“The most characteristic feature of metric fixation is the aspiration to replace judgment based on experience with standardized measurement.”
We live in an era of technocratic numbers men and an endlessly proliferating class of middle management bean counters who have elevated numbers and statistical data to the
sine qua non of knowledge and objective truth. “Numbers don’t lie” they tell us. “You can’t argue with the data” we are assured. “Don’t worry, very sharp statisticians have collected and interpreted this data so your opinion is no longer required,” we are warned by men in grey flannel suits and are expected to slink back to our cubicles or howl out our rage only in the sealed privacy of our cars in the silence of underground car parks. But at some level we know it is a con. We can plainly see that the guy with the clipboard and glib set of numbers doesn’t know what he’s talking about and is missing the point. He got his position through nepotism or brown-nosing and his experience is solely theoretical. He never spent a day in the trenches – on a sales pitch, in front of a classroom, in the operating theatre or on a drug bust. His numbers are merely rationalisations for a course of action that has been
decided in advance by head office. However, the delusion that experience, instinct and professional judgement can be junked and replaced by a stack of contextless spreadsheets without losing something of crucial significance is the particular madness of our age.
I recently read
The Tyranny of Metrics by Jerry Z. Muller and some of the sneering, gleeful and premature relegation of Federer’s achievements and career by perennial nay-sayers reminded me of the central arguments of his book. To sum it up crudely – measurement is often
not a replacement for judgement. In his words, “Metric fixation is the persistence of these beliefs despite their unintended negative consequences when they are put into practice. It occurs because
not everything that is important is measureable, and much that is measurable is unimportant.” The thesis of his book is that the managerialist obsession with measurement and data very often distorts the object that is being measured as criteria are adjusted to suit preferred outcomes or people and organisations, rationally, adjust behaviour or priorities in order to game the system. Here's a key passage:
“To demand or preach mechanical precision, even in principle, in a field incapable of it, is to be blind and to mislead others," as the British liberal philosopher Isaiah Berlin noted in an essay on political judgement. Indeed what Berlin says of political judgement applies more broadly: judgement is a sort of skill at grasping the unique particularities of a situation, and it entails a talent for synthesis rather than analysis, "a capacity for taking in the total pattern of a human situation, of the way in which things hang together." A feel for the whole and a sense for the unique are precisely what numerical metrics cannot supply.”
So it is with tennis. What are the definitive criteria for measuring greatness? They are arbitrary – not even rising to the level of conventional. In recent years it has become grand slam results. But what is or is not a grand slam has changed over time with commercial pressures, ease of international travel etc. In any case, some say the key metric is the record against key rivals, or number of weeks at number one, or year end number ones, or most dominant streak (or in some cases the possession of functioning tear ducts and the complete range of human emotion). For others it is an experiential thing, “I’ve seen player X’s game and it is closest to my vision of the Platonic form of tennis.” It could be a combination of all of these in whatever proportions you suit your preferences. In the end it’s whatever you want it to be. Whatever metrics you choose will be imperfect. Why? Because by the nature of metrics - compilers have to make an arbitrary decision about what is important enough to be measured and what is to be left out. Once this subjective choice has been made then we are told what has been selected as being worth measuring is objective. And so Federer fans are told, “No, the thing you value most is not relevant or important. It does not fit into my metric and therefore is illegitimate.” So goes the tyranny of managerialism but this does not make it correct
Of course, sponsors and advertising imperatives will demand metrics and simple, axiomatic slogans masquerading as common sense in order to flog watches, sneakers, racquets etc. This will always murder the past in order to move product and put bums on seats in the present. They don’t care about Sampras or Agassi, Laver or Rosewall and nor will they care about Federer fairly soon - once his product moving potential has been wrung out. He will be fitted with a narrative that privileges the present product movers. It has already begun on this board. But it won’t be true; it will just be expedient. Many will accept the revisionism because they heard it many times and there were some numbers on the TV. There is an old saying in marketing, “Everyone thinks that advertising works – on other people.”
The human element of tennis and the visceral judgement about what excites you on a tennis court will never be captured in a spreadsheet. This is what makes the game great. An imperfect analogy is acting. I like Robert DeNiro you prefer Tom Hanks. Who is correct? Should we check their trophy room to decide who is greater. The point is moot. So it is with Federer. Were he alive still, would David Foster Wallace have disowned his famous essay on Federer as result of recent victories by Nadal? Was his judgement faulty? Not at all. I cheered for Djokovic on the weekend and commend his victory as I have with Nadal but they simply do not move me in the way Federer did. They do not walk the tightrope and make themselves vulnerable in the way he did. He played in a way that made “the jaw drop and eyes protrude and sounds are made that bring spouses in from other rooms to see if you’re OK.” Deep down you sense that other top players even highly successful ones (some have even admitted it) would love to have his game - to play with that creativity, freedom and swashbuckling panache. His achievements will live on in the record books but his game will live on in our hearts and memories. Exhilarating and undiminished in a way that quickens the pulse and lightens the spirit and escapes the chains of numerical pedantry. Thankfully, Foster Wallace put his judgement and feeling into words for the rest of us.
"Genius is not replicable. Inspiration, though, is contagious, and multiform — and even just to see, close up, power and aggression made vulnerable to beauty is to feel inspired and (in a fleeting, mortal way) reconciled."
