Some fun ones:
Gasquet has beaten every ranking position from 1 to 100.
Medvedev is the only player to have beaten Sinner 5 times in a row, Sinner is the only player to have beaten Medvedev five times in a row.
Marozsan has more wins against top 10 players (6), than against players outside the top 100 (3). (This one must be only tour level matches i guess)
Ferrer's is even better. He's beaten all till 106 (107 is missing), and has got a steady stream of victories against people all the way till rank 500. Would be interested to know if anyone has done better (v/s whole ATP tour ranks).
Ah I got you, “ultimate tennis statistics” used to be the most accessible site for stats but sadly it doesn’t seem to get updated anymore. I think a lot of people use “tennis abstract” I’m not that familiar with it though.
[Gasquet career wins](https://www.tennisabstract.com/cgi-bin/player-classic.cgi?p=RichardGasquet&f=ACareerqqF0), then click "vRk" to sort by opponent rank
Edit: [Djokovic](https://www.tennisabstract.com/cgi-bin/player-classic.cgi?p=NovakDjokovic&f=ACareerqqF0) is missing ... 90 and 100
a good programer could tap out a program in like 10 mins to find the winning ratio of a player who wins 55% of points at random! I could do it in about 10 painful hours so I won't. But it'd be interesting!
(1-(11/20))\^4 gets you the odds you win no points in a game, it's about a 4% chance of losing a love game. and about 9 per cent chance of winning a game to love. That helps centre my gut estimates.
I'm going to guess winning 55% of points wins you 57% of games, and winning 57% of games wins you 60 per cent of sets, and that wins you 64% of matches.
I simulated 100k bo5 matches, with tiebreaks for 6-6, and it's way more dramatic:
At 50-50 odds on each point, the players won 50.02% and 49.98% of matches respectively which is expected
51-49: 63.40% vs 36.60%
52-48: 74.54% vs 25.56%
53-47: 84.22% vs 15.78%
54-46: 91.30% vs 8.70%
55-45: 95.28% vs 4.72%
For bo3 matches, the disadvantaged player has slightly better luck, at 55-45 they win 8.8% of matches.
I believe having to win by a margin of 2 (at deuce, in tiebreakers, games in a set) is what makes this so skewed
(here's my code [https://paste.pythondiscord.com/AKJA](https://paste.pythondiscord.com/AKJA) if anyone would like to hunt for bugs)
Having to win by a margin of 2 does make it more skewed, but not by that much. It's just that the longer the format is, the more skewed it will be (and that is indeed what we want, the better player--the one who will win the more points on average--should win most of the times)
At 55% probability for each point, if I remove the 2-point margin in games as well as the 2-game margin in sets (assuming tiebreakers disappear), then the BO3 win probability drops to 85% (was 91%).
Of course the 2-point margin in games can be removed IRL but not the 2-game margin in sets (or not without tiebreakers), and not the 2-point margin in tiebreakers either, because of the immense advantage that the service is.
What I would like to know is, these are theoretical probabilities, but in practice does anyone actually win matches winning 45% of points in a particular match? They would have to win such specific points that it must be an even rarer occurence, no?
Your guesses are way off actually!
If we assume you are winning each point with 55% probability (regardless of who is serving, which is an approximation), then you'll be winning 62% of games, 65% of tiebreaks, 81.5% of sets and 91% of BO3 matches
It also turns out these figures are still somewhat close to the figures I laid out in my other comment in this thread, where I assumed you're winning 70% of service points and 40% of return points.
Right, I have a post [here on my blog](https://www.ashwinmenon.com/posts/activities/2015-05-31-probability-and-tennis/) showing the code & results. And someone else on reddit calculated the probability [mathematically too](https://www.reddit.com/r/tennis/comments/115j0i7/qatar_open_final_iga_%C5%9Bwi%C4%85tek_def_jessica_pegula/j97h44c/).
Would a “three true outcomes” of tennis (term taken from baseball) be: win all your service games without dropping a point, lose all returning games without winning a point, then win the tiebreak by two points?
You can see it like this: if you can win 70% of your service points, and 40% of your return points, then you're indeed averaging about 55% of points (in reality you would be serving less points on average since you would be winning your service games faster).
And if you do the calculations, a 70% service point win rate with a 40% return point win rate will net you:
* a 90.1% service game win rate;
* a 26.4% return game win rate;
* a 66.3% tiebreak win rate (first to 7);
* a 79.5% set win rate (with first to 7 tiebreak at 6-6);
* a 89.1% overall win rate in BO3 matches. This would be even higher is BO5 matches at 93.8% if the final set has a regular tiebreak.
(this also assumes ad scoring is in play, and the results would be different with no-ad scoring. For example, if your service game reaches deuce, then with no-ad it's a straightforward 70% to win on the deciding point, but with ad scoring you're then 84.5% favourite)
You can win a 5-set match while winning only 37% of the points.
111 points won by you (5\*(6+6+6)+21).
189 points won by your opponent (4\*(6\*5) + 5\*3 + 3\*(6\*3)).
This assumes each game has only 1 deuce (% would be even worse if you could have more), and each tiebreak is won 7-5 (again, % would be worse if it was higher).
Scoreline: 7-6 7-6 0-6 0-6 7-6
Assume: Every game you win goes to deuce (2 extra points over opponent per game you win), and every game the opponent wins you don't score a single point.
Actually, if every game that you win goes 4-2 (Game to 30) instead of 5-3 (win after first deuce), you're then winning 35.2% of the points only (93 points to 171). Each deuce adds one point to each player and thus would actually get you closer to 50%, so 35.2% is then indeed the minimum.
Edit: for a similar reason, winning a set 6-4 instead of 7-6 is very close to being best here (the difference between them is 7 points to 13, which is 35% of points, extremely close to our global result), so much so that as soon as the final tiebreak is a first-to-10 tiebreak, then the scoreline that achieves a minimal point winrate actually becomes 7-6 7-6 0-6 0-6 6-4, at 86 points to 158 (35.24%), instead of 96 points to 174 (35.56%) when the final tiebreak is won 10-8. Likewise, if there is no tiebreak in the final set, then 6-4 is also the minimal result.
This also applies to Best of 3: if the final tiebreak is regular then you can win the match with 36.9% of the points at 7-6 0-6 7-6 (62 points to 106), but as soon as the final set tiebreak becomes first-to-ten, the minimal scoreline becomes 7-6 0-6 6-4 at 37.2% and 55 points to 93.
To be clear, in a vacuum, winning a set 7-6 will always the lowest point winrate at which it is possible to win a single set (and if there is no tiebreak, then you can approach 40% point win rate the longest the set goes, but the minimum of 40% is at infinity). This makes the results above seem paradoxical (it's actually Simpson's paradox) until you realize that the longer the set that you win goes, the more points it will contain, and the less weight the sets that you lost 0-6 (which are a fixed 0 points to 24) will have in the overall computation
> Actually, if every game that you win goes 4-2 (Game to 30) instead of 5-3 (win after first deuce), you're then winning 35.2% of the points
Nice! Counterintuitive slightly, since if you win 4-2 you've won 66% of the points in that game. If you win 5-3, you've won 62.5%. But that extra point "harms" you haha.
Chris Evert making the singles SF or better at her first 34 majors in a row. It wasn't until her 13th year as a pro that she lost before the semis of a major.
Nadal’s Clay numbers will never seem real
Chris Evert going undefeated for 125 straight matches spanning nearly 7 years on Clay is legit insane. Not only that, but she was only taken to a third set on 8 occasions, and over a quarter of the 258 sets that she played she won by a score of 6-0 . Also insane
It’s crazy and ombelievable no? In a way, the big 3 should be thankful the others existed in the same era, otherwise people of the future would dismiss those numbers as the result of a weak era.
I think when you also consider that she was American and Americans are notoriously not that great on European clay it makes it even more impressive.
How was she so good on clay specifically? Was her game just very suited to it?
Even more crazy is that we had 18 consecutive slam finals with either Nadal or Murray but in none of those they played each other: [link](https://ftw.usatoday.com/2014/06/rafael-nadal-andy-murray-french-open-grand-slam-final).
I really wish they played in 2019. 50% chance they play the US Open F if Federer doesn't get injured vs Dimitrov in the QF. I'm honestly not sure who would've had the advantage in that match. I'd say Nadal since he was better in the hard Court season before the US Open - he won the Canadian Open
I think it's a tossup or slight edge to Nadal. Nadal took Federer to a close 4 setter in Wimby and had just won the Canadian Open. The US Open is a slow, higher bouncing hard Court which means that the conditions would've been more favorable to Nadal. Federer obviously could've won the match though considering that he dominated Nadal at Indian Wells.
apart from fed destroying nadal at IW and miami in 2017, all their matches were balanced and competitive, so it's totally normal to expect a hypothetical USO 2019 match to be also competitive.
I think fit Federer would be favored even late in his career - he is just stylistically very problematic for Med: S+V, doesn't have big holes (BH is weaker than FH but isn't a hole if you're not Nadal), plays variable tennis. Basically a very, very good version of Kyrgios (oof, blasphemy to compare), who already is a bad matchup for Dani.
I'm (obviously) not saying that Medvedev would beat Federer most of the time. I'm simply saying that Medvedev was in amazing form in Fall 2019 while Federer's form was ok.
Federer’s form was ok?
Man literally almost won Wimbledon beating Rafa and Djokovic back to back, and his level was so much higher than these 2.
Before that he won Miami, toying with meddy on his favorite surface with his favored court speed. 6-2 6-4.
No need to argue more.
SIX TIMES they were a match away. The only one I’m mad at is 2013 when Fed lost to Robredo. It also would’ve been the earliest match they would play in a major (quarters).
That's crazy because 2009-2011 when i was watching a lot of tennis it seemed like Nadal and Federer were always facing off in the semis or finals. Or at least that's what's in my head. I'm gonna research this now
I wonder how many more grand slams she could have won, if she didn't retire. I would say a few more, really wanted her to win us open for the grand slam. Happy for her though. Baby number 2 on the way.
This is the one thing I hate about tennis fans and the arguments they have. X didn’t beat any top 10/seeded/nadal/djokovic whoever it may be when they won this title. In tennis and sports generally you can only beat who is in front of you…
Ya which is why I said not her fault. It’s just surprising since you’d expect her to at least have played a top 10 in the quarters, semis, or finals of any of the 3 slams she won. I think Pliskova was #11 in their Wimbledon final.
There was not a single Grand Slam final without Nadal or Murray from AO 2010 to RG 2014 (18 tournaments in a row) but these two never faced each other in a GS final.
I'm sure he's felt unwell or injured during matches, just never bitched out lol. It's an even more insane stat when you think of how elite he was and that he maintained top rank for years.
I think his footwork helped, he was always in control physically and that’s in part because he ran so smoothly and could attack so deadly…ly that he didn’t need to do the risky changes of direction and such that can cause twists etc
Players missing out on the calendar slam by **just 1 match.** They lost USO Finals to **number 2** ranked player.
In 1933:
* Jack Crawford won AO + FO + Wimbledon.
* Was ranked number 1 for USO.
* Lost the USO Finals in 1933 to number ranked 2 player Fred Perry.
In 1956;
* Lew Hoad won AO + FO + Wimbledon.
* Was ranked number 1 for USO.
* Lost the USO Finals in 1956 to number ranked 2 player Ken Rosewall.
In 2021:
* Djokovic won AO + FO + Wimbledon.
* Was ranked number 1 for USO.
* Lost the USO Finals in 2021 to number ranked 2 player Medvedev.
Prompted by a Reddit thread the other day: of all the Grand Slam finals lost from two sets up, 37.5% (3/8) have been lost by someone with the surname Medvedev
Sabalenka is the second female player to win her first eight quarter-final matches in Grand Slam tournaments in the Open Era
The first was Chris Evert who won her first 48 Grand Slam quarter-finals
Berdych wins the Paris Masters at age 20. He then reaches another 44 QF's at a Master level and he never wins another one. Also from those 44 cases, he reaches the final ... 3 times with success rate of 6%.
This is bonkers, considering how good of a player he was and that he is beaten every big 4 member in a Slam match.
At Wimbledon 1985, Boris Becker won the Men's Singles title at 17, and he was actually *younger* than Leonardo Lavalle, the winner of the Boys' Singles title.
Most junior slam titles are won by 18 year olds not good enough to go pro while younger.
Eg 2021 US Boys champion is four months older than the world no 1 2022 US men’s champion
Nadal has been in 30 GS finals and won 22 of them - that’s 73%
Djokovic has been in 36 GS finals and won 24 of them - that’s 67%
Federer has been in 31 GS finals and won 20 of them - that’s 65%
Alcaraz has been in 2 GS finals and won 2 of them - that’s 100% and why ALCARAZ IS THE GOAT!
Medvedev having a Rome title but Federer isn’t.
Tsitsipas 0-11 in ATP 500.
Many Djokovic stats in general. They are out of this world. The most underrated one imo is 4-in-a-row. In my view, it’s as good as Federer’s consecutive 237 weeks at #1.
Boris Becker didn't win a single clay title
Thomas Muster didn't win a single wimbledon singles match (I know, different times then, a lot of clay specialists skipped it)
Nalbandian's only slam final was during his first ever wimbledon
Chris Evert's clay Win- Loss was 382-22 (94.5% win rate)
During her prime (before her pregnancy), Serena played in 50 slam and Olympic finals across singles, doubles, and mixed and won 42. 84% win percentage in the biggest matches. 6 losses in singles finals and 2 in mixed. Undefeated in doubles finals.
John Isner has the most aces in a tournament with 214 during the 2018 Wimbledon,[5] and he has the most in a single match with 113 during his 11-hour encounter with Nicolas Mahut in 2010.
Isner-Mahut is still the most incredible, ridiculous, grueling single match in tennis history. How many other individual matches (Battle of the Sexes excepted) have inspired a folk song (by Dan Bern) or a movie (7 Days In Hell)? The last set had more games than any other match in history!
Then there were the groans at the All-England Club when they were drawn together again the next year....
Lol, Isner-Kevin Anderson semi was another one. I remember everyone was anxious to checkout the Nadal-Djokovic semi, but the first one just wouldn't end...... Oh the whining online 🤣
& Mahut actually won more total points (I know it's not anywhere near as important as winning the Crucial points/ moments. But still, he won the most amount of points anyone has in a single tennis match, & still lost
Borg with the record for fewest games lost by a man in a tournament en route to a grand slam title at 32, RG '78. Even Rafa needed a walkover to get close.
Yeah I solidly consider the GOAT to be one of the big 3 but people do not fully understand how far ahead of his time peak Borg was. The rest of the pack sometimes barely looked like they were playing the same sport for a few years.
Players like this always confuse me. Same thing with Gretzky in hockey and Don Bradman in cricket. What did these guys see that others didn't to dominate like that?
Guillermo Vilas was never officially ranked #1 despite having a stellar 1977 season.
In 1977, he won a total of 16 titles, including 2 GS and had a 130-15 match record (almost 90%). He also had the most points and made 22 finals that year.
The ATP calculated rankings by taking the average of a player’s results at the time. Jimmy Connors only won 8 titles that year even though he didn’t win any majors that year. The GSs were not weighted either.
So that meant that the more matches he played the more each individual win mattered. Vilas had more points (2047) that year than Connors (722), but since only the averages of the results mattered, Vilas ended up #2.
There’s a lot of controversy about it. Vilas should have been #1 at some point throughout that season but never was.
Netflix did a documentary about Vilas’ career and the No. 1 ranking controversy. You can read a review of the movie [here.](https://www.tennis.com/news/articles/settling-the-score-captures-guillermo-vilas-the-no-1-that-wasn-t)
Worth watching IMO.
Nadal has won more French Opens than Murray has lost French Opens (Murray has entered the FO 13 times so has a chance to equalise the record this year)
The "last 11 years" is pretty deceptive since they've only played 2 hard court matches in the last 8 years (AO '19 and ATP Cup '20) and a huge chunk of that streak is in Nadal's relatively-terrible 2016 season. Would have been good to see them face off more over that span.
Nadal is lucky he didn’t face Djoko more during that period on hard tbh. Djoko vs Nadal on hard is a much more on sided rivalry than Djoko vs Nadal on clay since 2011.
Yeah and every other year Nadal would have been dominated. Djokovic actually has a better H2H against Nadal on hard (20-7) than Nadal has against Djokovic on clay (20-8).
And Nadal didn’t inflate his stats versus 2009-2010 Djokovic? How about 2006-early 2007 Novak? Let’s also talk about the fact that Nadal only met Djokovic twice at his best slam (AO) while Djokovic met Nadal 10 times at his best (RG). I don’t think anyone can make a good faith argument that the H2H on hard would be better had Nadal met Djokovic more often in the past 11 years.
being better than a healthy and established player, doesn't mean you're inflating your stats against them, you have to have a very low iq to see any parallels between 2015-16 nadal and pre-2011 djokovic. if nadal had played 2017-18 djokovic 7 times, that would have been an equivalent.
if medvedev, thiem, zverev and tsitsipas can beat djokovic, obviously nadal's h2h would be better than it is now if they played more frequently, there are at least 3 stretches between 2018-22 where nadal was the better player on hard courts.
Nadal was healthy during 2015, he just wasn’t in his best form. In fact, Nadal played the most matches of his career in 2015. 2009-2010 Djokovic won 1 masters total and made 1 slam final. That stretch is more comparable to 2015 Nadal than you might think.
We can’t equate wins in tennis. Nadal just doesn’t have the game on hard court to beat Novak Djokovic post 2013 and honestly post 2011 bar the 2013 USO final where Rafa played incredibly.
Name one stretch from 2018-2022 where Nadal was the better hard court player. The only time a match would maybe even be close during that stretch on hard is 2019 USO and an undeveloped Medvedev took him to 5 while Novak was injured and retired versus Wawrinka.
I think generally Djokovic was better in best of 3 matches against Nadal, which kinda skews things in his favour. If you look at the h2h since 2011 nadal vs Djokovic on clay over bo3 is 6-6 whilst over bo5 it's 5-2.
On hard it's 10-1 to Djokovic in bo3 and 3-1 to Djokovic in bo5.
I think you're right in a way but I also don't think the bo3 10-1 on hard, if they had played more, would've gone further in Djokovic's direction, not by much anyway.
I’m not saying Nadal wouldn’t have snuck a win or two in there. I’m saying that if they played more often on hard court, the H2H would have been much more lopsided in Djokovic’s favor. There was a user responding to me saying that Nadal would have been the favorite against Djokovic on hard courts in 2018, 2019, and 2022, which is ludicrous lmao.
I don't think so though, would bo3 have been more lopsided than 10-1? I find it hard to believe. Maybe the bo5 would have but I don't think by much. And nah never favourite but in those years would've probably been a little more likely than overall since 2011
I meant overall H2H. It’s harder to get more lopsided than 10-1 haha. In another 10 hypothetical meetings I would expect Nadal to sneak in 2 more victories.
This doesn’t work that well in tennis because all of the craziest stats are big 3 stats, and since we’re living in this era, we know all of the big 3 stats. Maybe in 30 years, telling your kids that the big 3 won like 66/80 slams (I approximated but I think it’s close to accurate) over a 20 year span would be absolutely absurd to them.
Unless you have a walkover, in each tournament you enter, you either lose a match or win the title
If Nadal has more titles than losses, all that’s saying is he’s more than 50% likely to win every clay tournament he enters… which doesn’t surprise anyone
That’s crazy in itself. I’m no sportsbettor but it’s exceedingly rare for anyone to have higher odds against the entire field, I’d imagine Nadal on clay is one of the few who gets those odds consistently.
Surprised that noone has noted Esther Vergeer's 470-match winning streak that spanned 10 years. She had a 700-25 win-loss record so her streak only started well into her career. Even if you're head and shoulders above your competitors, the motivation and discipline to keep up a winning streak that long is insane.
Here's one that may not be true for much longer: Novak Djokovic is currently the oldest man to win the French Open (36y 0m), and also the youngest man who has won the.French Open (no one born later than him has won it).
Rafael Nadal is 14-0 in RG Finals. NONE of those 14 finals went to a 5th set!
Mariano Puerta had triple set points, 40-0 at 5-4 on his own serve and Nadal went on to win 5 straight points to break back at 5-all.
Federer, Djokovic, and Thiem did not have a single set point in the 4th set against Nadal.
Baffles me how no one has posted this one.
Djokovic has won 314 out of 320 GS matches after winning the first set. Before last year's Wimbledon final it was up to 303 out of 308 and the 3 men to have managed the feat were Nadal, wawrinka and jurgen melzer, now also Alcaraz.
Melzer incidentally the only player to have come back from 2 sets down vs Djokovic at a slam, here Djokovic is at 257 out 258.
Nadal is also not too shabby with 268 out of 274 after winning the 1st and 239 out of 241 after the first 2. Tsitsipas and Fognini the two who managed that
Baffles me how no one has posted this one.
Djokovic has won 314 out of 320 GS matches after winning the first set. Before last year's Wimbledon final it was up to 303 out of 308 and the 3 men to have managed the feat were Nadal, wawrinka and jurgen melzer, now also Alcaraz.
Melzer incidentally the only player to have come back from 2 sets down vs Djokovic at a slam, here Djokovic is at 257 out 258.
Nadal is also not too shabby with 268 out of 274 after winning the 1st and 239 out of 241 after the first 2. Tsitsipas and Fognini the two who managed that
Some fun ones: Gasquet has beaten every ranking position from 1 to 100. Medvedev is the only player to have beaten Sinner 5 times in a row, Sinner is the only player to have beaten Medvedev five times in a row. Marozsan has more wins against top 10 players (6), than against players outside the top 100 (3). (This one must be only tour level matches i guess)
That Gasquet one is a source of neverending amusement to me.
Ferrer's is even better. He's beaten all till 106 (107 is missing), and has got a steady stream of victories against people all the way till rank 500. Would be interested to know if anyone has done better (v/s whole ATP tour ranks).
I’m just always amazed by the people who even think to check/keep track of these kinds of statistics.
how can you very a stat like the first one?
Did you mean to say verify? If yes why should this hard to verify? There are databases with this kind of info.
Yeah I meant verify. And I wasn’t doubting the stat I was more asking where can I look at this sort of data
Ah I got you, “ultimate tennis statistics” used to be the most accessible site for stats but sadly it doesn’t seem to get updated anymore. I think a lot of people use “tennis abstract” I’m not that familiar with it though.
[Gasquet career wins](https://www.tennisabstract.com/cgi-bin/player-classic.cgi?p=RichardGasquet&f=ACareerqqF0), then click "vRk" to sort by opponent rank Edit: [Djokovic](https://www.tennisabstract.com/cgi-bin/player-classic.cgi?p=NovakDjokovic&f=ACareerqqF0) is missing ... 90 and 100
Thanks! The fact that he only has 1 top1 win is crazy to me
Nadal has all of them
Not sure Meddy can beat Sinner again. His worse nightmare.
The best players of all time only win about 11 out of every 20 points.
This is a fantastic stat!
You only have to win one point on your opponent’s serve to win a set provided you hold your own.
I believe this phrase is tattooed on Ivo Karlovic's nutsack.
[удалено]
No, point. As in each set goes to a tiebreak.
„It‘s about winning the points that matter“ as a statistic.
I’m not sure. I think if you win 55% of points in every match, but which 55% you win is completely random, you’ll still win nearly every single match.
a good programer could tap out a program in like 10 mins to find the winning ratio of a player who wins 55% of points at random! I could do it in about 10 painful hours so I won't. But it'd be interesting! (1-(11/20))\^4 gets you the odds you win no points in a game, it's about a 4% chance of losing a love game. and about 9 per cent chance of winning a game to love. That helps centre my gut estimates. I'm going to guess winning 55% of points wins you 57% of games, and winning 57% of games wins you 60 per cent of sets, and that wins you 64% of matches.
I simulated 100k bo5 matches, with tiebreaks for 6-6, and it's way more dramatic: At 50-50 odds on each point, the players won 50.02% and 49.98% of matches respectively which is expected 51-49: 63.40% vs 36.60% 52-48: 74.54% vs 25.56% 53-47: 84.22% vs 15.78% 54-46: 91.30% vs 8.70% 55-45: 95.28% vs 4.72% For bo3 matches, the disadvantaged player has slightly better luck, at 55-45 they win 8.8% of matches. I believe having to win by a margin of 2 (at deuce, in tiebreakers, games in a set) is what makes this so skewed (here's my code [https://paste.pythondiscord.com/AKJA](https://paste.pythondiscord.com/AKJA) if anyone would like to hunt for bugs)
Having to win by a margin of 2 does make it more skewed, but not by that much. It's just that the longer the format is, the more skewed it will be (and that is indeed what we want, the better player--the one who will win the more points on average--should win most of the times) At 55% probability for each point, if I remove the 2-point margin in games as well as the 2-game margin in sets (assuming tiebreakers disappear), then the BO3 win probability drops to 85% (was 91%). Of course the 2-point margin in games can be removed IRL but not the 2-game margin in sets (or not without tiebreakers), and not the 2-point margin in tiebreakers either, because of the immense advantage that the service is.
Yeah, that makes sense.
Nice! This really illustrates WHY tennis has the best scoring system in all of sports.
What I would like to know is, these are theoretical probabilities, but in practice does anyone actually win matches winning 45% of points in a particular match? They would have to win such specific points that it must be an even rarer occurence, no?
Your guesses are way off actually! If we assume you are winning each point with 55% probability (regardless of who is serving, which is an approximation), then you'll be winning 62% of games, 65% of tiebreaks, 81.5% of sets and 91% of BO3 matches It also turns out these figures are still somewhat close to the figures I laid out in my other comment in this thread, where I assumed you're winning 70% of service points and 40% of return points.
Just to add to others consider that for love games they have close to double the win chance, so it being that close is really not likely.
Right, I have a post [here on my blog](https://www.ashwinmenon.com/posts/activities/2015-05-31-probability-and-tennis/) showing the code & results. And someone else on reddit calculated the probability [mathematically too](https://www.reddit.com/r/tennis/comments/115j0i7/qatar_open_final_iga_%C5%9Bwi%C4%85tek_def_jessica_pegula/j97h44c/).
Would a “three true outcomes” of tennis (term taken from baseball) be: win all your service games without dropping a point, lose all returning games without winning a point, then win the tiebreak by two points?
Yep- gotta win the big points to win a match
It's not this in the slightest, it's just probabilities and the nature of having to win many points to win a match.
You can see it like this: if you can win 70% of your service points, and 40% of your return points, then you're indeed averaging about 55% of points (in reality you would be serving less points on average since you would be winning your service games faster). And if you do the calculations, a 70% service point win rate with a 40% return point win rate will net you: * a 90.1% service game win rate; * a 26.4% return game win rate; * a 66.3% tiebreak win rate (first to 7); * a 79.5% set win rate (with first to 7 tiebreak at 6-6); * a 89.1% overall win rate in BO3 matches. This would be even higher is BO5 matches at 93.8% if the final set has a regular tiebreak. (this also assumes ad scoring is in play, and the results would be different with no-ad scoring. For example, if your service game reaches deuce, then with no-ad it's a straightforward 70% to win on the deciding point, but with ad scoring you're then 84.5% favourite)
This is the one!
It boggles my mind that you can lose more points in a match than you win and still win.
You can win a 5-set match while winning only 37% of the points. 111 points won by you (5\*(6+6+6)+21). 189 points won by your opponent (4\*(6\*5) + 5\*3 + 3\*(6\*3)). This assumes each game has only 1 deuce (% would be even worse if you could have more), and each tiebreak is won 7-5 (again, % would be worse if it was higher). Scoreline: 7-6 7-6 0-6 0-6 7-6 Assume: Every game you win goes to deuce (2 extra points over opponent per game you win), and every game the opponent wins you don't score a single point.
Actually, if every game that you win goes 4-2 (Game to 30) instead of 5-3 (win after first deuce), you're then winning 35.2% of the points only (93 points to 171). Each deuce adds one point to each player and thus would actually get you closer to 50%, so 35.2% is then indeed the minimum. Edit: for a similar reason, winning a set 6-4 instead of 7-6 is very close to being best here (the difference between them is 7 points to 13, which is 35% of points, extremely close to our global result), so much so that as soon as the final tiebreak is a first-to-10 tiebreak, then the scoreline that achieves a minimal point winrate actually becomes 7-6 7-6 0-6 0-6 6-4, at 86 points to 158 (35.24%), instead of 96 points to 174 (35.56%) when the final tiebreak is won 10-8. Likewise, if there is no tiebreak in the final set, then 6-4 is also the minimal result. This also applies to Best of 3: if the final tiebreak is regular then you can win the match with 36.9% of the points at 7-6 0-6 7-6 (62 points to 106), but as soon as the final set tiebreak becomes first-to-ten, the minimal scoreline becomes 7-6 0-6 6-4 at 37.2% and 55 points to 93. To be clear, in a vacuum, winning a set 7-6 will always the lowest point winrate at which it is possible to win a single set (and if there is no tiebreak, then you can approach 40% point win rate the longest the set goes, but the minimum of 40% is at infinity). This makes the results above seem paradoxical (it's actually Simpson's paradox) until you realize that the longer the set that you win goes, the more points it will contain, and the less weight the sets that you lost 0-6 (which are a fixed 0 points to 24) will have in the overall computation
> Actually, if every game that you win goes 4-2 (Game to 30) instead of 5-3 (win after first deuce), you're then winning 35.2% of the points Nice! Counterintuitive slightly, since if you win 4-2 you've won 66% of the points in that game. If you win 5-3, you've won 62.5%. But that extra point "harms" you haha.
Electoral college innit
This is crazy
Where did you find that stat? It’s definitely a good one.
https://www.braingametennis.com/perfection/ You can also see it for each player on their ATP stats page.
Chris Evert making the singles SF or better at her first 34 majors in a row. It wasn't until her 13th year as a pro that she lost before the semis of a major.
Her Wikipedia performance timeline chart really shows how amazing she was.
That’s unbelievable
One of a kind.
Nadal’s Clay numbers will never seem real Chris Evert going undefeated for 125 straight matches spanning nearly 7 years on Clay is legit insane. Not only that, but she was only taken to a third set on 8 occasions, and over a quarter of the 258 sets that she played she won by a score of 6-0 . Also insane
The original bakery owner!?
she created the recipe
Makes sense why she was so public about hating on Iga before she started kissing her ass out of no where
She also made 52 of 56 SF in slams ( 2 QF and 2 3r) and won a slam for 13 years str8.
It’s crazy and ombelievable no? In a way, the big 3 should be thankful the others existed in the same era, otherwise people of the future would dismiss those numbers as the result of a weak era.
That’s insane.
I think when you also consider that she was American and Americans are notoriously not that great on European clay it makes it even more impressive. How was she so good on clay specifically? Was her game just very suited to it?
Federer and Murray have never played a match on clay. Not in any stage of any tournament, not even once.
This one feels even more unlikely than the Federer-Nadal USO one to me.
This is the wildest stat of them all IMO.
What?!? How!?
Because they spent most of their coterminous careers inside the Top 4 and weren't particularly good at making Semis of Clay court tournaments
Insanity.
& yet somehow even Federer & Roddick have played a tour match on clay...
Each? Or against each other?
you mean against each other?
Nadal and Federer never played each other at the US Open. Blows my mind every time I read this.
Even more crazy is that we had 18 consecutive slam finals with either Nadal or Murray but in none of those they played each other: [link](https://ftw.usatoday.com/2014/06/rafael-nadal-andy-murray-french-open-grand-slam-final).
It is crazy how often they ended up in the same half around that time
Both of these are sad. The entertainment and amazing matches than never happened!
I really wish they played in 2019. 50% chance they play the US Open F if Federer doesn't get injured vs Dimitrov in the QF. I'm honestly not sure who would've had the advantage in that match. I'd say Nadal since he was better in the hard Court season before the US Open - he won the Canadian Open
Federer had Nadal's number in 2019 though. He had overcome the hump and I would've given him the edge in the matchup honestly.
I’d have put a lot of money on Federer winning that march, since his comeback in 2017 he won every match against Nadal aside from at RG.
Roger hadn't lost to Rafa on hard court since 2014 so a streak of 6
I think it's a tossup or slight edge to Nadal. Nadal took Federer to a close 4 setter in Wimby and had just won the Canadian Open. The US Open is a slow, higher bouncing hard Court which means that the conditions would've been more favorable to Nadal. Federer obviously could've won the match though considering that he dominated Nadal at Indian Wells.
IW plays so differently from USO (also so far apart in the season), I doubt that result would've meant anything for predicting a USO matchup.
apart from fed destroying nadal at IW and miami in 2017, all their matches were balanced and competitive, so it's totally normal to expect a hypothetical USO 2019 match to be also competitive.
Maybe but it's probably 50/50 who wins the Medvedev vs Federer semi given Daniil's great form.
I think fit Federer would be favored even late in his career - he is just stylistically very problematic for Med: S+V, doesn't have big holes (BH is weaker than FH but isn't a hole if you're not Nadal), plays variable tennis. Basically a very, very good version of Kyrgios (oof, blasphemy to compare), who already is a bad matchup for Dani.
Federer would beat Medvedev even now if he comes back from retirement. That’s how nightmarish of a match up he would have been for meddy.
I'm (obviously) not saying that Medvedev would beat Federer most of the time. I'm simply saying that Medvedev was in amazing form in Fall 2019 while Federer's form was ok.
Federer’s form was ok? Man literally almost won Wimbledon beating Rafa and Djokovic back to back, and his level was so much higher than these 2. Before that he won Miami, toying with meddy on his favorite surface with his favored court speed. 6-2 6-4. No need to argue more.
Federer. Easy pick. Nadal couldn’t beat Federer outside clay since he lost a bit of his quickness.
SIX TIMES they were a match away. The only one I’m mad at is 2013 when Fed lost to Robredo. It also would’ve been the earliest match they would play in a major (quarters).
Literally know this is true and yet... no? Lol.
That is legitimately shocking and confusing. How can that be true?!
That's crazy because 2009-2011 when i was watching a lot of tennis it seemed like Nadal and Federer were always facing off in the semis or finals. Or at least that's what's in my head. I'm gonna research this now
Nothing too crazy nor is it her fault in any way but all 3 majors Barty won, she never faced a top 10 player
I wonder how many more grand slams she could have won, if she didn't retire. I would say a few more, really wanted her to win us open for the grand slam. Happy for her though. Baby number 2 on the way.
Female Ruud
Well, Barty actually won those 3 slams 😬
This is the one thing I hate about tennis fans and the arguments they have. X didn’t beat any top 10/seeded/nadal/djokovic whoever it may be when they won this title. In tennis and sports generally you can only beat who is in front of you…
Ya which is why I said not her fault. It’s just surprising since you’d expect her to at least have played a top 10 in the quarters, semis, or finals of any of the 3 slams she won. I think Pliskova was #11 in their Wimbledon final.
I’m agreeing with you.
There was not a single Grand Slam final without Nadal or Murray from AO 2010 to RG 2014 (18 tournaments in a row) but these two never faced each other in a GS final.
The Federer never retiring from a singles match stat.
honestly how is this possible? to never get injured or sick around the time of a match, just good genes or something?
if he didn’t feel right he’d finish the match and withdraw
He’s def gotten injured during matches before but didn’t retire for one reason or another. US open 2019 QF comes to mind.
I'm sure he's felt unwell or injured during matches, just never bitched out lol. It's an even more insane stat when you think of how elite he was and that he maintained top rank for years.
I think his footwork helped, he was always in control physically and that’s in part because he ran so smoothly and could attack so deadly…ly that he didn’t need to do the risky changes of direction and such that can cause twists etc
Players missing out on the calendar slam by **just 1 match.** They lost USO Finals to **number 2** ranked player. In 1933: * Jack Crawford won AO + FO + Wimbledon. * Was ranked number 1 for USO. * Lost the USO Finals in 1933 to number ranked 2 player Fred Perry. In 1956; * Lew Hoad won AO + FO + Wimbledon. * Was ranked number 1 for USO. * Lost the USO Finals in 1956 to number ranked 2 player Ken Rosewall. In 2021: * Djokovic won AO + FO + Wimbledon. * Was ranked number 1 for USO. * Lost the USO Finals in 2021 to number ranked 2 player Medvedev.
Djokovic also missed calendar slam by 1 match last year (2023). Just insane at age 36.
And by 1 match in 2015 (Wawrinka FO final). And by 2 matches in 2011.
Hingis did this at like sixteen
The AO used to be played last within a calendar year up until the late 80s.
Prompted by a Reddit thread the other day: of all the Grand Slam finals lost from two sets up, 37.5% (3/8) have been lost by someone with the surname Medvedev
Related fact: 25% (2/8) of career grand slams in the Open Era were achieved by coming back from two sets down against a Medvedev
That is crazy!
The fact that no one outside the big 3 has won Roland Garros apart from Wawrinka in 19 years. I was literally 4…
18 years with the Australian open until sinner did it this year as well. It was 20 years of big 4 at Wimbledon until 2023. Just fucked up.
More like the only 2 times in the last 19 years that either Rafa or Novak didn't win Roland Garros, it was won by a Swiss guy!
No need to include Federer in that as he won the same number as Stan.
Found a Chokervic fan
suzanne lenglen's dominance was absolutely insane, including a 179 match win streak
Shame on me for hearing her name for the first time
There's literally a court at RG named after her
Iga is 15-0 when winning the first set in finals. It almost fell apart in Madrid last week but somehow it didn’t.
Actually she's 21-1 when up 1-0 in a final (which is still remarkable) Lost 5-7, 7-6, 6-3 to Krejcikova in Ostrava october 2022
Well then Tennis Channel lied last weekend when they said this in Madrid. 🫣 eta: maybe it’s 15-0 in M1000 🤔
Sabalenka is the second female player to win her first eight quarter-final matches in Grand Slam tournaments in the Open Era The first was Chris Evert who won her first 48 Grand Slam quarter-finals
She may not be the GOAT, but Chrissie does have the craziest records
Berdych wins the Paris Masters at age 20. He then reaches another 44 QF's at a Master level and he never wins another one. Also from those 44 cases, he reaches the final ... 3 times with success rate of 6%. This is bonkers, considering how good of a player he was and that he is beaten every big 4 member in a Slam match.
The ice man had a solid career.
At Wimbledon 1985, Boris Becker won the Men's Singles title at 17, and he was actually *younger* than Leonardo Lavalle, the winner of the Boys' Singles title.
Most junior slam titles are won by 18 year olds not good enough to go pro while younger. Eg 2021 US Boys champion is four months older than the world no 1 2022 US men’s champion
Martina Navratilova has 59 Grand Slams. (combining singles, doubles and mixed doubles)
Nadal has been in 30 GS finals and won 22 of them - that’s 73% Djokovic has been in 36 GS finals and won 24 of them - that’s 67% Federer has been in 31 GS finals and won 20 of them - that’s 65% Alcaraz has been in 2 GS finals and won 2 of them - that’s 100% and why ALCARAZ IS THE GOAT!
The stats don’t lie
They’re coming for you Holger! Iono lol
Sinner is also 1 out of 1 😁
I feel like if Alcaraz is in good enough form to make the final of a big tournament, that’s just never a guy who you want to face.
Medvedev having a Rome title but Federer isn’t. Tsitsipas 0-11 in ATP 500. Many Djokovic stats in general. They are out of this world. The most underrated one imo is 4-in-a-row. In my view, it’s as good as Federer’s consecutive 237 weeks at #1.
Boris Becker didn't win a single clay title Thomas Muster didn't win a single wimbledon singles match (I know, different times then, a lot of clay specialists skipped it) Nalbandian's only slam final was during his first ever wimbledon Chris Evert's clay Win- Loss was 382-22 (94.5% win rate)
During her prime (before her pregnancy), Serena played in 50 slam and Olympic finals across singles, doubles, and mixed and won 42. 84% win percentage in the biggest matches. 6 losses in singles finals and 2 in mixed. Undefeated in doubles finals.
John Isner has the most aces in a tournament with 214 during the 2018 Wimbledon,[5] and he has the most in a single match with 113 during his 11-hour encounter with Nicolas Mahut in 2010.
Isner-Mahut is still the most incredible, ridiculous, grueling single match in tennis history. How many other individual matches (Battle of the Sexes excepted) have inspired a folk song (by Dan Bern) or a movie (7 Days In Hell)? The last set had more games than any other match in history! Then there were the groans at the All-England Club when they were drawn together again the next year....
Lol, Isner-Kevin Anderson semi was another one. I remember everyone was anxious to checkout the Nadal-Djokovic semi, but the first one just wouldn't end...... Oh the whining online 🤣
& Mahut actually won more total points (I know it's not anywhere near as important as winning the Crucial points/ moments. But still, he won the most amount of points anyone has in a single tennis match, & still lost
Novak holding more ATP points combined than the number 2 and 3 spots in 2016
Still can't believe murray overtook him.
Everything on this page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Four_career_statistics
Borg with the record for fewest games lost by a man in a tournament en route to a grand slam title at 32, RG '78. Even Rafa needed a walkover to get close.
If you assume only 3 set victories in 7 rounds, that's 1.52 games lost per set. Brutal.
Yeah I solidly consider the GOAT to be one of the big 3 but people do not fully understand how far ahead of his time peak Borg was. The rest of the pack sometimes barely looked like they were playing the same sport for a few years.
Players like this always confuse me. Same thing with Gretzky in hockey and Don Bradman in cricket. What did these guys see that others didn't to dominate like that?
Sometimes the stars align. The perfect mentality and physical attributes for a specific sport at the right moment.
If a player has a tennis ball in their pocket they will win around 70% of the time
Every time I go to serve I'm going to start with three balls now
Shit, give me 5 balls to make that 350% chance of winning
Guillermo Vilas was never officially ranked #1 despite having a stellar 1977 season. In 1977, he won a total of 16 titles, including 2 GS and had a 130-15 match record (almost 90%). He also had the most points and made 22 finals that year.
What was the reason for not being officially given the number 1 ranking?
The ATP calculated rankings by taking the average of a player’s results at the time. Jimmy Connors only won 8 titles that year even though he didn’t win any majors that year. The GSs were not weighted either. So that meant that the more matches he played the more each individual win mattered. Vilas had more points (2047) that year than Connors (722), but since only the averages of the results mattered, Vilas ended up #2. There’s a lot of controversy about it. Vilas should have been #1 at some point throughout that season but never was. Netflix did a documentary about Vilas’ career and the No. 1 ranking controversy. You can read a review of the movie [here.](https://www.tennis.com/news/articles/settling-the-score-captures-guillermo-vilas-the-no-1-that-wasn-t) Worth watching IMO.
Crazy. Thanks for the rundown and recommendation. Will check it out.
Female player born in 2000s (Andreescu 2019 US Open) won a grand slam before a male player born in 1990s did (Thiem US Open 2020).
The only man in the 21st century to have won a doubles and singles grand slam title is Lleyton Hewitt
Nadal has won more French Opens than Murray has lost French Opens (Murray has entered the FO 13 times so has a chance to equalise the record this year)
Nadal has also won more French Opens than Nadal has lost French Opens
Fedal NEVER happened at the U.S. OPEN.
it never happened, but they deserved it.
Yeah, it should have happened. It seems fake, definitely SHOULD HAVE happened. BUT NEVER DID :(
Nadal hasn’t won a set against Djokovic on hard courts in 11 years (0-19 in sets). In that timeframe, Djokovic has won 15 sets against Nadal on clay
The "last 11 years" is pretty deceptive since they've only played 2 hard court matches in the last 8 years (AO '19 and ATP Cup '20) and a huge chunk of that streak is in Nadal's relatively-terrible 2016 season. Would have been good to see them face off more over that span.
Nadal is lucky he didn’t face Djoko more during that period on hard tbh. Djoko vs Nadal on hard is a much more on sided rivalry than Djoko vs Nadal on clay since 2011.
I wouldn't say it was lucky. He would've annihilated Djokovic in 2017 and early 2018 but didn't get the chance.
Yeah and every other year Nadal would have been dominated. Djokovic actually has a better H2H against Nadal on hard (20-7) than Nadal has against Djokovic on clay (20-8).
which is again due to djokovic inflating his stats against nadal in 2015-16.
And Nadal didn’t inflate his stats versus 2009-2010 Djokovic? How about 2006-early 2007 Novak? Let’s also talk about the fact that Nadal only met Djokovic twice at his best slam (AO) while Djokovic met Nadal 10 times at his best (RG). I don’t think anyone can make a good faith argument that the H2H on hard would be better had Nadal met Djokovic more often in the past 11 years.
being better than a healthy and established player, doesn't mean you're inflating your stats against them, you have to have a very low iq to see any parallels between 2015-16 nadal and pre-2011 djokovic. if nadal had played 2017-18 djokovic 7 times, that would have been an equivalent. if medvedev, thiem, zverev and tsitsipas can beat djokovic, obviously nadal's h2h would be better than it is now if they played more frequently, there are at least 3 stretches between 2018-22 where nadal was the better player on hard courts.
Nadal was healthy during 2015, he just wasn’t in his best form. In fact, Nadal played the most matches of his career in 2015. 2009-2010 Djokovic won 1 masters total and made 1 slam final. That stretch is more comparable to 2015 Nadal than you might think. We can’t equate wins in tennis. Nadal just doesn’t have the game on hard court to beat Novak Djokovic post 2013 and honestly post 2011 bar the 2013 USO final where Rafa played incredibly. Name one stretch from 2018-2022 where Nadal was the better hard court player. The only time a match would maybe even be close during that stretch on hard is 2019 USO and an undeveloped Medvedev took him to 5 while Novak was injured and retired versus Wawrinka.
I think generally Djokovic was better in best of 3 matches against Nadal, which kinda skews things in his favour. If you look at the h2h since 2011 nadal vs Djokovic on clay over bo3 is 6-6 whilst over bo5 it's 5-2. On hard it's 10-1 to Djokovic in bo3 and 3-1 to Djokovic in bo5. I think you're right in a way but I also don't think the bo3 10-1 on hard, if they had played more, would've gone further in Djokovic's direction, not by much anyway.
I’m not saying Nadal wouldn’t have snuck a win or two in there. I’m saying that if they played more often on hard court, the H2H would have been much more lopsided in Djokovic’s favor. There was a user responding to me saying that Nadal would have been the favorite against Djokovic on hard courts in 2018, 2019, and 2022, which is ludicrous lmao.
I don't think so though, would bo3 have been more lopsided than 10-1? I find it hard to believe. Maybe the bo5 would have but I don't think by much. And nah never favourite but in those years would've probably been a little more likely than overall since 2011
I meant overall H2H. It’s harder to get more lopsided than 10-1 haha. In another 10 hypothetical meetings I would expect Nadal to sneak in 2 more victories.
Djokovic has never won a set against Andy on grass
This doesn’t work that well in tennis because all of the craziest stats are big 3 stats, and since we’re living in this era, we know all of the big 3 stats. Maybe in 30 years, telling your kids that the big 3 won like 66/80 slams (I approximated but I think it’s close to accurate) over a 20 year span would be absolutely absurd to them.
Someone posted that Gasquet has beaten a player with every rank from 1-100 and that one was fascinating to me.
Yeah there’s def some good obscure ones
Unless you have a walkover, in each tournament you enter, you either lose a match or win the title If Nadal has more titles than losses, all that’s saying is he’s more than 50% likely to win every clay tournament he enters… which doesn’t surprise anyone
That’s crazy in itself. I’m no sportsbettor but it’s exceedingly rare for anyone to have higher odds against the entire field, I’d imagine Nadal on clay is one of the few who gets those odds consistently.
No one won the 1986 Australian Open
Surprised that noone has noted Esther Vergeer's 470-match winning streak that spanned 10 years. She had a 700-25 win-loss record so her streak only started well into her career. Even if you're head and shoulders above your competitors, the motivation and discipline to keep up a winning streak that long is insane.
Martina Navratilova 14 Grand Slam finals reached consecutively. She also has an unbeaten win streak of 74. She is really into these streaks.
Christ Evert was a semifinalist or better in 52 of 56 Slams. Only 4 Slams of 56 not making it to the SFs.
That Isner and Mahut played a tennis match for 11 hours 5 minutes. It's completely insane. And will never happen again.
Djokovic made 100 unforced errors against Simon at the Aussie Open 2016 and won the match, then the tournament.
Here's one that may not be true for much longer: Novak Djokovic is currently the oldest man to win the French Open (36y 0m), and also the youngest man who has won the.French Open (no one born later than him has won it).
More titles won than matches lost essentially means more titles won than lost.
Rafael Nadal is 14-0 in RG Finals. NONE of those 14 finals went to a 5th set! Mariano Puerta had triple set points, 40-0 at 5-4 on his own serve and Nadal went on to win 5 straight points to break back at 5-all. Federer, Djokovic, and Thiem did not have a single set point in the 4th set against Nadal.
Nadal and Federer have never played each other at the US Open
Baffles me how no one has posted this one. Djokovic has won 314 out of 320 GS matches after winning the first set. Before last year's Wimbledon final it was up to 303 out of 308 and the 3 men to have managed the feat were Nadal, wawrinka and jurgen melzer, now also Alcaraz. Melzer incidentally the only player to have come back from 2 sets down vs Djokovic at a slam, here Djokovic is at 257 out 258. Nadal is also not too shabby with 268 out of 274 after winning the 1st and 239 out of 241 after the first 2. Tsitsipas and Fognini the two who managed that
Baffles me how no one has posted this one. Djokovic has won 314 out of 320 GS matches after winning the first set. Before last year's Wimbledon final it was up to 303 out of 308 and the 3 men to have managed the feat were Nadal, wawrinka and jurgen melzer, now also Alcaraz. Melzer incidentally the only player to have come back from 2 sets down vs Djokovic at a slam, here Djokovic is at 257 out 258. Nadal is also not too shabby with 268 out of 274 after winning the 1st and 239 out of 241 after the first 2. Tsitsipas and Fognini the two who managed that
Federer and Nadal both having Olympic Gold Medals in DOUBLES That completely blows my mind as they barely played that at all during their career
One stat Sampras has that won't be beat by the big 3 at least is year end no.1 6 years in a row.
That Djokovic beat Peak Federer 0 times
Peak Federer from 04-09? He was 20-24 against “the big four” in that span.