Olympic Draw 'Toughness' Analysis

Using my favourite tool, a table, this is an attempt to look at the 'toughness' of the opposition in the Olympic 2012 draw.

I use the number of games won by the losing player against the winner to measure such 'toughness' of opposition. There are many other nuances like BPs converted, percentage returns, points won first and second serves which can change the matrix but a similar model should still be valid.

The key metric is to measure if the matches were close in a specific round or not. The assumption of this model is how close were the opposition to the winner. If they played a close match, the winner-loser were fairly evenly matched, otherwise they were not.

This method forgoes the past performance of the player and looks at Olympics 2012 'form' of the player. For example, Darcis d Berdych does support such an approach.

Unfortunately, I have to wait for Olympics to be over to look at detailed statistics of each match.

The current analysis indicates that the 60-40 split is consistent with variations, for example at the QF stage, Top half had a more balanced contest.

Back to Tennis.

E&OE

Top Half Match	Games Won	Games Lost	Bottom Half Match	Games Won	Games Lost
Federer v Falla	17	13	Darcis v Berdych	12	8
Benneteau v Youzhny	13	8	Giraldo v Harrison	13	8
Muller v Ungur	12	6	Bogomolov v Berlocq	14	11
Istomin v Verdasco	13	10	Almagro v Troicki	13	10
Isner v Rochus	13	10	Gasquet v Haase	12	6
Jaziri v Lu	17	15	Baghdatis v Soeda	19	15
Petzschner v Lacko	13	7	Nieminen v Devvarman	12	4
Tipsarevic v Nalbandian	12	7	Murray v Wawrinka	12	6
Ferrer v Pospisil	12	8	Tsonga v Bellucci	18	15
Kavcic v Vardhan	12	5	Raonic v Ito	12	7
Davydenko v Stepanek	12	7	Lopez v Tursunov	21	16
Nishikori v Tomic	14	12	Monaco v Goffin	12	5
Simon v Kukushkin	12	6	Cilic v Melzer	13	8
Dimitrov v Kubot	13	9	Hewitt v Stakhovsky	16	12
Seppi v Young	12	8	Roddick v Klizan	13	9
Del Potro v Dodig	12	5	Djokovic v Fognini	18	11
	209	136		230	151
	61%	39%		60%	40%
Federer v Benneteau	12	4	Darcis v Giraldo	18	15
Istomin v Muller	20	18	Almagro v Bogomolov	12	4
Isner v Jaziri	13	8	Baghdatis v Gasquet	12	8
Tipsarevic v Petzschner	15	13	Murray v Nieminen	12	6
Ferrer v Kavcic	12	4	Tsonga v Raonic	34	32
Nishikori v Davydenko	16	11	Lopez v Monaco	12	8
Simon v Dimitrov	12	6	Hewitt v Cilic	13	9
Del Potro v Seppi	16	10	Djokovic v Roddick	12	3
	116	74		125	85
	61%	39%		60%	40%
Federer v Istomin	13	8	Almagro v Darcis	13	8
Isner v Tipsarevic	14	11	Murray v Baghdatis	16	11
Nishikovi v Ferrer	15	10	Tsonga v Lopez	13	10
Del Potro v Simon	16	10	Djokovic v Hewitt	17	12
	58	39		59	41
	60%	40%		59%	41%
Federer v Isner	13	10	Murray v Almagro	12	5
Del Potro v Nishikori	13	10	Djokovic v Tsonga	13	6
	26	20		25	11
	57%	43%		69%	31%
Total	409	269		439	288
	60%	40%		60%	40%

Laverfan while I love your follow through and work ethic, I mean I don't know if this is a fair indicator of a tough draw at the outset. I mean a draw can be easy and you can still lose, a draw can be tough and if a great player is playing well enough he can still win the title. What I have been talking about are the odd statistical advantages fedal seem to be getting from these draw committees.

socal1976 wrote:Laverfan while I love your follow through and work ethic, I mean I don't know if this is a fair indicator of a tough draw at the outset. I mean a draw can be easy and you can still lose, a draw can be tough and if a great player is playing well enough he can still win the title. What I have been talking about are the odd statistical advantages fedal seem to be getting from these draw committees.

Socal I have agreed with you on general counts regarding Djoko-Fed being placed on the same draw most times, but you took it too far this Olympics, and we had to show every evidence one by one to prove you wrong.

socal1976 wrote: I mean a draw can be easy and you can still lose, a draw can be tough and if a great player is playing well enough he can still win the title.

There is a wonderful example of what you are referring to @ Olympics 2012, Darcis v Berdych. I will try and obtain more granular statistics to see if I can elucidate my case better.

BTW, thanks for the comment on this thread.

Same for you iC.

Tennis is a 'brutal' sport, because there is always a player and/or a team who loses, very similar to other sports. We humans like to have our categorizations with black and white certainty of a winner and a loser.

Good thread, good research.

Exactly LF, Tennis like other sport will produce a winner and a loser end of the match, all we have to do is appreciate the winner if possible and if we don't like the win just forget it and wait till the favourite player produce one rather the complaining the win due to certain luck or biased issues.

IC, check you inbox

invisiblecoolers wrote:

socal1976 wrote:Laverfan while I love your follow through and work ethic, I mean I don't know if this is a fair indicator of a tough draw at the outset. I mean a draw can be easy and you can still lose, a draw can be tough and if a great player is playing well enough he can still win the title. What I have been talking about are the odd statistical advantages fedal seem to be getting from these draw committees.

Socal I have agreed with you on general counts regarding Djoko-Fed being placed on the same draw most times, but you took it too far this Olympics, and we had to show every evidence one by one to prove you wrong.

Really what evidence was that, I didn't see any. You are declaring premature victory along the lines of George W. Bush. Roger got a cupcake draw in general. I am sure Roger was quaking his boots at the outset at the prospect of his difficult semi against Ferrer or Del PO. This is my problem with Roger fans. They have no problem saying Nadal gets easy draws or that Djoko wins because of slow conditions or whatever, they love attaching asteriks to other people's favorite players accomplishments. But when anyone points out the blindingly obvious fact that Novak got a much harder draw the federer fans throw a hissy fit of epic proportion. How dare anyone claim that Roger has ever benefitted from an easy draw only other players do that. Everything Roger does is the best and the most impressive and he never gets lucky, he never gets favoritism, and it isn't like he benefitted at all from not getting Murray or anything. In fact, the results of the murray match proves how difficult the draw dealt to Djoko was. Murray has been the form horse of the whole tournament. If you consider other Federer fans agreeing with you and disagreeing with me as evidence of your arguments being proven right well then I would posit that you aren't a very good judge of what is or isn't evidence. But you will be a very happy poster because if that is your criteria for winning argument with me then I think you will go undefeated, as long as you judge the contest yourself or have Bogbrush judge it then I am sure you will never lose.

laverfan wrote:

socal1976 wrote: I mean a draw can be easy and you can still lose, a draw can be tough and if a great player is playing well enough he can still win the title.

There is a wonderful example of what you are referring to @ Olympics 2012, Darcis v Berdych. I will try and obtain more granular statistics to see if I can elucidate my case better.

BTW, thanks for the comment on this thread.

Same for you iC.

Tennis is a 'brutal' sport, because there is always a player and/or a team who loses, very similar to other sports. We humans like to have our categorizations with black and white certainty of a winner and a loser.

If anyone can get to the granularity of statistics it is you laverfan, good work on this by the way. But I think you would remiss if you wanted my suggestion on this what i would do is look at the grass record win loss records both career and single season of the HIGHEST POSSIBLE SEEDS FACED BY EACH AT THE OUTSET. From my perspective the CRUCIAL MOMENT IN TIME IS AT THE OUTSET BEFORE THE MATCHES ARE PLAYED. Why because I would like to get to the crux of whether there is favoritism or discrimination on the part of these draw committees. Also you have to weight the later round draws (ie the semi) as a much bigger part of what determines the difficulty of a draw. I mean for a top seed like Djoko or Fed it isn't usually that much of difference if their opponents in the first round are slightly better or slightly worse. The crucial and more heavily weighted portion should be the Quarters and Semis. With each successive level being weighted more while the first 2 or 3 rounds could be weighted the same because those rounds generally don't impact the performance of a federer or Djokovic at a major tournament. So for fed you would not look at del Po when analyzing the draw under my criteria you would look at ferrer eventhough fed actually played del po. Why? because Ferrer is the highest possible seed fed could have faced in that section.

I mean I loathe research because I have to do it all day, but i know you are really great at it. If you would Laverfan compare single season and career grass records FOR THE HIGHEST SEED EACH PLAYER COULD HAVE FACED FROM THE OUTSET AT EACH SUCCESSIVE ROUND whether he ended up playing them or not. For me this is the crucial prism that will shed light on the true difficulty of the hand dealt out by the draw committees.

socal1976 wrote:Also you have to weight the later round draws (ie the semi) as a much bigger part of what determines the difficulty of a draw. I mean for a top seed like Djoko or Fed it isn't usually that much of difference if their opponents in the first round are slightly better or slightly worse. The crucial and more heavily weighted portion should be the Quarters and Semis. With each successive level being weighted more while the first 2 or 3 rounds could be weighted the same because those rounds generally don't impact the performance of a federer or Djokovic at a major tournament. So for fed you would not look at del Po when analyzing the draw under my criteria you would look at ferrer eventhough fed actually played del po. Why? because Ferrer is the highest possible seed fed could have faced in that section.

Weighting brings in quite a bit of subjectivity though.

socal1976 wrote:I mean I loathe research because I have to do it all day, but i know you are really great at it. If you would Laverfan compare single season and career grass records FOR THE HIGHEST SEED EACH PLAYER COULD HAVE FACED FROM THE OUTSET AT EACH SUCCESSIVE ROUND whether he ended up playing them or not. For me this is the crucial prism that will shed light on the true difficulty of the hand dealt out by the draw committees.

My research is currently on titles that were won, not tournaments participated, which is a smaller sample. Let us see what I can find.

Yes Laverfan I think if you did that both year to year grass court record and career grass court record of THE HIGHEST SEED THAT THE TOP SEEDS COULD have faced from the outset. I know your focus is on something different. But in my opinion the proper criteria to judge the difficulty of the draw in terms of fairness of the draw is at the outset. The toughest draw can open up with a lot of upsets. I am much more interested in the fairness of the hand being dealt by the draw committee because I do feel certain players especially in regards to semi and quarter matchups do get added protection.

Yes by weighing you bring in some subjectivity but in actuality if you exercise discretion in a balanced way the mathematical result you achieve is actually more indicative of real life. Because the assumption that a tough first or second round match can even out getting an easy semi in a grandslam is wrong. The semis, quarters, and 4th round is the real working end of a slam.

socal1976 wrote:This is my problem with Roger fans....But when anyone points out the blindingly obvious fact that Novak got a much harder draw the federer fans throw a hissy fit of epic proportion.

socal, I do not see anyone throwing a hissy fit of the kind you describe. I would guess that a solid majority of posters would have agreed when they saw the draw that Federer's was easier than Nole's.

With resepct to LF's post, I suspect LF may find it disrespectful when people talk about "easy" opponents so she likes to come to their defence, so to speak. However, I would guess that in a conversation where nobody is demeaning players and everyone just looks at the draws without too much emotion, she would quite possibly have also agreed that more of the favorites were in the bottom half.

So I see no need to get all so emotional about it.

Did you consider that the draw had nothing to do with Djokovic and that they just wanted to help Murray and put him in the easier half.

summerblues wrote:With resepct to LF's post, I suspect LF may find it disrespectful when people talk about "easy" opponents so she likes to come to their defence, so to speak. However, I would guess that in a conversation where nobody is demeaning players and everyone just looks at the draws without too much emotion, she would quite possibly have also agreed that more of the favorites were in the bottom half.

So I see no need to get all so emotional about it.

SB... very eloquently stated. Thank you for being so succinct.

break_in_the_fifth wrote:Did you consider that the draw had nothing to do with Djokovic and that they just wanted to help Murray and put him in the easier half.

Possibility absolutely B in the 5th. Excellent point that i did think about but focused more on the Djoko angle. Of course Murray wants to avoid federer. But either way it is wrong whatever the motivation of ALLEGED tampering or draw tweaking and REGARDLESS OF who it benefits or hurts. I don't care what the motives are, and who benefits, it is a massive damage to the game if it is happening. And massively unfair to the players as well. A draw is either random and therefore fair or it is manufactured if it is tweeked even a little bit by interested parties.

Summerblues again misunderstanding, I did not attack laverfan, if I wanted to address my post to Laverfan I would have used her name. I was not thinking or directing my post at her. The people I am thinking who have had hissy fits on my questioning the cupcake nature of fed's draw is probably invisible who can't accept the obvious. My discussions with Laverfan on this subject have been on her desire to do a mathmatical analysis of the draw fairness. I think it would be a great idea and laverfan the most emminently qualified person to do it. But to have the analysis be fair I suggested a possible route.

Let me be clear in the future do not assume that posts I make are directed at only the people who have posted on a particular thread or directed at a specific individual. To clear up confusion when I direct posts at people I usually name in the first couple of sentences.

Hah, reverse misunderstanding but I guess my fault to some extent. I realize you do not have LF in mind with your "hissy fits" comment.

When I said I did not see any hissy fits I was not referring to this thread only. I really think most posters - Federer fans or otherwise - across multiple threads were in agreement that Fed's draw looked good compared to Nole's (and also compared to Andy's). That seemed to be pretty much the consensus, and no hissy fits were involved.

I don't know people seem to love to argue the obvious with summerblues, people have been argueing with me quite vehmently on the point in the last few days I don't know if you have been following it or not.

I have been following it (I do like contentious topics so I was glad you reappeared) but I think most of it is people arguing with some of the more "extreme" parts of your position rather than with the premise that Nole's draw was tougher.

As an example, BB - who was one of the posters who argued with you more vehemently - said this after he saw the draw:

bogbrush wrote:Did Mirka do the draw?

Hardly a denial of the relative friendliness of Roger's draw. If you read through the Olympic draw thread, you will see that the consensus was quite happily leaning in that same direction.

I think if you just came and said that Nole's draw was harder than Roger's, you would have found yourself very much in the boring mainstream. I think it is more in connection with your insistence that it *has to* be due to intentional manipulation where you start seeing disagreement.

Also, you have got yourself into the argument about actual opponents rather than projected opponents which I think made your case look weaker (with Cilic losing early, Tsonga playing a very long match while Delpo on the other hand playing above himself). I would be inclined to agree that even the actual opponents ended up being harder on the Nole's side, but not nearly as much as the projected draws would have suggested.

And, perhaps more than anything, you do appear do drive yourself into a state of frenzy during these arguments so I suspect some of the posters may look for points of disagreement just to feed it some more - partly just for the fun of helping to build up a "contentious" thread.

socal1976 wrote:Yes Laverfan I think if you did that both year to year grass court record and career grass court record of THE HIGHEST SEED THAT THE TOP SEEDS COULD have faced from the outset.

One clarification, instead of using Tournament seedings, I will use the ATP rankings, which are typically the same, except at W.