The most recent 20 Slam champions by age:

H

helterskelter

G.O.A.T.
Men's singles: 31, 29, 29, 28, 28, 28, 30, 27, 25, 27, 28, 28, 27, 26, 27, 25, 25, 30, 26, 24.

Women's singles: 28, 34, 22, 28, 33, 33, 33, 33, 32, 24, 27, 31, 31, 28, 31, 23, 30, 30, 25, 22.
 
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Gary Duane said:
Point is the winners are overall getting older and older...
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I really wonder why that is. What caused the shift? I remember when players like McEnroe and Edberg (just two examples among many) were wining their last Slams in their mid 20s. I often hear that the "game has become more physical," but are players in their late 20s really that much more physically gifted as a 21 or 22 year old? I get that teenagers aren't done growing, but you can be physically mature by early 20s. Even if you're not, you can certainly still be a good enough athlete to win a Slam, no?

I thought maybe the game has become more grinding, it takes more focus and maturity. But, is that really true across the board? There were grindfests in previous generations as well.

Part of it may simply be that we had a series of historical all-time greats overlapping and in quick succession in Fed, Nadal, and Djokovic who, collectively, dominated Slams unlike a group of players previously have, blocking many potentially younger players from winning a Slam or two in the process.
 
NuBas said:
Could have at least done an average age or something
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Fine. Here are oldest, youngest, mean, and mode for both men and women:

Men

Oldest = 31.5 (Stan Wawrinka, 2016 US Open - second-oldest men's Slam champion in the last 40 years).
Youngest = 24.67 (Novak Djokovic, 2012 Australian Open - only men's Slam champion in the last five years under 25).
Mean = 27.4 (I'm not including partial years here but going only by age at most recent birthday. If I included months, it could be almost a year higher and would almost certainly be 28 to the nearest year. But it'll take me a while to calculate the mean including months, so I'll get back to you on that).
Mode = 28 (five Slams by a man aged 28, second is 27 with four champions).

Women

Oldest = 34.75 (Serena Williams, 2016 Wimbledon - oldest women's Slam champion in a long time).
Youngest = 22.5 (Victoria Azarenka, 2012 Australian Open).
Mean = 28.9 (same caveat as for the men's).
Mode = 33 (four champions).
 
helterskelter said:
Fine. Here are oldest, youngest, mean, and mode for both men and women:

Men

Oldest = 31.5 (Stan Wawrinka, 2016 US Open - second-oldest men's Slam champion in the last 40 years).
Youngest = 24.67 (Novak Djokovic, 2012 Australian Open - only men's Slam champion in the last five years under 25).
Mean = 27.4 (I'm not including partial years here but going only by age at most recent birthday. If I included months, it could be almost a year higher and would almost certainly be 28 to the nearest year. But it'll take me a while to calculate the mean including months, so I'll get back to you on that).
Mode = 28 (five Slams by a man aged 28, second is 27 with four champions).

Women

Oldest = 34.75 (Serena Williams, 2016 Wimbledon - oldest women's Slam champion in a long time).
Youngest = 22.5 (Victoria Azarenka, 2012 Australian Open).
Mean = 28.9 (same caveat as for the men's).
Mode = 33 (four champions).
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Isn't the 'peak' age for men supposed to be like in their late 20s and early 30s anyway? So perhaps its not so surprising. Early 20s you are still developing and maturing so only really exceptional people at that young age can break through.
 
NuBas said:
Isn't the 'peak' age for men supposed to be like in their late 20s and early 30s anyway? So perhaps its not so surprising. Early 20s you are still developing and maturing so only really exceptional people at that young age can break through.
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Yes, for most sports similar to tennis the "peak" age would be something like 25-31, or 26-32. (For example, the researchers of the soccer-management simulation Football Manager decided that the peak age for a forward is 26-31 and for defenders and midfielders it is 27-32. Both strike me as being roughly accurate for soccer players, although there's more flexibility and divergence among people than is possible in a computer game). But in tennis it was younger than that in the past, so this is a change from the days when players in their early and mid-20s were dominant.
 
helterskelter said:
And yet there are several threads on the boards purporting to show that Slam championship winning is basically done at 28, based on the results between about 1975 and 2010.
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It's hard to say the slam winners are at their peak age right now.

Djokovic is hardly at his peak. He isn't playing as well as he was even a year ago, but 2011 Djokovic was far more dominant. Murray isn't at his peak. He isn't playing as well as he was a couple of years ago before his injuries. Wawrinka may be an exception, but is probably the exception proving the rule.

These GS winners are rarely at their peak. The issue is that the ones following them seem unable to break past the top 3 or 4, even though they are not at their peak.
 
Vrad said:
It's hard to say the slam winners are at their peak age right now.

Djokovic is hardly at his peak. He isn't playing as well as he was even a year ago, but 2011 Djokovic was far more dominant. Murray isn't at his peak. He isn't playing as well as he was a couple of years ago before his injuries. Wawrinka may be an exception, but is probably the exception proving the rule.

These GS winners are rarely at their peak. The issue is that the ones following them seem unable to break past the top 3 or 4, even though they are not at their peak.
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But, "Peak" is a hard thing to pin down. Of course, there is the absolute, narrow "peak", which players aren't in for very long. But, I think there's a broader "peak" which encompasses a broader range of play, all of it among the best of that player, but not all of it as good as the "best of the best" - the aforementioned narrow peak. It drives me insane when people dismiss a player's win because his opponent wasn't at his absolute "peak". Players rarely play at their pure peak level of play. So, IMO, djokovic may be past his narrow peak, but I still think he's in his broader peak.
 
bluetrain4 said:
But, "Peak" is a hard thing to pin down. Of course, there is the absolute, narrow "peak", which players aren't in for very long. But, I think there's a broader "peak" which encompasses a broader range of play, all of it among the best of that player, but not all of it as good as the "best of the best" - the aforementioned narrow peak. It drives me insane when people dismiss a player's win because his opponent wasn't at his absolute "peak". Players rarely play at their pure peak level of play. So, IMO, djokovic may be past his narrow peak, but I still think he's in his broader peak.
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Absolutely. Very well said. Posters tend to define "peak" in a way that is terribly mistaken and simplistic. In so far as I understand the common usage of "peak," it means "the most prime years in a player's prime career." It's as though a player's level could be objectively measured and forms the shape of a bell curve. Then, if you draw a line halfway up, all the points on the bell curve above that line are "prime." If you draw another line three-quarters of the way up, all the points on the bell curve about that line are "peak." Now, the first error here is that no account is made for that elusive, mysterious, but important entity "form." In fact, while players' levels may roughly resemble a bell curve, there will be myriad peaks and troughs along the way. What "peak" actually refers to is a few outstanding performances dotted across a long career. Djokovic, at less than 29 and a half, is absolutely still in his prime years, even if his recent performances have not been his very best. He may well in the future have performances as good as or better than anything he has yet produced. Wawrinka produced far better tennis after he turned 28 and a half than he did prior to turning 28 and a half, but there are posters who believe in a so-called rule of 28.5, where all players enter "physical decline" and leave their "peak" no later than the age of 28.5.
 
How bad is this situation going to get? In another 3 or 4 years, the entire top 10 will be made up of 30 somethings + Thiem and Zverev.
 
We are mostly in a fact free zone here.

Tennis has been roughly the same in terms of young players winning from 1974 to 2009, and people are forgetting that Del Potro won in 2009 under the age of 21.

There was a period from 1968 through 1973 when no one won a slam under the age of 23, and in fact the youngest slam winner during that time was Jan Kodes - 24y 03m 06d. Newcombe was 29 in 73. Gimeno was 34 in 72. Laver was 30-31 in 69 when he won the GS. I'm not even counting Rosewall. If we count him, it just gets absurd. And some of these older players were blocked from playing in some slams.

In fact, the dominance of these older players started before 68, when Laver and Rosewall were winning almost everything. So that period was EXACTLY like 2010-2016 when you had and aging group of amazingly dominant champions who were genetically amazing (so healthy).

What is happening right now is not new. It is a repeat.

There will be a reset next year or the year after.

There were approximately the same number of players under 23 who won slams in the 80s, 90s and then in 2000-2009. That's an inconvenient fact.

Tennis is not a sport that favors older players. It's just that we have an amazing group of aging stars like Federer who have had incredible longevity. Right now experience is trumping youth.
 
This transition period has happened before, for example it's similar to the end of the Sampras/Agassi generation and the beginning of the Federer generation. The players in between those two were also not as distinguished as either of those generations. Sampras and Agassi won slams into their 30s, and I expect it to happen to the Djokovic/Murray et al. crowd. They'll only be as successful as the younger generations allow.
 
bluetrain4 said:
But, "Peak" is a hard thing to pin down. Of course, there is the absolute, narrow "peak", which players aren't in for very long. But, I think there's a broader "peak" which encompasses a broader range of play, all of it among the best of that player, but not all of it as good as the "best of the best" - the aforementioned narrow peak. It drives me insane when people dismiss a player's win because his opponent wasn't at his absolute "peak". Players rarely play at their pure peak level of play. So, IMO, djokovic may be past his narrow peak, but I still think he's in his broader peak.
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I agree with your comment. I think in this case when people talk about players's peak usually being mid to late 20s, they are talking about the narrow peak that you're mentioning.
 
helterskelter said:
Yes, for most sports similar to tennis the "peak" age would be something like 25-31, or 26-32. (For example, the researchers of the soccer-management simulation Football Manager decided that the peak age for a forward is 26-31 and for defenders and midfielders it is 27-32. Both strike me as being roughly accurate for soccer players, although there's more flexibility and divergence among people than is possible in a computer game). But in tennis it was younger than that in the past, so this is a change from the days when players in their early and mid-20s were dominant.
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Don't follow football that closely anymore, but it was def. also younger than those numbers for football players in the past.
Also, you can be as physically strong at 22 onwards as you need for tennis, I would presume. Decision-making takes time to learn.
All in all, I really don't quite get why we see not just so few champions, but so few players under 25 in top-50 (we're talking around 8 iirc - Thiem, Kyrgios, Zverev, Sock, Pouille, Tomic, Coric and one or two more).
 
Gary Duane said:
We are mostly in a fact free zone here.

Tennis has been roughly the same in terms of young players winning from 1974 to 2009, and people are forgetting that Del Potro won in 2009 under the age of 21.

There was a period from 1968 through 1973 when no one won a slam under the age of 23, and in fact the youngest slam winner during that time was Jan Kodes - 24y 03m 06d. Newcombe was 29 in 73. Gimeno was 34 in 72. Laver was 30-31 in 69 when he won the GS. I'm not even counting Rosewall. If we count him, it just gets absurd. And some of these older players were blocked from playing in some slams.

In fact, the dominance of these older players started before 68, when Laver and Rosewall were winning almost everything. So that period was EXACTLY like 2010-2016 when you had and aging group of amazingly dominant champions who were genetically amazing (so healthy).

What is happening right now is not new. It is a repeat.

There will be a reset next year or the year after.

There were approximately the same number of players under 23 who won slams in the 80s, 90s and then in 2000-2009. That's an inconvenient fact.

Tennis is not a sport that favors older players. It's just that we have an amazing group of aging stars like Federer who have had incredible longevity. Right now experience is trumping youth.
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You have a partial point. But if we broaden the scope to not only include top-3 players winning the slams, but top-50 or top-100, the same thing applies. Older players beat youngsters again and again and keep them from rising in the rankings.
From 2007 to 2014, the average age of a top-50 player went up with more than 3 years. That's massive. I haven't done the analysis, but I can only imagine it has gone up further since then. Have a look: http://www.changeovertennis.com/atp-dark-age-coming/

Can't find the graph, but we've had graphs on the site earlier showing the average age of slam winners and slam finalists for the Open era. The best years were 24-25 - and 22-27 more broadly speaking. Today, the average age of the top-4 is almost 30 and the average age of top-10 is probably above that.
 
Youndslamwinnrs.png
 
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Woah - NO idea why the site did that, and now it's not allowing me to delete the extra copies. Weird...

Edit. I just put in the link. It appeared 5 times. Then I could not simply delete 4 copies because any attempt to type in the window just enlarged the pics. Had to delete it all and start from scratch.
 
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Chanwan said:
@Gary - what am I looking at above? I need averages to draw conclusions
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You are looking at ALL slam winners under the age of 23 from 1990 through 2009. I can't show the whole list. The list is too long.

There are about the same number of young players winning in the 80s, 90s, and 2000s.

Less in the 70s because no one under 23 won until 1974.

As to why there are more older players ranked in the top 10 and 20, more than in the late 60s and early 70s, I don't know. I don't have a list of top 20 players from 1973.

But it is likely that things are going to change a lot over the next couple years. We are in an anomaly right now.
 
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I disagree with your conclusions, because as @Chanwan rightly points out the difference between the last few years and the period between 1999 and 2002 or so is that the aging goes right the way down the ranks of the top few hundred. In the previous era, it was indeed simply that nobody could break through past Sampras and Agassi. Now, it's not simply that nobody can break past Djokovic and Murray. Rather, nobody can break past Djokovic, Murray, Nadal, Berdych, Tsonga, etc etc. And that's still the tip of the iceberg. As Chanwan pointed out, there are very few players under 25 even in the top 50 or 100. Moreover, again unlike the previous period, the aging occurs in both the men's game and the women's game at the same time. It's my view that there have been significant structural changes to the tour that make breaking through more difficult AND that there have been changes to the game that advantage older players.

Your reading of the history is also not quite right, either. In particular, this is just wrong: "Tennis has been roughly the same in terms of young players winning from 1974 to 2009." It appears to be right only because you don't differentiate players under the age of 23. But if you were to do so, you would see that teenagers (17-19) won many Slams between about 1974 and 1990 but were then frozen out from 1991 onwards, with only one teenage Slam champion in the more recent 26 years. That's a long-term change in the game. Now, if it's possible for the age of youngest winner to shift upwards from 17 to 20, it must also be possible for it to shift upwards from 20 to 23 and for the age of oldest winner to shift upwards from 30 to 33.

Of course there will be fluctuations and there will in future likely be a period in which younger players do better. But you put your finger on the button when you portray the eras in which young players dominate as the norm and those in which old players dominate as the aberration.

Gary Duane said:
We are mostly in a fact free zone here.

Tennis has been roughly the same in terms of young players winning from 1974 to 2009, and people are forgetting that Del Potro won in 2009 under the age of 21.

There was a period from 1968 through 1973 when no one won a slam under the age of 23, and in fact the youngest slam winner during that time was Jan Kodes - 24y 03m 06d. Newcombe was 29 in 73. Gimeno was 34 in 72. Laver was 30-31 in 69 when he won the GS. I'm not even counting Rosewall. If we count him, it just gets absurd. And some of these older players were blocked from playing in some slams.

In fact, the dominance of these older players started before 68, when Laver and Rosewall were winning almost everything. So that period was EXACTLY like 2010-2016 when you had and aging group of amazingly dominant champions who were genetically amazing (so healthy).

What is happening right now is not new. It is a repeat.

There will be a reset next year or the year after.

There were approximately the same number of players under 23 who won slams in the 80s, 90s and then in 2000-2009. That's an inconvenient fact.

Tennis is not a sport that favors older players. It's just that we have an amazing group of aging stars like Federer who have had incredible longevity. Right now experience is trumping youth.
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helterskelter said:
I disagree with your conclusions, because as @Chanwan rightly points out the difference between the last few years and the period between 1999 and 2002 or so is that the aging goes right the way down the ranks of the top few hundred. In the previous era, it was indeed simply that nobody could break through past Sampras and Agassi. Now, it's not simply that nobody can break past Djokovic and Murray. Rather, nobody can break past Djokovic, Murray, Nadal, Berdych, Tsonga, etc etc. And that's still the tip of the iceberg. As Chanwan pointed out, there are very few players under 25 even in the top 50 or 100. Moreover, again unlike the previous period, the aging occurs in both the men's game and the women's game at the same time. It's my view that there have been significant structural changes to the tour that make breaking through more difficult AND that there have been changes to the game that advantage older players.

Your reading of the history is also not quite right, either. In particular, this is just wrong: "Tennis has been roughly the same in terms of young players winning from 1974 to 2009." It appears to be right only because you don't differentiate players under the age of 23. But if you were to do so, you would see that teenagers (17-19) won many Slams between about 1974 and 1990 but were then frozen out from 1991 onwards, with only one teenage Slam champion in the more recent 26 years. That's a long-term change in the game. Now, if it's possible for the age of youngest winner to shift upwards from 17 to 20, it must also be possible for it to shift upwards from 20 to 23 and for the age of oldest winner to shift upwards from 30 to 33.

Of course there will be fluctuations and there will in future likely be a period in which younger players do better. But you put your finger on the button when you portray the eras in which young players dominate as the norm and those in which old players dominate as the aberration.
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I don't really have a conclusion. But I have the facts I just showed you. Up until 2009 players under 23 were still winning slams.

This surprised me too.

As to whether or not seeing only aging players win slams is now the norm and will remain so, I suggest we all wait 5 years or so.

My conclusion could be, right now, that in South Florida we are no longer vulnerable to hurricanes because none has hit since Wilma, and that's longer than the young-slam-winner drought.

That's why I say - let's wait and see. If no young players break through in a couple years, you can bump this thread to remind me why I was wrong. ;)
 
helterskelter said:
I disagree with your conclusions, because as @Chanwan rightly points out the difference between the last few years and the period between 1999 and 2002 or so is that the aging goes right the way down the ranks of the top few hundred. In the previous era, it was indeed simply that nobody could break through past Sampras and Agassi. Now, it's not simply that nobody can break past Djokovic and Murray. Rather, nobody can break past Djokovic, Murray, Nadal, Berdych, Tsonga, etc etc. And that's still the tip of the iceberg. As Chanwan pointed out, there are very few players under 25 even in the top 50 or 100. Moreover, again unlike the previous period, the aging occurs in both the men's game and the women's game at the same time. It's my view that there have been significant structural changes to the tour that make breaking through more difficult AND that there have been changes to the game that advantage older players.

Your reading of the history is also not quite right, either. In particular, this is just wrong: "Tennis has been roughly the same in terms of young players winning from 1974 to 2009." It appears to be right only because you don't differentiate players under the age of 23. But if you were to do so, you would see that teenagers (17-19) won many Slams between about 1974 and 1990 but were then frozen out from 1991 onwards, with only one teenage Slam champion in the more recent 26 years. That's a long-term change in the game. Now, if it's possible for the age of youngest winner to shift upwards from 17 to 20, it must also be possible for it to shift upwards from 20 to 23 and for the age of oldest winner to shift upwards from 30 to 33.

Of course there will be fluctuations and there will in future likely be a period in which younger players do better. But you put your finger on the button when you portray the eras in which young players dominate as the norm and those in which old players dominate as the aberration.
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Well put, I agree. @Gary, you are underestimating that the increase in age is across the board. The entire top-50, top-100, top-200 or where you want to make your cut-off has aged by more than 3 years in a seven year period (well, top-50 that was, but I believe the same goes for top-100 and above).
@helterskelter - Question is then: What are those changes (the bold). Slower courts and balls, more baseline rallies, longer points, less variety in styles etc?
 
It's actually rather unlikely that things will change a lot in the next couple of years. It's far more likely that they will not do so and that any change will be slow and take many years. Just so you know, there were NUMEROUS threads predicting rapid change within the next two years about two years ago. But the change didn't happen. For example, Falstaff and others had produced charts just like the one you posted on this thread that purported to show that players must decline at about 28 and that as the top players were about to turn 28, we would see rapid change. We have not done so.

You can't use past results to predict future ones. Results are context-dependent and you don't know how the context will change. You can only use past results to explain past contexts.

Gary Duane said:
You are looking at ALL slam winners under the age of 23 from 1990 through 2009. I can't show the whole list. The list is too long.

There are about the same number of young players winning in the 80s, 90s, and 2000s.

Less in the 70s because no one under 23 won until 1974.

As to why there are more older players ranked in the top 10 and 20, more than in the late 60s and early 70s, I don't know. I don't have a list of top 20 players from 1973.

But it is likely that things are going to change a lot over the next couple years. We are in an anomaly right now.
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Your chart didn't surprise me at all: I already knew the information in it. But I don't regard it as conclusive because, as I said, past results don't predict future ones.

I don't think there will be a "norm." I think that there will be different historical eras and that in some of them older players dominate and in others younger players do. I do think that the change will be slow, though. So I am happy to predict that there will not be much change within the next two years, but I agree with you that things might change within the next five years or so. Of course they might.

Gary Duane said:
I don't really have a conclusion. But I have the facts I just showed you. Up until 2009 players under 23 were still winning slams.

This surprised me too.

As to whether or not seeing only aging players win slams is now the norm and will remain so, I suggest we all wait 5 years or so.

My conclusion could be, right now, that in South Florida we are no longer vulnerable to hurricanes because none has hit since Wilma, and that's longer than the young-slam-winner drought.

That's why I say - let's wait and see. If no young players break through in a couple years, you can bump this thread to remind me why I was wrong. ;)
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helterskelter said:
Your reading of the history is also not quite right, either. In particular, this is just wrong: "Tennis has been roughly the same in terms of young players winning from 1974 to 2009." It appears to be right only because you don't differentiate players under the age of 23. But if you were to do so, you would see that teenagers (17-19) won many Slams between about 1974 and 1990 but were then frozen out from 1991 onwards, with only one teenage Slam champion in the more recent 26 years. That's a long-term change in the game. Now, if it's possible for the age of youngest winner to shift upwards from 17 to 20, it must also be possible for it to shift upwards from 20 to 23 and for the age of oldest winner to shift upwards from 30 to 33.
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I've thought about that too.

On the other hand, there were only two in this group in the 70s, two players under 20. One in the 90s, one in the 2000s, none so far in 2010+.

Six in the 80s. So we could as easily say that the 80s was an exception.

10 players under the age of 20 is a very small sample size.
Of course there will be fluctuations and there will in future likely be a period in which younger players do better. But you put your finger on the button when you portray the eras in which young players dominate as the norm and those in which old players dominate as the aberration.
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What age do you want to concentrate on? We can do players from 24-26. We can see how many of them fall in each era.

If there are less players 17-19, then there are more players 20-22.

Pick your range.
 
Chanwan said:
Well put, I agree. @Gary, you are underestimating that the increase in age is across the board. The entire top-50, top-100, top-200 or where you want to make your cut-off has aged by more than 3 years in a seven year period (well, top-50 that was, but I believe the same goes for top-100 and above).
@helterskelter - Question is then: What are those changes (the bold). Slower courts and balls, more baseline rallies, longer points, less variety in styles etc?
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Yes, those are the changes in playing style. But we need to be more nuanced about it because it is not simply longer points that help older players but a particularly type of longer point. Remember that Borg and Vilas engaged in rallies far longer than the current ones and Borg was done by 25, and even Vilas reached his last Slam final in the year he turned 30. (I think he was still 29 but I can't remember offhand when in 1952 he was born). The point is, I think, that the current baseline game is a power baseline one, whereas the tennis of Borg and Vilas (and the Swedish and Argentinian Armadas who followed them) was much less powerful. I am not quite sure what it is about the power baseline game that helps older players, but I think that some of the following are going on:

- strength is a physical attribute that develops later than some other attributes. It may not be the case that 30-year-olds have an advantage over 23-year-olds, but it is probably the case that they don't have a disadvantage. By contrast, they do have a disadvantage when it comes to being able to turn quickly. [I believe that heavyweight boxers tend to be older than lightweight boxers and I think the difference between strength and speed of turn is partially the reason].
- the power-baseline game places more emphasis on shot selection than did the previous variant of baseline play. Older players definitely have an advantage over younger players when it comes to shot selection because a man's cerebral cortex doesn't stop developing until he is about 25. Prior to that age, he is just not going to be equally able to avoid making rash decisions in the heat of the moment. It is just a supposition that the power baseline game places more emphasis on shot selection, but that would be my sense of what's going on.

Besides this, there are several "extra"-court changes that are relevant, such as:

- there have been advances in nutrition and in training that allow older players to stay in shape longer. Some injuries that would have finished the careers of a player no longer do so. Many players declined as the result of sustaining an injury that never fully healed.
- the prize money differentials have increased. This enables the established players to access those improvements in nutrition and in training that non-established players cannot access.
- there are more byes in ATP/WTA events than in the past, so the draws are smaller. This also handicaps non-established players, who tend to be younger.
- there are more seeds in ATP/WTA events, e.g. there are 32 in Slams rather than 16. This also benefits established players, who tend to be older.
 
helterskelter said:
Your chart didn't surprise me at all: I already knew the information in it. But I don't regard it as conclusive because, as I said, past results don't predict future ones.

I don't think there will be a "norm." I think that there will be different historical eras and that in some of them older players dominate and in others younger players do. I do think that the change will be slow, though. So I am happy to predict that there will not be much change within the next two years, but I agree with you that things might change within the next five years or so. Of course they might.
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It could take five years or longer.

It could also happen next year. We just don't know.

No one saw Connors coming a couple years before he burst on the scene. There may have been people hot on him as a hot young gun, but even so...

And yes, you can't predict any short period because there are always fluctuations. If I flip a coin and get heads 5 or 10 times in a row, it doesn't mean the coin changed - or the law of physics.

I'm looking at the data in many different ways. I can only show one view here. That doesn't mean I am only looking at one view.

I'll repeat: bump this thread in a couple years and tell me I'm wrong if I'm wrong. ;)
 
Gary Duane said:
It could take five years or longer.

It could also happen next year. We just don't know.

No one saw Connors coming a couple years before he burst on the scene. There may have been people hot on him as a hot young gun, but even so...

And yes, you can't predict any short period because there are always fluctuations. If I flip a coin and get heads 5 or 10 times in a row, it doesn't mean the coin changed - or the law of physics.

I'm looking at the data in many different ways. I can only show one view here. That doesn't mean I am only looking at one view.

I'll repeat: bump this thread in a couple years and tell me I'm wrong if I'm wrong. ;)
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Why aren't you commentating on the average age for the entire top-50, top-100 etc. going up by several years?
 
Yes, that's true about the teenagers, but note that you are still supposing that it's possible to classify some eras as "exceptional" and others as "normal." I don't think that's true. The disagreement probably relates to fundamental underlying disagreements about social explanation. If you want me to say more about that, I'm happy to do so, but it takes us very close to issues of social-science methodology that are interesting to me as a (type of) social scientist but probably not interesting to you and certainly not interesting to the bulk of posters.

On another note: there aren't many Slam champions of ANY age. It's important to list by Slam champion and not by Slam tournament, because listing by Slam tournament allows multiple counting. (For example, Borg won 11 Slams but was done within a week of his 25th birthday. If we list by Slam tournament, we come to 11 championships won by a player aged 25 or under, and that seems to give a much more sizable n than if we list by Slam champion and realize that they were all one just by Borg). I think that this is a mistake that many posters made in presenting the data about slam champions in the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s that led to unwarranted confidence that those results reflected a timeless inevitable order.

I'm not sure it's worth considering players aged 24-26, because I think we would all agree that that's an age range that is always likely to fall within the winnable range. In the past it may have been middle-aged, now it may be young, but it's never likely to be so young that players of that age are still developing or so old that players of that age are past it. Tennis is not gymnastics!

Gary Duane said:
I've thought about that too.

On the other hand, there were only two in this group in the 70s, two players under 20. One in the 90s, one in the 2000s, none so far in 2010+.

Six in the 80s. So we could as easily say that the 80s was an exception.

10 players under the age of 20 is a very small sample size.

What age do you want to concentrate on? We can do players from 24-26. We can see how many of them fall in each era.

If there are less players 17-19, then there are more players 20-22.

Pick your range.
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I've also looked at the data in many different ways!

I'm happy to bump the thread in a couple of years. All I can do is repeat that if you search for similar threads from the end of 2014 or start of 2015, you'll see that there were people who were CONFIDENT that we would see major changes in the next two years. We did not see such changes.

Again, I don't think that understanding tennis on the norms of natural science is the only or the best way to model it. Of course, tennis is a physical activity. But it's also a mental activity and a social one. (That is to say, while it's true that once a player has developed, his or her results depend on his ability and not so much on social factors, whether the player develops or not in the first place is probably much more heavily dependent on social factors encouraging or inhibiting that development. In concrete terms: I agree that a 22-year-old Federer or Nadal would do extremely well nowadays if they were playing at the level they played at aged 22, but I am not sure that a 22-year-old Federer or Nadal could emerge nowadays, as there are structural obstacles in their place).

Gary Duane said:
It could take five years or longer.

It could also happen next year. We just don't know.

No one saw Connors coming a couple years before he burst on the scene. There may have been people hot on him as a hot young gun, but even so...

And yes, you can't predict any short period because there are always fluctuations. If I flip a coin and get heads 5 or 10 times in a row, it doesn't mean the coin changed - or the law of physics.

I'm looking at the data in many different ways. I can only show one view here. That doesn't mean I am only looking at one view.

I'll repeat: bump this thread in a couple years and tell me I'm wrong if I'm wrong. ;)
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Chanwan said:
Why aren't you commentating on the average age for the entire top-50, top-100 etc. going up by several years?
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Because I don't have that data. If you do, post it.

The big picture idea is that what is happening now is more or less permanent. To some extent I actually agree and have been saying so for some time. On the other hand, we may be exaggerating the advantage of age.

It could be, for instance, that the age at which slams are won most often is slowly going up. In 50 years we may find that the peak for players winning slams is 26, or 26.6. That would still be a huge change.
 
Gary Duane said:
Because I don't have that data. If you do, post it.

The big picture idea is that what is happening now is more or less permanent. To some extent I actually agree and have been saying so for some time. On the other hand, we may be exaggerating the advantage of age.

It could be, for instance, that the age at which slams are won most often is slowly going up. In 50 years we may find that the peak for players winning slams is 26, or 26.6. That would still be a huge change.
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I did already, have a look at the chart in this article: "From 2007 to 2014, the average age of a top-50 player went up with more than 3 years. That's massive. I haven't done the analysis, but I can only imagine it has gone up further since then. Have a look: http://www.changeovertennis.com/atp-dark-age-coming/"
 
Gary Duane said:
Because I don't have that data. If you do, post it.

The big picture idea is that what is happening now is more or less permanent. To some extent I actually agree and have been saying so for some time. On the other hand, we may be exaggerating the advantage of age.

It could be, for instance, that the age at which slams are won most often is slowly going up. In 50 years we may find that the peak for players winning slams is 26, or 26.6. That would still be a huge change.
Click to expand...

If that is the big idea, it's not the big idea on my presentation of it. As I put it, we shouldn't think of these results as an aberration that will correct itself. That doesn't mean that they will necessarily be permanent.
 
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