Stat guru gives Fed a 58 percent chance of winning another slam

Nate silver is most famous for picking US elections where he has become the numbers cruncher of the media and politicians alike. He picked the obama victory with almost exact count of the electoral college result that actually happened. His statistical analysis states that Fed has a 58 percent chance of winning another slam. However, he qualifies this by saying that he believes this to be a touch optimistic when considering Nadal and Djoko and the gap that exists between Fed currently and the other two. Anyone interested in reading the article, I found it very interesting:

But it won’t be easy. What, exactly, are the odds?
Apart from Nadal and Djokovic, the key factor working against Federer is his biological clock. Tennis players peak at a fairly young age. In the Open Era (since 1968), the average age of men’s Grand Slam winners is 24.4 years old.

Perhaps not coincidentally, that number bisects the age that Nadal (25) and Djokovic (24) are right now. (Maybe you should spring for tickets to Monday’s final: both players are probably close to the absolute peak of their abilities.)

But thirty-something players — Federer turned 30 in August — have won occasionally. They’ve claimed 18 of the 174 Grand Slam titles during this period, or about 10 percent.

One way to frame the question is this. How likely is a tennis player who is ranked third in the world as of his 30th birthday to win another Grand Slam before he retires?

I looked up the ranking as of age 30 for every men’s player who ranked in the world’s top 5 at any point during the Open Era. (For 1973 onward, I used the A.T.P. rankings. For 1968 through 1972, before the A.T.P. rankings were unveiled, I relied on unofficial rankings instead.)

http://straightsets.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/12/can-federer-win-another-slam-title/

His charts are pretty interesting to look at past success but for some reason I couldn't copy and paste those, it is an interesting article by maybe the most famous stat guru in the states right now.

Socal if you want graphs etc. Save them as pictures to your PC and then upload them to a site likel photobucket.com and paste the image code in to your message

Too lazy for that tom, plus my internet connection in the lovely islamic republic isn't exactly lightening fast.

He has got a chance. He was match point away from getting to the final against a guy who has been almost unstoppable.

Yes munster joe, but the devil's advocate of your point is that he never seems to be that close when playing Rafa recently and he seems to be tough matchup stylistically for Novak and much less so for Nadal who seems to find his way to the finals almost as consistently as Novak.

socal1976 wrote:Yes munster joe, but the devil's advocate of your point is that he never seems to be that close when playing Rafa recently and he seems to be tough matchup stylistically for Novak and much less so for Nadal who seems to find his way to the finals almost as consistently as Novak.

socal - Any thoughts on the defence of points for 2012, Novak to do a repeat job? - tall order but not impossible!!

It's gonna be very tough..

A mountain of pressure.. any slip-up will start rumours of a descent..

But of course he doesn't have to repeat this years performance.

I'm sure he'll be pretty happy with staying ahead of the pack points wise and with good returns at the slams.

My thoughts are this, one of his closest competitors still has to rise up and beat him and close the gap which is very large right now. It certainly won't be an easy task but people make too big of a deal of defending points. Defending points is important for the week to week rankings and irrelevant for the year end rankings which most of the player and myself as well really see as the true number 1. The year end #1 is the guy who won the most points that year period, week to week rankings can go up and down based on losing a big tournament you won the year before.

Lets remember Novak won almost everything for 7 months before he overtook Nadal, and that is because Nadal had a huge points gap. Novak enjoys just as big a points gap now as Nadal had last year and its probably only going to grow till the end of the year. Who is going to do to Novak what Novak did to Nadal. Who is going to outgain 3000-5000 plus points on him. That is the gap between him and the rest of top 3 or 4 guys?

socal interesting stuff.

As the guru says both Nadal and Djokovic are around the average age peak (24-25 years old).

The one thing that must worry Federer though is the sheer physical nature of the battle between the two finalists. He nearly had the beating of Djokovic bur would he have had enough in the tank then to do the same to Nadal?

Socal,

please stop copying me..

Thank you,



emancipator

Fed has a pretty good chance I'd say and Fed has got a track record of making come backs (so does Nadal), 2009 being the most memorable. I think it's been said elsewhere but Nadal has never made all 4 grand slam finals in a calendar year. All it takes is for Nadal to have an early departure and Fed than beats Djokovic (more than possible). As has been pointed out, Djokovic's form won't stay brilliant forever and a slight dip and what was a narrow victory over Fed on Saturday becomes a narrow win for Fed instead. More than possible.

Something that hasn't been spoken about a lot is Fed's motivation. Fed has now lost two matches from 2 sets up to love and many have commented the fire seems to have gone out from him, which is easy to understand as he has the most grand slam titles record. Next year does offer him some real reasons to be more motivated so it will be interesting to see if he makes that come back. I'd rate his chances way higher than 58%. The only thing we don't know is where and when, we could be waiting a short time or for over a year, we just don't know with Fed (unlike in the past).

Newballs, I think barring an injury I don't see anyone closing the massive points lead with Novak for some time. The only two I could potentially see doing it would be either Murray or Nadal. But remember it took 4 wins in big finals and 7 months of winning virtually every match before Novak could surpass Nadal's massive points lead. Novak doesn't have to play like he did this year to keep the number one for a good stretch. The gap he has now allows him to absorb a bad month or two or to absorb a hot rival for some time to come. Of course he isn't going to defend all these points but he doesn't have to. Especially, if one of his rivals doesn't step up and start winning everything.

Lucius, I personally think 58 percent is a little bit of a high estimate, i would say that fed is right around 50-50 for another slam. Basically, the writer himself also feels that his analysis came out just a touch high, but ofcourse it is hard to prognosticate into the future even for Nostrafreakingdamus.

Socal, what if the analysis included ALL players ranked three or below, rather than just THREE. The probability will be I think greater by a slight margin.

Not a math expert manoj, i don't know how it would come out. But if you look at the link provided it does actually list a table where it looks at other older players who were ranked lower than #3.