I agree with)…but when ‘03’s weakness comes up, you’re reserved and circumspect… despite it arguably being the weakest of the three.


You also generously conceded to @abmk that Rafa’s 65.9% in ‘17 USO was “very suspect” due to that “breezy draw” — I agree with all of this, and like you still uphold Nadal’s quality at the event, but what’s grating is that it’s as strongly-worded as the criticism I had about Agassi and his draw in my OP, which makes this all the more ridiculous.

So, what gives? These are exact quotes. Why so amenable in previous convos, but rigid here?

You don’t wanna budge cuz you risk undermining yourself, so you gish-gallop here with endless qualifiers and caveats trying to minimize 03 AO’s weakness, despite actually calling it “a far weaker draw among all OE AO champs” in another thread (shows how ya really feel about it when you’re not boxed in, eh? ).

Ultimately, if a range of 60-65% GW in a normal-to-tough-draw is so questionable to you that it justifies all this, it’s more than reasonable to call BS on saying this draw is merely “on the weak side”. It’s one of the weakest slam-winning draws in a full field in the Open Era, by far the weakest of any of Agassi’s slam wins, arguably weaker than any of Pete’s (only ‘00 Wimby has an argument, but a strong Rafter in the F is enough to put that debate to rest), definitively weaker than maybe all but 3-4 of TB3’s, etc.

Calling the other two “truly weak” but ‘03 only “on the weak side”, and objecting to me saying Dre’s 71.6% overstates his greatness cuz the draw makes his true level hard to assess when you call ‘17 Rafa’s run “suspect” due to a “breezy draw” (essentially the same thing) should close the book on this convo and over who’s hairsplitting, doubling down, quibbling or whatever the hell you want to call it.

I've already said I dispute your characterization of this dustup as "unprompted," and now you're framing this follow-up as a generous gesture on your part while broadcasting your intention to put me on ignore. All this after airing (and I say distorting) a (semi-)private matter in public, but I'm the one who's supposed to extend the olive branch?

The “prompt” was your patience being lost during what was a run-of-the-mill disagreement before you lost it, then being hypocritical by calling me infantile for giving you the same barbs you like to throw at others—hence the “smackdown” allusion to prove my point.

No such “framing” on the follow-up (one more leap in a long line of them) , just explaining why I bothered. I’ve mostly looked the other way on your random descents into derision and condescension during long exchanges which basically date back to my teenage years, so setting a boundary was a long time coming.

Anyhow, in light of the double-down it’s clear that giving you more of my time was a mistake. This will definitively be my last reply here.

I can count literally on the fingers of one hand the # of TTW members (all former unless U count krosero) I've exchanged emails with, and I initiated none of these 4-5 exchanges myself. I'm not here to make friends. I'm here to have fun, and if you don't care to acknowledge your own part in this matter that's really the end of it. Not interested in sorting this out just to maintain "public" peace.

To me this just reads as “I’m too proud to admit fault even on an Internet forum where no one knows who I am”. Yes, I can gather you’re not here to make friends, that’s pretty evident from how you respond to people when they stop enabling you.

You’re right that I “don’t care to a acknowledge [my] part” - because there’s nothing to acknowledge here. I’ll be respectful in a convo til the other person isn’t (unless there’s a backstory or history of contentiousness) then all bets r kinda off…true to form here. On the few occasions I go too far I can cop to it once the smoke clears. This ain’t one of them.

 

[TheFifthSet]

Already addressed. And '03 Schuttler proved his AO F was no fluke by posting consistent results all season long and making the YEC SF on outdoor hard

Not necessarily a “fluke”, but a weak slam finalist in a weak draw, that should get drubbed by a strong slam finalist or even an ATG in merely decent form, relevant to the Bull-Agassi comparison.

I wasn't "throwing out" those later matches between Dre and Wayne, just noting that it makes more sense to look at their earlier ones. Either way Dre's dominance in % of sets won is indisputable. I was talking more in terms of how competitive they were.

Not even a TB til the 6th match. Never particularly competitive whether it was prime-to-prime or otherwise. More hair-splitting by trying to obscure the results of the overall H2H by making it seem a disproportionate amount of them weren’t prime-to-prime and that the earlier ones were more competitive than they were.

again his futility vs. Dre is not in question

Great, so little point disputing he caught a lucky break (GW%-wise) to get an underwhelming opponent, that is ALSO a disproportionately easy match-up, in the late rounds. Alas…

I'll just add Dre still finished '98 as #6 while Wayne took a big drop from 10th in '96 to 42nd in '97 and would never make the top 10 again (though he came close at #13 in '00).

Ferreira only ever ended the year in the Top 10 twice, at 9 and 10, so #13 is not a far cry from that. In a normal year the difference between 9/10 and 13 is a couple hundred ranking points at most.

That and your rating of Dre's '00 AO draw as "normal to fairly tough." The dogfight vs. Pistol alone raises it above "normal."

Again, remove Pete and he’s at 62.7%, in a draw that is in the normal range of toughness. So your basement effectively IS 62-63% considering you also acknowledge ‘00 is arguably better than ‘03. That’s definitely hair-splitting when my OP talked about his greatness being overstated by the #’s, not that the #’s wouldn’t still potentially be very impressive in a tough draw. If you had cared to probe some more instead of trying to impress us all with your vast intellect, this pissfest would have never taken place.

I'd say that's "fairly tough" for the slugfest vs. Kafelnikov. Throw in the SF vs. Pistol and it rises well above that.

Without Pete, it is a normal slam-winning draw on HC. So, sub-63% in a form that was equal to or better than ‘03 is within the range I set for ‘03—nothing crazy about a range of 60-65% (which is not even hard-and-fast).

He actually won 64.6% in '01, hence my earlier description of '03 as his 3rd (rounded) 65% AO run. And I don't consider Martin, Rafter and Clement in succession "on the easier side." The 5-set SF alone (which he might well have lost if not for Pat cramping) rules that out.

Gotcha, my error re: the GW%, but that’s still within the range.

Rafter cramping after three sets and playing like a zombie brings down his value, it doesn’t elevate it. Watch the match and you’ll see it was actually a light-serving display from Dre yet Rafter could still barely get anything going off the return (also applies to ‘00 Pete, who was missing a disproportionate amount of regulation returns even when behind, Dre had no business getting close to 40% URS in that match), and both were conserving energy a fair bit even before the heat did Rafter in. A good match, but it was marred by the conditions, which favoured Agassi far more than Rafter.

He’s decent for the toughest opponent of a slam win but it wasn’t a tough draw on aggregate. Martin was coming back from injury, wasn’t particularly match-fit and should be a straightforward win for most contenders. He was also basically done as a consistent touring pro after the event. We’re not talking prime Martin here. Clement was like ‘09 Soderling, had a fantastic run and did well enough to not embarrass himself in the final, but still played a passable final at best.

But U made it look like that was the gist of my criticism. It wasn't. No need to drag this out if U agree it was nothing major.

Holy moly LOL.


You are the one that responded to that one sentence by slyly mentioning that you didn’t explicitly say a thing you were clearly arguing, before pivoting to it not being the gist of your argument.

It’s fine if it’s not the gist of your argument. What’s less forgivable (tho at this point it’s kind of amusing) is that you’re trying to spin an originally harmless blunder into me missing your point.

but to say everything went Dre's way just isn't accurate.

Almost impossible for everything to go anyone’s way, ever. But, among other things:

• His draw was populated by players that accomplished very little in big tournaments on non-clay…3 Masters, 1 major final total.
• They were uniquely futile against Agassi on HC, more so than the gap in career achievements would predict, notching only one win on outdoor HC in 26 tries, and 5 sets total won in those 26 matches. You can point to competitive sets here or there or nuance-manufacture about how revelatory the sample actually is, but this much should be clear
• There was a return-dominant skew as most of ‘em shaded towards being stronger on the return than off their serve, evident in career stats (Escude, Ferreira, Schutz, Coria, Grosjean), so that’s ripe for a return-dominant wiz like Agassi himself to pad against (opposite is true to an extent in ‘00, but removing Pete gets rid of that—one SB in Scud aint enough to create a big skew).
• (furthest down the list in importance), the 9 less games he had to win, shortening an already short sample

The point is that even replacing '03 Dre's easiest match (where he gave up all of 1 game vs. Lee) with a razor-thin 5-setter a la that showdown vs. Pistol would bring his event GW% down to just 65% (64.9% or 131/202, if U want the exact #s). That's why I say 62-3-ish% is still too low for him barring exceptional opposition.

Even doing so, a draw of

Vahaly
Escude
Coria
Grosjean
Ferreira
Schuttler
Sampras

Is good with the inclusion of a strong Pete, but not exceptionally tough (I mean strictly from a GW% perspective, not wrt winning the tournament) and remember I put ‘00 Agassi above ‘03 so I don’t think it’s guaranteed he does as well. The 5th set also throws a wrench into things, it was a breadstick and Pete was in bad enough condition by then to admit he’d have defaulted if he won the 4th set TB.

Still, that would definitely give ‘03 some much-needed top-heaviness (a la ‘00 Wimby w and w/o Pat).

Nobody would mistake Escude for a servebot and his career SGW% (79%) and RGW% (25%) reflect that. To break this GOATing Dre 4 times when he serves 69% and 8 aces is pretty damn good.

Indeed nobody would, but Escude landing in nearly 9% less first serves than his already low career average makes it pretty suspect to say he performed too far above expectation — a lot of the result was can be attributed to Agassi’s own patchy play, something Dre acknowledged—and we’re talking about the lone bright spot in an otherwise barren draw.

Vahaly also broke AA 4 times, in their first round match.

See above for the rest. There are many Slam draws that would look significantly weaker with one competitive round removed.

‘course, like Nadal’s ‘10 US Open draw which would look pretty bad without Djoko, but is salvageable with. Not relevant here when the draw is terribly weak with or without Escude.

Anyways, enough with this time-vampire.

 

[NonP]

Let’s expose the double standard once and for all....

This is just embarrassing on your end. For anyone still paying attention to this nonsense: I was actually arguing for Nadal against my current favorite player in a peak-to-peak USO matchup, this despite the fact that no championship version of Bull except in '13 (certainly not '10) holds a decisive advantage in GW% over Djoker.

So instead of showing my "double standard" or "undermining" me or my argument you've actually proved my consistency in treating GW% as but one barometer among many. Thx for that, I guess, cuz I certainly have better things to do than digging up months-old posts to "expose [anyone's] double standard once and for all."

The “prompt” was your patience being lost during what was a run-of-the-mill disagreement before you lost it, then being hypocritical by calling me infantile for giving you the same barbs you like to throw at others—hence the “smackdown” allusion to prove my point.

No “framing” on the follow-up (one more leap in a long line of them) , just explaining why I bothered. I’ve mostly looked the other way on your random descents into derision and condescension during long exchanges which basically date back to my teenage years, so setting a boundary was a long time coming.

Anyhow, in light of the double-down it’s clear that you more of my time was a mistake. This will definitively be my last reply here.



To me this just reads as “I’m too proud to admit fault even on an Internet forum where no one knows who I am”. Yes, I can gather you’re not here to make friends, that’s pretty evident from how you respond to people when they stop enabling you.

You’re right that I “don’t care to a acknowledge [my] part” - because there’s nothing to acknowledge here. I’ll be respectful in a convo til the other person isn’t (unless there’s a backstory or history of contentiousness) then all bets r kinda off…true to form here. On the few occasions I go too far I can cop to it once the smoke clears. This ain’t one of them.

Of course U think U did nothing wrong even though, for one thing, U admit to making public a PM "to prove [your] point" while trying to justify it. And I'm not interested in making nice with anyone that goes to such lengths to "win" a gotcha contest.

Do whatever the hell U want. Just spare me the faux high ground.

Not necessarily a “fluke”, but a weak slam finalist in a weak draw, that should get drubbed by a strong slam finalist or even an ATG in merely decent form, relevant to the Bull-Agassi comparison.

Never said it wasn't. The rest is umpteenth repetition on your part.

Not even a TB til the 6th match. Never particularly competitive whether it was prime-to-prime or otherwise. More hair-splitting by trying to obscure the results of the overall H2H by making it seem a disproportionate amount of them weren’t prime-to-prime.

Actually 6 of the 11 matches took place before '97, and the difference in GW% between the two periods is almost a whopping 11% (61.1% vs. 72.0%). Hardly "hair-splitting."

And with just a few extra % points which one would expect from younger Dre his career GW% vs. Blake (say just 56-57% from 54.1%) wouldn't look so much worse. Perfectly fair to point out the athleticism angle in that context.

Ferreira only ever ended the year in the Top 10 twice, at 9 and 10, so #13 is not a far cry from that. In a normal year the difference between 9/10 and 13 is a couple hundred ranking points at most.

And Wayne did push Dre to their 1st and only TB in their lone '00 match, so rankings are indeed quite relevant.

Again, remove Pete and he’s at 62.7%, in a draw that is in the normal range of toughness. So your basement effectively IS 62-63% considering you also acknowledge ‘00 is arguably better than ‘03. That’s definitely hair-splitting when my OP talked about his greatness being overstated by the #’s, not that the #’s wouldn’t still potentially be very impressive in a tough draw. If you had cared to probe some more instead of trying to impress us all with your vast intellect, this pissfest would have never taken place.

That is only if U assume I consider '00 Dre roughly equal to '03 based on GW% and draws alone. I don't. That '00 SF is arguably the clutchest W of Dre's career and thus worth extra points in my book. You're the one that still fails to see the big picture while accusing the other party of "bean-count[ing]" or "hair-splitting."

Gotcha, my error re: the GW%, but that’s still within the range.

Rafter cramping after three sets and playing like a zombie brings down his value, it doesn’t elevate it. Watch the match and you’ll see it was actually a light-serving display from Dre yet Rafter could still barely get anything going off the return (also applies to ‘00 Pete, who was missing a disproportionate amount of regulation returns even when behind, Dre had no business getting close to 40% URS in that match), and both were conserving energy a fair bit even before the heat did Rafter in. A good match, but it was marred by the conditions, which favoured Agassi far more than Rafter.

He’s decent for the toughest opponent of a slam win but it wasn’t a tough draw on aggregate. Martin was coming back from injury, wasn’t particularly match-fit and should be a straightforward win for most contenders. He was also basically done as a consistent touring pro after the event. We’re not talking prime Martin here. Clement was like ‘09 Soderling, had a fantastic run and did well enough to not embarrass himself in the final, but still played a passable final at best.

Dre rarely used his serve as a primary weapon so that point is moot. The fact of the matter is that he won 87.9% of his SG at the '01 AO, actually above his seasonal average on hard.

And that Martin still dispatched Pistol in 4 and got 12 games off Dre. Hardly a nobody in this context. Fair point on Clement but that's why U shouldn't go by the names only.

You are the one that responded to that one sentence by slyly mentioning that you didn’t explicitly say a thing you were clearly arguing, before pivoting to it not being the gist of your argument.

It’s fine if it’s not the gist of your argument. What’s less forgivable (tho at this point it’s kind of amusing) is that you’re trying to spin an originally harmless blunder into me missing your point.

LOL, you're the one who's "trying to spin" an amusing blunder in your favor. U clearly ended your original non-explanation with "Still nothing internally inconsistent here" in a separate paragraph as if that were the gist of my criticism, and after I correctly pointed it out in response you're doubling down on that one quick earlier aside from me to make your original reply look less like a red herring.

Quit while you're behind. Seriously.

Almost impossible for everything to go anyone’s way, ever. But, among other things....

None of this addresses my point that Escude produced roughly the same scoreline vs. Dre as a Hewitt, Safin, JCF, Nalby, Moya or Roddick likely would have considering everyone's form at the time. And you yourself just noted that Clement in the '01 F was a top 20 player in name only.

U really can't just look at the names and assume these Slam champs/finalists would've done better vs. Dre when we know for a fact that they fell well short of meeting that goal. Rusty barely squeaked by qualifier Larsson on his last legs in 1R, Ferrero lost to Ferreira in straights, Moya couldn't even clear the 2nd round vs. baby Fish, etc. There's no reason to think any of these guys would've done much better vs. Dre in the money rounds which Dre really dominated and where, again, he would've met the youngsters regardless of how they did earlier.

Indeed nobody would, but Escude landing in nearly 9% less first serves than his career average makes it pretty suspect to say he performed too far above expectation — a lot of the result was can be attributed to Agassi’s own patchy play, something Dre acknowledged—and we’re talking about the lone bright spot in an otherwise barren draw.

Vahaly also broke AA 4 times, in their first round match.

And Vahaly actually won more games vs. that Dre than any of his other opponents but Escude, which tells moi the eventual champ was still finding his groove in the early rounds. Yet more reason to be wary of star power in these hypos.

‘course, like Nadal’s ‘10 US Open draw which would look pretty bad without Djoko, but is salvageable with. Not relevant here when the draw is terribly weak with or without Escude.

Bull won only 61.0% of his games in that run, or just 61.7% sans the F vs. Djoker, but I still consider it his very best along with '13 cuz it's clear to moi he was taking it easy on return due to that out-of-nowhere serve (which, again, U would've noticed if U weren't so hell-bent on "prov[ing your] point). That doesn't apply to Dre in any of his own Slam runs. RoS was his bread and butter and that's where he did most of the damage.

 

[RS]

I think this whole string of logic shows that cross surface level comparisons are best avoided generally.

A bit my fault with the different surfaces comparisons.

 

[RS]

'07 Nadal was leading the points race heading into the Wimby final, would've taken over as #1 if he won the match...won IW without the loss of a set, beat 3-4 quality grass-courters to reach the final and played an incredible match, which was immediately heralded as an epic. Go listen to the NBC broadcast/post-match recap and you'll notice the effusive praise being heaped upon it.

The only revisionism here is you claiming that it's revisionism to call it a classic when it was rightly seen as one right after it concluded lol.

Does this prove that the 2007 final is indeed not underrated as sometimes claimed?

 

[TheFifthSet]

Does this prove that the 2007 final is indeed not underrated as sometimes claimed?

I think the superior drama/scenes/narrative of '08 took some of the shine off '07, which was to me always just as good or slightly superior quality-wise with higher individual peaks from both (Nadal in set 4, Fed in set 5), and less flaws (patchy first two sets, Fed's BP conversion and second serve return rate).

If '08 never happens, '07 probably has more mainstream appeal as it was indeed immediately praised as an epic rivalling Borg-Mac.


So, yes and no.