Roddick’s “terrible” record against the Top 10: a deeper dive

TheFifthSet

G.O.A.T.
(Cribbed this from an old PM I sent someone, turning it into its own thread.)

Discovered something i long suspected about Roddick: his widely-panned record against the Top 10 has to at least partially be a function of some freakishly bad luck. Was looking through his match logs on TA and noticed a disproportionate gap between results against lower end of top 10 and ranks 11-15, lots of wins against the latter right before they broke through into the top 10 or were only out of it due to injury or blips in form. Checked the numbers:

Career record against players ranked

7th: 5-7
8th: 1-2
9th: 2-3
10th: 4-4
11th: 11-4 (!!)
12th: 6-1 (!!)
13th: 6-3
14th: 6-4
15th: 1-3

and so on…there’s of course generally a gap between 8th-10th and 11th-13th (duh)…but not usually this big of one. Some of this is down to plain old bad luck.

Rod’s overall record against the top is indeed pretty unsightly, 37-73. But against #’s 11 - #’s 15 it’s 30-15. Against #’s 16 - #’s 20 it’s 28-6, 58-21 altogether.

This might sound like it’s par for the course, but Wawa by comparison is a healthier 63-103 against the top 10 compared with mediocre 52-57 against ranks 11-20. Some others that occupy a similar tier historically:

Hewitt: 65-73 against the Top 10, 53-38 against ranks 11-20.

Murray: 105-96 / 95-53

Rafter: 35-49 / 35-33

Have yet to see a discrepancy as big as Roddick’s.

Point being, yes he underachieved against the top players but it is vastly overblown and mostly due to

a) his best surface having the least representation

b) Fed and

c) the aforementioned wonkiness from ranks 8-10 to ranks 11-13
 
So Andy Roddick only played the 8th ranked player three times over his 13 year career? And the 9th ranked player five times from 2000-2012?
How could that be?

Yes it sounds so absurd that you reminding me (the stats I compiled on Roddick are from years ago, only edited Murray’s and Wawa’s #’s) made me nervously check again, LOL. But, sure enough:

‘02 Basel QF against Fed
‘07 IW QF against Ljubicic
‘12 USO R4 (his last match) against JMDP

Are the only ones against a #8.

‘02 Davis Cup against Grosjean
‘03 Basel SF against Nalby
‘04 Bangkok SF against Safin
‘07 Memphis F against Haas
‘07 US Open R16 against Berdych

Are the 5 against a #9
 
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This is a great stat compilation, but it also kind of goes hand-in-hand with a number of threads we have where (1) someone says Roddick would have had many more Majors in other eras without Federer to stop him; and then (2) others respond by showing draws he'd have to navigate in the '80s and '90s where he'd have to beat two or three top 10 players.

As your stats reflect, Roddick was really good at beating players outside the top 10, so he'd be a good pick to make a bunch of QFs. But, once he gets there are faces top 10 opposition, it's going to be hard for him to win those final 3 matches.
 
This is a great stat compilation, but it also kind of goes hand-in-hand with a number of threads we have where (1) someone says Roddick would have had many more Majors in other eras without Federer to stop him; and then (2) others respond by showing draws he'd have to navigate in the '80s and '90s where he'd have to beat two or three top 10 players.

My argument isn’t quite so ambitious, and I acknowledge there was some underperformance.
 
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Were there any wins you think Roddick had that were equivalent to a top 10 win but were not officially?
 
(Cribbed this from an old PM I sent someone, turning it into its own thread.)

Discovered something i long suspected about Roddick: his widely-panned record against the Top 10 has to at least partially be a function of some freakishly bad luck. Was looking through his match logs on TA and noticed a disproportionate gap between results against lower end of top 10 and ranks 11-15, lots of wins against the latter right before they broke through into the top 10 or were only out of it due to injury or blips in form. Checked the numbers:

Career record against players ranked

7th: 5-7
8th: 1-2
9th: 2-3
10th: 4-4
11th: 11-4 (!!)
12th: 6-1 (!!)
13th: 6-3
14th: 6-4
15th: 1-3

and so on…there’s of course generally a gap between 8th-10th and 11th-13th (duh)…but not usually this big of one. Some of this is down to plain old bad luck.

Rod’s overall record against the top is indeed pretty unsightly, 37-73. But against #’s 11 - #’s 15 it’s 30-15. Against #’s 16 - #’s 20 it’s 28-6, 58-21 altogether.

This might sound like it’s par for the course, but Wawa by comparison is a healthier 63-103 against the top 10 compared with mediocre 52-57 against ranks 11-20. Some others that occupy a similar tier historically:

Hewitt: 65-73 against the Top 10, 53-38 against ranks 11-20.

Murray: 105-96 / 95-53

Rafter: 35-49 / 35-33

Have yet to see a discrepancy as big as Roddick’s.

Point being, yes he underachieved against the top players but it is vastly overblown and mostly due to

a) his best surface having the least representation

b) Fed and

c) the aforementioned wonkiness from ranks 8-10 to ranks 11-13
I think I looked at something similar some years back, the top 10 is almost arbitary - someone might be top 10 one week and then #11 another. It also doesn't reflect that the top 10 players on grass aren't always top 10 in the actual rankings, which was Roddick's best surface. A guy like Grosjean was 25-7 on grass in 2003-2005, but he was 25-3 outside of Roddick himself with 2x finals at Queens, 2x SF and a QF at Wimbledon - of his 3 other losses 1 was to Federer and the other to Scud. But he wasn't ranked inside the top 10 in any of his losses to Roddick. Hewitt in 2004 at Queens was also outside of the top 10 but was arguably the number 2 player in 2004 and was building his ranking back up. Of course there are examples like this for every player, I just think Roddick was particularly unfortunate in his best years.
 
It might be worth noting Roddick also retired at 30 so relatively young his top 10 record would have got a bit worse if he stuck around say a few years longer like say a Hewitt did.
 
Great thread. That’s actually crazy how rarely he’s played opponents in certain ranking spots. For a player as prolific as he was, only meeting the eighth ranked player three times in his entire career is kind of wild.

Of course this isn’t to completely excuse his numbers since, yes, he did underperform on a few occasions, but this statistic is overblown.
 
Beating #11 Hewitt at Queen's Club in 2004 seems like a solid example.

This one.

The Montreal 2003 final against Nalbandian, too. One could mention Nalbandian as well in the USO semi that year if it weren't for the controversies of that match, Nalbandian's injuries, etc. But Nalbandian was ranked 13, I believe, at the time and was playing some of his best tennis and more in line with his ranking in the coming months that oscilated between 8 and 4.

OTOH, he was lucky in being so bad on clay, thus losing before facing the top 10 players at the time.
 
As your stats reflect, Roddick was really good at beating players outside the top 10, so he'd be a good pick to make a bunch of QFs. But, once he gets there are faces top 10 opposition, it's going to be hard for him to win those final 3 matches.

I think this misrepresents Roddick a little bit. People (like myself) credit him with multiple slams in a hypothetical Roger-free world because he's 1–4 in slam finals, with every defeat being to Fed. And he's a career 5–5 in slam semis, with three of the five losses also at Fed's hands. He was clearly very good at getting beyond QFs for at least some of his career.

From UTS, A-Rod's overall slam record from the QFs onwards is 16–18, and that includes the beginning and end of his career when he wasn't a top ten player himself. From the QF onwards versus only top ten players he's 3–12, but the losses break down as 2x Hewitt, 1x Djokovic (in '08), 1x Nadal (in '11), and 8x Federer. There's no particular history you can point to where he was reaching QFs and then losing to "mugs" [sic]. Top ten players who weren't themselves legitimate title contenders or multi-slam champs themselves weren't beating Roddick any more frequently than journeymen were.
 
I think this misrepresents Roddick a little bit. People (like myself) credit him with multiple slams in a hypothetical Roger-free world because he's 1–4 in slam finals, with every defeat being to Fed. And he's a career 5–5 in slam semis, with three of the five losses also at Fed's hands. He was clearly very good at getting beyond QFs for at least some of his career.

From UTS, A-Rod's overall slam record from the QFs onwards is 16–18, and that includes the beginning and end of his career when he wasn't a top ten player himself. From the QF onwards versus only top ten players he's 3–12, but the losses break down as 2x Hewitt, 1x Djokovic (in '08), 1x Nadal (in '11), and 8x Federer. There's no particular history you can point to where he was reaching QFs and then losing to "mugs" [sic]. Top ten players who weren't themselves legitimate title contenders or multi-slam champs themselves weren't beating Roddick any more frequently than journeymen were.
But I think that's kind of the point. If I pick a random year from the 1990s, Roddick has to beat two to three top 10 players who were legitimate title contenders to take the title.

In 1990, he likely has to beat Edberg, Becker, and either Ivanišević or Lendl​
In 1991, he likely has to beat Stich, Becker, and someone like Edberg, Agassi, or Wheaton​
In 1992, he likely has to beat Agassi, Ivanišević, and either Sampras or McEnroe​
In 1993, he likely has to beat Sampras, Courier, and either Edberg or Becker​
In 1994, he likely has to beat Sampras, Ivanišević, and either Becker or Martin​
In 1995, he likely has to beat Sampras, Becker, and either Agassi or Ivanišević​

And so on and so forth.

I can see Roddick winning one of these matches, maybe two. But it's a big ask for him to win all three.
 
But I think that's kind of the point. If I pick a random year from the 1990s, Roddick has to beat two to three top 10 players who were legitimate title contenders to take the title.

Ahhhh, sorry, I misunderstood your previous post; I thought you were disputing the chances of him winning multiple slams in the 2000s if Fed weren't around.

I agree with you 100% that in the 1990s he struggles more. He was the second/third best grass-courter alongside Hewitt during his peak years, but if you put him in the 1990s he'd have needed a much better volley to survive against the opposition you mention.
 
But I think that's kind of the point. If I pick a random year from the 1990s, Roddick has to beat two to three top 10 players who were legitimate title contenders to take the title.

In 1990, he likely has to beat Edberg, Becker, and either Ivanišević or Lendl​
In 1991, he likely has to beat Stich, Becker, and someone like Edberg, Agassi, or Wheaton​
In 1992, he likely has to beat Agassi, Ivanišević, and either Sampras or McEnroe​
In 1993, he likely has to beat Sampras, Courier, and either Edberg or Becker​
In 1994, he likely has to beat Sampras, Ivanišević, and either Becker or Martin​
In 1995, he likely has to beat Sampras, Becker, and either Agassi or Ivanišević​

And so on and so forth.

I can see Roddick winning one of these matches, maybe two. But it's a big ask for him to win all three.
To be fair the early 90's is one of the fiercest periods of the open era.
 
Dropped to #17. If he started the year in the top 10 his results would have been better than Roddick's.
Yeah, it's basically the only reason why Hewitt didn't finish 2004 at #2, i.e. running into Federer earlier in tournaments like the Australian Open, Hamburg and Wimbledon.
 
Wow, Hewitt fell from #1 in 2002 to #17 year end 2003? Was that one of the biggest drop offs ever for a reigning number one who wasn’t on the way out? Hewitt was still very young and played 10+ more years.
 
This is a great stat compilation, but it also kind of goes hand-in-hand with a number of threads we have where (1) someone says Roddick would have had many more Majors in other eras without Federer to stop him; and then (2) others respond by showing draws he'd have to navigate in the '80s and '90s where he'd have to beat two or three top 10 players.

As your stats reflect, Roddick was really good at beating players outside the top 10, so he'd be a good pick to make a bunch of QFs. But, once he gets there are faces top 10 opposition, it's going to be hard for him to win those final 3 matches.
He was pretty good at making the Quarterfinals. He made it that far in GS tournaments more often than Hewitt, Moya, Gerulitas, Chang, del Potro, Ferrero. He was fairly consistent. Then he didn't do too well. Probably would have had similar results in other eras.
 
Wow, Hewitt fell from #1 in 2002 to #17 year end 2003? Was that one of the biggest drop offs ever for a reigning number one who wasn’t on the way out? Hewitt was still very young and played 10+ more years.
Hewitt didn't play anything after the 2003 US Open except Davis Cup for the rest of that year. He was feuding with, and suing, the ATP, because they fined him heavily for skipping a post-match press conference. That's the reason why Hewitt fell as low as world number 17 by the 2003 year end. Hewitt had fallen to world number 7 after the 2003 US Open. Going out in the first round of his Wimbledon title defence hit his ranking the most in terms of crashing from number 1/2 down to 7 within two months.

In 2003, there were even rumours that Hewitt was thinking of leaving tennis to play Aussie Rules football. Some burnout issues going on there, I think, after his exertions in the previous few years.
 
It's also worth noting that in many of Roddick's best runs, the top 10 players in his draw failed to reach to him and were often eliminated by a player that lost to Roddick.

The 2003 AO was a prime breakthrough tournament for him. He arguably lost out on 2 top 10 wins because Youzhny beat Jiri Novak and El Aynaoui beat Hewitt. Of course, Roddick went on to beat Youzhny in the 4R and El Aynaoui in the QF. It doesn't always work out like that of course but factoring in forms at the time, Roddick had a good shot at beating both.

In 04 Wimbledon, Henman who was top 10 at the time was destroyed by Ancic in the QF, a player Roddick beat in the SF and had beat in Queens as well. All of a sudden because Ancic beat Henman and wasn't top 10, this win isn't worth much?

In 03 Canada, Roddick beat Karol Kucera who had beat JCF and Nalby who had beat Schuettler. Both potential top 10 wins. Same with 03 Cincy where he took out Mirnyi and Fish who had beat top 10 opponents in the round before.

In the 03 USO, I won't mention Fed/Nalby but Roddick beat Schalken convincingly after he beat Schuettler in the 4R who was top 10 at the time. I'm aware Schuettler had some success vs Roddick that year but none came during his 37-2, stretch from 03 Wimbledon-USO.

In 04 Canada, Rod beat Kiefer in the SF who had beat Moya. That's another potential top 10 win he missed out on.

06 Cincy was a very strong tournament for Roddick after hiring Connors yet nobody in the top 10 reached to him for various reasons. JCF got 3 top 10 wins that tournament against Blake, Nadal and Robredo but Roddick beat him in the F and got nothing. Murray got a top 10 win against Federer that tournament and then lost in straights to Rod. Imagine if Fed beat Murray and then laid a dud in the next match against Rod the way he actually did against Murray, that's an easy top 10 win for Rod.

In 06 USO, Roddick was carrying over the good form from Cincy but Baghdatis failed to reach him in the 4R as he lost to Agassi. Youzhny beat Nadal in the QF and then lost to Roddick in the SF. Roddick didn't get any top 10 wins as a result. I certainly don't think Nadal at that stage is beating Roddick.

In 07 AO, Rod beat his buddy Mardy Fish in the QF who had beat top 4 Ljubicic in the 1st round. Again, a potential top 10 win he lost out on. Not that I think much of this but a top 10 win is a top 10 win nonetheless.

08 Dubai one of his finest tournaments where he straight setted Nadal and Djokovic back to back and won the tournament without dropping serve. Arguably lost out on a top 10 win in the final as Lopez had beat Davydenko in the SF before losing to Rod in the F.

10 Miami when some of the top guys were out of form and Rod played good prime level tennis. Berdych got 2 top 10 wins against Fed and Soderling and then got straight setted by Rod. What does it mean?

That's without factoring in things like his best surface being grass, how short that season is compared to clay/HC, how he clearly beat multiple top 10 grass courters in the world which didn't count as top 10 wins for various reasons etc.

So in the grand scheme of things top 10 is a bit an arbitrary cutoff and a lot more context needs to be applied before aimlessly throwing out these type of numbers.
 
Top 10 wins isn't a particularly important stat.
I don't think it's necessarily the most important thing but don't know if it can be ignored completely.

As I said I think it probably slightly undersells Roddick here.
 
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I think this misrepresents Roddick a little bit. People (like myself) credit him with multiple slams in a hypothetical Roger-free world because he's 1–4 in slam finals, with every defeat being to Fed. And he's a career 5–5 in slam semis, with three of the five losses also at Fed's hands. He was clearly very good at getting beyond QFs for at least some of his career.

From UTS, A-Rod's overall slam record from the QFs onwards is 16–18, and that includes the beginning and end of his career when he wasn't a top ten player himself. From the QF onwards versus only top ten players he's 3–12, but the losses break down as 2x Hewitt, 1x Djokovic (in '08), 1x Nadal (in '11), and 8x Federer. There's no particular history you can point to where he was reaching QFs and then losing to "mugs" [sic]. Top ten players who weren't themselves legitimate title contenders or multi-slam champs themselves weren't beating Roddick any more frequently than journeymen were.
Most all good people (actual contenders whether ATG or the Roddick or Sabatini types) win more slams if you remove one player, either the best player or their worst match up of the top few. Maybe Roddick moreso but removing so and so in their era and what they may have won otherwise in their era is never a solid or accurate indicator. Federer himself is a good example of this as he may have won 6 RG titles without Nadal but he never wins 6 in any era (as is, not removing so and so in another era as well) nor is he a 6 time RG champ calibre clay courter. Even Roger fans would readily accept that. Djokovic may be a 9 time RG winner without Nadal but he wins 9 RG in no era, nor even close, nor is he even remotely close to a 9 time RG caliber player.

Roddick may win 5 or 6 slams without Federer, true, but he also likely wins not near that in any era (3 is his max in any era IMO) nor is he a 5 or 6 slam win calibre player. Mary Joe Fernandez probably wins atleast 3 slams without Graf, but she is not a 3 slam calibre player, nor does she likely win that in any era, minus again removing a different player.
 
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Well put. And I would agree that 3 slams for Roddick would probably have been his max in any era. Everyone figured his shtick out by 2004. He was very predictable, even when he threw everything but the kitchen sink at fed in those Wimbledon finals. He had the grace of an injured hippo.
 
Ahhhh, sorry, I misunderstood your previous post; I thought you were disputing the chances of him winning multiple slams in the 2000s if Fed weren't around.

I agree with you 100% that in the 1990s he struggles more. He was the second/third best grass-courter alongside Hewitt during his peak years, but if you put him in the 1990s he'd have needed a much better volley to survive against the opposition you mention.

But if he doesn't win many more, if more at all, than 1 slam, in most other eras, was he really that unlucky? Yeah he was unlucky Federer was around in his own era for sure, but I wouldn't say in the grand scheme of things he was unlucky, as he is not a winner of a half dozen slams or something in any era.
 
But if he doesn't win many more, if more at all, than 1 slam, in most other eras, was he really that unlucky? Yeah he was unlucky Federer was around in his own era for sure, but I wouldn't say in the grand scheme of things he was unlucky, as he is not a winner of a half dozen slams or something in any era.

Depends on the era; if he had peaked slightly earlier, like Hewitt did, he could have won more. 1997-2003 was up for grabs, many random slam winners and finalists.

But in most of the '70s, '80s, first half of the '90s and second half of the 2000s till now he'd struggle to win more than 1 or 2. And there wasn't much of a vacuum between the Big 3 and Sinnaraz to suggest he could win much there.
 
Depends on the era; if he had peaked slightly earlier, like Hewitt did, he could have won more. 1997-2003 was up for grabs, many random slam winners and finalists.

But in most of the '70s, '80s, first half of the '90s and second half of the 2000s till now he'd struggle to win more than 1 or 2. And there wasn't much of a vacuum between the Big 3 and Sinnaraz to suggest he could win much there.
True, I could see him doing well in the 97-2003 time period. Even then I am not sure he just gobbles up slams, but that is his best chance to win 3+ possibly.
 
Depends on the era; if he had peaked slightly earlier, like Hewitt did, he could have won more. 1997-2003 was up for grabs, many random slam winners and finalists.

But in most of the '70s, '80s, first half of the '90s and second half of the 2000s till now he'd struggle to win more than 1 or 2. And there wasn't much of a vacuum between the Big 3 and Sinnaraz to suggest he could win much there.
There was a vacuum between Big 3 and Sinneraz. It’s why the Next Gen were all so close to multiple slam titles.
 
Totally agree. If we play the "What If" game: What if Roddick's prime was around something like 2017-2021? It would have been interesting to see how Roddick would have done against the Big 3 senior citizens. Doesn't seem far-fetched at all to think he could have won 2 or more Grand slams around this time.
 
(Cribbed this from an old PM I sent someone, turning it into its own thread.)

Discovered something i long suspected about Roddick: his widely-panned record against the Top 10 has to at least partially be a function of some freakishly bad luck. Was looking through his match logs on TA and noticed a disproportionate gap between results against lower end of top 10 and ranks 11-15, lots of wins against the latter right before they broke through into the top 10 or were only out of it due to injury or blips in form. Checked the numbers:

Career record against players ranked

7th: 5-7
8th: 1-2
9th: 2-3
10th: 4-4
11th: 11-4 (!!)
12th: 6-1 (!!)
13th: 6-3
14th: 6-4
15th: 1-3

and so on…there’s of course generally a gap between 8th-10th and 11th-13th (duh)…but not usually this big of one. Some of this is down to plain old bad luck.

Rod’s overall record against the top is indeed pretty unsightly, 37-73. But against #’s 11 - #’s 15 it’s 30-15. Against #’s 16 - #’s 20 it’s 28-6, 58-21 altogether.

This might sound like it’s par for the course, but Wawa by comparison is a healthier 63-103 against the top 10 compared with mediocre 52-57 against ranks 11-20. Some others that occupy a similar tier historically:

Hewitt: 65-73 against the Top 10, 53-38 against ranks 11-20.

Murray: 105-96 / 95-53

Rafter: 35-49 / 35-33

Have yet to see a discrepancy as big as Roddick’s.

Point being, yes he underachieved against the top players but it is vastly overblown and mostly due to

a) his best surface having the least representation

b) Fed and

c) the aforementioned wonkiness from ranks 8-10 to ranks 11-13
I love the delve into details, I'm new here and have had a few posts trying to do similar analyzation.

Roddick was interesting to me for obvious reasons.. I played 1st singles tennis in high school and he was 1 day older than me (Roddick Aug 30th, 1982, me Aug 31st 1982). That's where the comparison ends LOL.

But my observation of Roddick is that while he had what I would call a "wallop" of a serve and forehand, he didn't disguise it well. I remember one of the most fun matches I ever watched. It was the third round of the 2001 Wimbledon between a 19 year old firecracker phenom Andy Roddick and a dark horse proven beast in Goran Ivanesevic. It was an ace-fest, both guys nuking 125+ serves nonstop. The difference was while Roddick had higher MPH, Goran had better control and disguised his serve better. Goran had way more aces, serving 4 straight multiple times. Roddick said post-game he was guessing because he had given up on trying to read it. Goran would serve 130-132 tops while Roddick would hit 135+.

I think Roddick fell into hitting the ball too hard and being too deliberate on his serve/strokes, and not crafty enough.
 
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I love the delve into details, I'm new here and have had a few posts trying to do similar analyzation.

Roddick was interesting to me for obvious reasons.. I played 1st singles tennis in high school and he was 1 day older than me (Roddick Aug 30th, 1982, me Aug 31st 1982). That's where the comparison ends LOL.

But my observation of Roddick is that while he had what I would call a "wallop" of a serve and forehand, he didn't disguise it well. I remember one of the most fun matches I ever watched. It was the third round of the 2001 Wimbledon between a 19 year old firecracker phenom Andy Roddick and a dark horse proven beast in Goran Ivanesevic. It was an ace-fest, both guys nuking 125+ serves nonstop. The difference was while Roddick had higher MPH, Goran had better control and disguised his serve better. Goran had way more aces, serving 4 straight multiple times. Roddick said post-game he was guessing because he had given up on trying to read it. Goran would serve 130-132 tops while Roddick would hit 135+.

I think Roddick fell into hitting the ball too hard and being too deliberate on his serve/strokes, and not crafty enough.

Hey welcome man! Hope to see more of you.
 
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