The Elite 3 x 100 Club

First topic message reminder :

Lleyton Hewitt is on something of a farewell tour this year, having announced his intention to retire after the Australian Open next January. Many stops on this tour are tournaments where he is a past champion and wild cards have been generously given. One such tournament was the US Men's Clay Court Championships in Houston last week, where unfortunately, Hewitt lost in the first round to Go Soeda. This wasn't entirely unexpected since Soeda is higher ranked, but it was unfortunate, because Hewitt needs only 2 more wins on clay to join a very elite club - men who have won 100 matches on each of hard court, clay and grass in the Open Era.

Roger Federer is the only active player in this club, with Becker, McEnroe and Connors among the other members. For most players, the trickiest target to reach is the 100 wins on grass. Due to its limited window in the calendar, you've got to want to play as much as possible on grass or be exceptionally good on it to get near. Federer, of course, is in the latter category and even with his 7 Wimbledon titles plus 2 finals, 7 Halle titles plus 2 finals plus Olympic silver medal still has "only" 131 wins on grass. Hewitt falls into the former: playing all tournaments that wrap around Wimbledon has netted titles at Wimbledon, Queens (x4), Halle, s-Hertogenbosch and Newport and 128 match wins in total.

So just how likely is it for Hewitt or any other current player to join Federer in the club? Let's look at the requirements for each:

Lleyton Hewitt
Age 34 and < 1 season to play
Hard 367
Clay 98 - 2 wins required
Grass 128
2 wins on clay must be easy to get, right? Well, wrong actually - because in total in the past 4 seasons, Hewitt has won only 2 matches on clay. The fields in the pre-RG tournaments are likely too strong to get a soft draw, and he isn't on the entry list of any although a wild card may be a possibility for one of the 250's such as Estoril or Geneva. There are 3 weeks of clay after Wimbledon, but these to tend to attract strong clay courters, and anyway, Hewitt will likely head to Australia post-Wimbledon for the Davis Cup quarter final.
So it seems likely that Hewitt will end his career one or 2 short on clay.

Rafael Nadal
Age 28 - possibly 4 or 5 seasons to play
Hard 341
Clay 325
Grass 53 - 47 wins required        
Despite a resume on grass of 2 Wimbledon titles plus 3 finals and a Queens title, Nadal still needs pretty much the same again in grass wins to reach the target. With the clay swing seemingly taking more and more out of him each year, I just don't see how this is possible - even with the extra week before Queens. If we assume 5 more seasons, that's 10 wins a season. I think Nadal will end up more than 20 wins short on grass.

Novak Djokovic
Age 27 - possibly 5 to 7 seasons to play
Hard 415
Clay 144
Grass 60 - 40 wins required  
Djokovic's best seasons on grass have been the recent ones with 2 titles and a final at Wimbledon in the last 4 years. However, he has skipped the warm-up tournaments most years leaving him well short of the required grass wins. Adding these back in his schedule now that we have the extra week after the French will be crucial to achieving the target. If he can play 6 injury-free seasons, that's 6-7 wins across 2 tournaments each season - tough not certainly not out of the question.

Andy Murray
Age 27 - possibly 5 or 6 seasons to play
Hard 353
Clay 63 - 37 wins required
Grass 78 - 22 wins required          
A different challenge with 2 targets still to reach - conflicting at that, since grass success in later years often comes with holding back in the clay swing. Here we have a player who is both very good on grass, and more committed to the whole season, particularly Queens, but also Newport/Nottingham earlier in his career, with a good few Davis Cup ties on grass thrown in for good measure. The required wins equate to 5 seasons with 4-5 wins each season, which seems quite possible.
Clay however - well, again, averaging out the 37 wins required across 5 seasons, that's 7-8 wins per season across say 4 tournaments. It doesn't sound too bad, until you see that in his first 10 years on tour, Murray has averaged less than 4 clay tournaments per year and about 6 clay match wins per season.
I think Murray will end up with 100 wins on grass and in the 80's on clay.

The Top 10 Stalwarts and Lost Boys
What of the other players who've been entrenched in the top 10 for so long? Or the 23 to 26 year olds so long shut out by the big 3/4? Well, they're falling short by most on grass, with their wins being:
Ferrer (age 33) - 39
Berdych (age 29) - 48
Del Potro (age 26) - 29
Cilic (age 26) - 34
Nishikori (age 25) - 20
Raonic (age 24) - 14
Dimitrov (age 23) - 23
Dimitrov looks nearest to being on track here, but to put that into context, by the age Dimitrov is now, Murray had 40 wins on grass. This group seems to have no chance.  

Ranking them in order of likelihood, I have: Djokovic > Hewitt > Murray > Nadal. But quite possibly, none of this generation will make it and someone like Kyrgios or Kokkinakis will do so, with the benefit from the longer grass season.

What do you think? Who has the best chance to join this elite club?

...nice stats but I'm kind of feeling "so what"...isn't it about slams/Masters/DC titles?

@lydian - it's a lesser cousin for sure, but in the case of Murray the fact that he's close to guaranteed to joining the 'club' is yet another indicator that his overall status in the history of men's tennis players is more significant than 2 slams indicates.

lydian wrote:...nice stats but I'm kind of feeling "so what"...isn't it about slams/Masters/DC titles?

I find it the most interesting sub stat to those of titles won. Purely because of how players have racked up such a high number of victories, especially on Grass.

Fair enough G, and I'm one for stats myself but I don't really put any cache on "100 club"...its not to me any sort of recognised achievement. W/L, weeks at 1, etc...ok...anyway, good that Murray is near that club...however he's only got 2 slams...maybe it speaks to underachievement then if surface wins are high but 2/10 isn't...?

Well I agree. 2/10 is a poor return for someone with such a strong game. I think the 3x100 club demonstrates a degree of capability on all surfaces. There are obvious caveats to some. Eg Djokovic not playing an event before Wimbledon or Nadals injury woes.

The thread was done before Murray finally cracked his clay demons.

lydian wrote:I don't really put any cache on "100 club"...its not to me any sort of recognised achievement.

Of course! I started this thread mainly as a bit of trivia about Hewitt but I also thought the different make-up of this era's other leading players' wins was interesting. I've only been updating it because of the dramatic change in Murray's clay results in the 14 months since I wrote it - but yes, a bit ironic I guess to track it as an achievement when someone's just won their 4th slam in a row.

Murray reached 100 grass wins with victory over Tsonga at Wimbledon, with a current win percentage of 85.5% (3rd in the Open era).

Some interesting things in the comparison between surfaces:
Federer has 668 HC wins, 152 grass court wins and 214 clay wins, so roughly 1 clay win for every 3 HC wins and 1 grass win for every 4.25 HC wins (and this from one of the best grass court players, who has mainly played 2 grass tournaments a season). Obviously, without peak Rafa, his clay record would be somewhat better (a w/l record of 2/13) and he'd have a similar ratio to Novak

Murray now as 385 HC wins, 100 grass wins and 98 clay wins. So roughly 1 grass win and 1 clay win for 4 HC wins. Obviously, until the last couple of years, Andy hasn't been that competitive on clay compared with the other surfaces, and that shows quite clearly.

Djokovic now at 479 HC wins, 67 grass wins and 176 clay wins, so 1 clay win for 2.75 HC wins but only 1 grass win for 7 HC wins.

Nadal now at 371 HC wins, 365 clay wins and 58 grass wins, so virtually 1:1 in wins between clay and HC and 1:6.5 grass to HC.

Now, I've long held the opinion that Rafa is the best clay courter ever, but I didn't appreciate quite how extreme his record actually is - 49 of his 67 titles have come on clay. Stats suggest Novak is probably a bit better clay courter than Fed.

More difficult to compare grass court records because there are so few tournaments and while Andy and Roger have usually played a warm up before Wimbledon, Rafa has been patchy in this and Novak not at all.

Well, I do believe that the win over Lopez in Barcelona was Murray's 100th on clay, so becomes the 2nd active player with 100 wins on all surfaces. Really, 2 seasons with a massive turnaround in results on clay were required.
Looks unlikely that Nadal or Djokovic will get to 100 on grass. Could be quite some time before anyone achieves this. Both Kyrgios and Zverev seem to have the game for grass success and the upcoming young American players too - will be interesting to see what numbers they can get to.

It is a testament to Murray's consistency, and the way he has improved so much on clay. We are lucky to have him - it is going to look quite bleak on the men's side once he retires, we've got used to having top players in C'mon Tim and Andy.

YvonneT wrote:Well, I do believe that the win over Lopez in Barcelona was Murray's 100th on clay, so becomes the 2nd active player with 100 wins on all surfaces. Really, 2 seasons with a massive turnaround in results on clay were required.
Looks unlikely that Nadal or Djokovic will get to 100 on grass. Could be quite some time before anyone achieves this. Both Kyrgios and Zverev seem to have the game for grass success and the upcoming young American players too - will be interesting to see what numbers they can get to.

I think some people underestimate just how good Murray is in the grand scheme of tennis history. He is just unfortunate to have three all time greats present that have generally got the better of him in finals and semi-finals. His closest match-up has been with Djokovic.

Thanks for the update.

However I think if we saw a breakdown of Murray, Djokovic and Nadal's wins on grass by Wimbledon and other we might see that Murray is primarily ahead of Djokovic because of the years that Novak has skipped warm up tournaments before Wimbledon. In absolute Wimbledon victories, Djokovic might have a similar number to Murray's total.

Going by the old saying you have got to be in them to win them. Murray has played Queens most years and chalked up 30 wins there. Wimbledon stats are very similar :

Both first played Wimbledon in 2005

Djokovic 54 wins 9 losses 3 titles

Murray 53 wins 9 losses 2 titles (missed 2007)

Hmm, going to use Calder's post as a quiz question whilst I'm on the train - who beat them in each year and when:

Murray

05 - R3 Nalby
06 - R4 Baggy
08 - QF Rafa
09 - SF Roddick
10 - SF Rafa
11 - SF Rafa
12 - F Federer
14 - QF Dimitrov
15 - SF Federer

Novak (this is tougher!)

05 - ?
06 - ?
07 - SF Rafa
08 - R2 Safin
09 - QF Haas?
10 - SF Berdych
12 - SF Fed
13 - F Andy
16 - R3 Querrey

05 - Grosjean R3
06 - Ancic R4

Both very impressive lists. Only Querrey who hasn't been a top 10 player at some point?