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Hall of Fame
Kudos to member falstaff78 for originally posting this. The original thread is now closed for further replies, so I feel now is a good time to bring it up again since DjoKodal fans are having a field day with Federer, the true GOAT being buried behind recency bias:
This thread looks at all 151 tour level tournaments that Federer and Nadal entered together. For each draw, I looked at the round in which they were due to have their "date," and who reached the "date".
This allows us to quantify the worst-kept secret in tennis: that Nadal's head to head record vs. Federer has been protected because Nadal wasn't good enough vs the field to reach Federer, in many situations which favoured Federer.
Overall
Split by first and second half of season
Split by time
To conclude, this post has merely quantified what we already know: that Federer vs. Nadal matches were strongly skewed towards conditions suiting Nadal, and that this is due to Nadal's shortcomings vs the field.
The reason head-to-head is such a silly metric is: if Nadal had played better against the field later in the year, especially on hard courts, and especially between 2003 and 2007, his head to head with Federer would have been much closer to parity.
The purpose of professional tennis is to advance as far as possible in tournaments. It is therefore much more relevant to look at who went further in more tournaments that both played (Federer 73-67). Or who won more tournaments that they both played (Federer 47-37). This objectively means Federer has done better than Nadal, head to head.
Enjoy.
This thread looks at all 151 tour level tournaments that Federer and Nadal entered together. For each draw, I looked at the round in which they were due to have their "date," and who reached the "date".
This allows us to quantify the worst-kept secret in tennis: that Nadal's head to head record vs. Federer has been protected because Nadal wasn't good enough vs the field to reach Federer, in many situations which favoured Federer.
Overall
- Federer and Nadal entered 151 tournaments together.
- Federer won more of these (47 vs. 37) and went further more often (73 vs. 67 with 11 ties).
- The same is true of the 46 majors they entered together - Federer went further more often (25 v. 19), and won more (16 v. 14).
- They have played in 25% of tournaments entered together (37)
- Interestingly, Federer won the title each time he beat Nadal (14/14). Whereas Nadal won the title 17/23 times he beat Federer.
Split by first and second half of season
- Nadal does better than Federer in the first half of the season, until RG (went further 50 vs. 29). And Federer does better after RG (went further 44 vs. 17). This should tell you how big a favourite Federer is for the year end ranking in 2017 - it won't even be close.
- The same trend is reflected in their head to head. Nadal leads 20-7 in the first half, and Federer leads 7-3 in the second half.
- The two most common explanations offered for this trend are: increased court speeds in the second half of the year, and fatigue for Nadal after clay court exertions.
- A key question is: why have they played 27 matches in the first half of the year, and only 10 in the second?
- There are two reasons for this:
- The first is that they entered far fewer draws together in the second half (67 vs. 84)
- The second is that they played in a greater fraction of the draws they entered in the first half of the year, than in the second (in first half, met in 32% of common tournaments, vs. 15% in the second half).
- Both of these reasons are due to Nadal:
- First, he enters far fewer events in the second half of the year (only 46% of his career tournament entries are after RG vs. 52% for Federer - not shown on the chart).
- Second, in the tournaments Nadal and Federer did play in the second half, Nadal only reached 28% of "dates". Federer, on the other hand, reached 64%. Compare this to the first half, where Federer was much closer to Nadal in reaching "dates" (51% vs. 58%)
- We can see the same trend when we split their records by surface.
- On clay Nadal killed Federer 13-2, and they played in 38% of draws entered together.
- On grass and hard courts, Federer leads, and they have only met 20% of the time on each.
- Specifically, on hard courts in the second half of the season, Federer leads 5-2; in such draws, they play each other only 1/3 as often as clay. (13% of draws, vs. 38%).
- Again, Nadal is clearly the culprit, having only reached their "date" 27% of the time. vs. 60% for Federer.
Split by time
- As a consequence of the 5 year age difference, their peaks have no overlap. Federer's peak of winning 11/16 majors was from 2004-2007. Whereas Nadal's peak years were all between 2008 and 2013.
- During Federer's peak, out of 24 tournaments in the first half of the season, they met 10 times (42%). Nadal won 8. However, out of 24 tournaments late in the season, they only met 4 times (17%). Federer won all 4.
- Again, the smaller number of matches in the second half was due to Nadal. Nadal showed up for "dates" much more often in the first half of the year (54% vs. 21%). Whereas Federer showed up to 75% of "dates" in the first half season, and 79% in the second.
- By comparison, during Nadal's peak years, Federer was much more consistent about reaching the "date" early and late in the season. (40% vs. 45%).
To conclude, this post has merely quantified what we already know: that Federer vs. Nadal matches were strongly skewed towards conditions suiting Nadal, and that this is due to Nadal's shortcomings vs the field.
The reason head-to-head is such a silly metric is: if Nadal had played better against the field later in the year, especially on hard courts, and especially between 2003 and 2007, his head to head with Federer would have been much closer to parity.
The purpose of professional tennis is to advance as far as possible in tournaments. It is therefore much more relevant to look at who went further in more tournaments that both played (Federer 73-67). Or who won more tournaments that they both played (Federer 47-37). This objectively means Federer has done better than Nadal, head to head.
Enjoy.
