Indian Wells

First topic message reminder :

Shame for Kyle Edmund. He was playing well in the first set.

Delpo beat Smyczeck 6-4, 6-0.

Fritz lost to Tiafoe.

This is breathtaking from Novak at the moment.

Raonic currently winning over 70% of points behind his first serve, 0/11 on his second serve. Incredibly one-dimensional.

If he is what we can expect from tomorrow's tennis thank God we had all our yesterdays...

Wow a non-contest...

Lucky to have a such a generation.

Born Slippy wrote:Except there is zero evidence that we are getting matches with endless baseline rallies.

It will depend on what you mean by "endless rallies".  They all end.

It seems to me pretty obvious that today's tennis has longer rallies than tennis used to have in the past.  I liked the way tennis was played in the 80s, and while I thought the 90s were indeed devolving into serve fests, we are quite clearly erring on the other side now.

So yes, we do have endless rallies.

Born Slippy wrote:Raonic currently winning over 70% of points behind his first serve, 0/11 on his second serve. Incredibly one-dimensional.

Don't worry Milos, go back to the practice court, hit 2000 aces, then wait for the current generation to retire and he'll be winning Slams in no time.

legendkillarV2 wrote:Wow a non-contest...

Lucky to have a such a generation.

Not sure what you mean, all I'll say is they're not part of the same generation; Djokovic was part of the golden period, and Raonic is a 6'7 servebot.

At least Raonic now knows what he could have expected if he had made the AO final and does not have to have any regrets about maybe having had a chance for his first slam there.

You've given Rao two extra inches..... height wise IMBL

All a bit harsh on Raonic. If he turned up down your club and played you you'd probably be in awe.

4 UEs for Novak in the whole match. Novak the baker delivers the bagel to poor Milos. Now Djokovic breaks the tie with Federer and becomes by himself the lone 5 time IW champion and I think he is the only guy to win the IW and Miami double 3 times. Can't think of anyone who on a medium to slow HC I would ever take over Novak. That is why I think Nadal was so good he did manage to get Novak out of his comfort zone for a set and half.

Well on the basis of that result.. Rafa can take some comfort.
At least Novak knew he had been in a match.
Raonic gave him a practice session

It Must Be Love wrote:

legendkillarV2 wrote:Wow a non-contest...

Lucky to have a such a generation.

Not sure what you mean, all I'll say is they're not part of the same generation; Djokovic was part of the golden period, and Raonic is a 6'7 servebot.

Not a servebot. 

Just has no BH.

Would be nice for some competition.

socal1976 wrote:4 UEs for Novak in the whole match. Novak the baker delivers the bagel to poor Milos. Now Djokovic breaks the tie with Federer and becomes by himself the lone 5 time IW champion and I think he is the only guy to win the IW and Miami double 3 times. Can't think of anyone who on a medium to slow HC I would ever take over Novak. That is why I think Nadal was so good he did manage to get Novak out of his comfort zone for a set and half.

There is no-one. The competition has truly dried up.

I think even HMM has given up on the game! 

Djokovic just unplayable. Even with lapses, no-one on tour has a big enough killer instinct to strike the hammer blow.

legendkillarV2 wrote:

socal1976 wrote:4 UEs for Novak in the whole match. Novak the baker delivers the bagel to poor Milos. Now Djokovic breaks the tie with Federer and becomes by himself the lone 5 time IW champion and I think he is the only guy to win the IW and Miami double 3 times. Can't think of anyone who on a medium to slow HC I would ever take over Novak. That is why I think Nadal was so good he did manage to get Novak out of his comfort zone for a set and half.

There is no-one. The competition has truly dried up.

I think even HMM has given up on the game! 

Djokovic just unplayable. Even with lapses, no-one on tour has a big enough killer instinct to strike the hammer blow.

The ESPN broadcast said that if you took 3 grandslams and a final off of Novak's point total he would still be number 1. That to me was a jaw dropping statistic. I think the season is still young. I could see Stan, Murray, and Fed on their day on their surface knocking him out. But if Novak brings his A game it won't matter. Even his B game is good enough to beat pretty much any of the other top guys. But the game has a tendency to surprise, someone is going to come up that can challenge and beat him in the biggest events. But I do think in the short term that he has opened up the biggest gap in terms of level of play and performance over his nearest competitors that we have seen in modern times.

summerblues wrote:
It will depend on what you mean by "endless rallies".  They all end.

It seems to me pretty obvious that today's tennis has longer rallies than tennis used to have in the past.  I liked the way tennis was played in the 80s, and while I thought the 90s were indeed devolving into serve fests, we are quite clearly erring on the other side now.

So yes, we do have endless rallies.

Eh oh, not so fast SB.
Endless rallies ?

OK, let me take the example of Djokovic vs Nadal, one match-up which would be clearly associated with longer baseline rallies.

Nad vs Djoko- WTF Final 2013 (stats from tennis abstract, great site):
Rallies between 1-3 shots- 49%
Rallies between 7-9 shots- 10%
Rallies with 10+ shots- 13%

Let me maybe compare with a rivalry that have players who are not known for long rallies.
Federer vs Gasquet USO 2015:
Rallies between 1-3 shots- 68%
Rallies between 7-9 shots- 6%
Rallies with 10+ shots- 5%

Let's have a look at the Wimbledon Final 2015:
Rallies between 1-3 shots- 60%
Rallies between 7-9 shots- 6%
Rallies with 10+ shots- 8%


People love talking about variety, I want more variety within the match itself. I don't want nearly 70% of the points in a match to be over in 3 or less shots, which let's be honest have very little action. Even Nadal vs Djokovic at the WTF Final in 2013 had 49% of points over in 1-3 points. It was also 49% for the AO 2012 final, something in the mid 40s for the WTF final last year.
It's ok if you enjoy and love points that are over in less than 5 seconds, that's ok, whatever floats your boat, maybe you love seeing unreturnable serves and 1-2 punches.
But it's got to the point where it seems some not only love seeing this, but aren't happy if the number of these points don't take up 60%+ of the whole match. I enjoy watching rallies and think that most of the best exciting points takes place during points which last over 5 seconds.
With Djokovic-Nadal I'm left with a figure around 20-25% (sometimes maybe even close to a third, AO 2012 final had 31%) that have more than 6 shots in a rally. Apparently even this low figure is too much enjoyment for me during a match.

As a colleague of mine says who works in the ONS 

"stats don't always tell the story"

IMBL, as LK says, the stats the way you present them do not say much.

To me, 23% of 7+ shot rallies that you mention in Nadal-Djoko sounds like an insanely high number.  I would even say that 11% from Fed-Gasquet is probably too much.  But it is hard to say in isolation unless we develop better feel for these numbers.  

My hunch would be that the average number of strokes per point went down from the 80s to the 90s, and then went up again thereafter, with current numbers being above where we started from.  I am not 100% sure, but it feels that way to me.

But without having some sense of that, your numbers are kind of meaningless.

summerblues wrote:
To me, 23% of 7+ shot rallies that you mention in Nadal-Djoko sounds like an insanely high number.  I would even say that 11% from Fed-Gasquet is probably too much.  But it is hard to say in isolation unless we develop better feel for these numbers.  

What do you mean by 'high' ? High as in that is too high for your enjoyment ?

summerblues wrote:IMBL, as LK says, the stats the way you present them do not say much.

To me, 23% of 7+ shot rallies that you mention in Nadal-Djoko sounds like an insanely high number.  I would even say that 11% from Fed-Gasquet is probably too much.  But it is hard to say in isolation unless we develop better feel for these numbers.  

My hunch would be that the average number of strokes per point went down from the 80s to the 90s, and then went up again thereafter, with current numbers being above where we started from.  I am not 100% sure, but it feels that way to me.

But without having some sense of that, your numbers are kind of meaningless.

Let's analyse this comment:

- basically half the points are over in 3 or less shots - ie over in, at most, a 1-2 punch.
- 87% of points are over by the time each player has hit the ball 5 times.
- 13 out of every 100 points (probably 6 or 7 a set) are more than 10 shots  

You think that the final stat is "insanely high"?

It Must Be Love wrote:What do you mean by 'high' ? High as in that is too high for your enjoyment ?

I mostly mean "higher than the long run historical average", or something along those lines.

In isolation the number does not say much.  People do not watch tennis and say "I think we need to have x% of rallies of length y".  People watch tennis and develop feeling "this is too short", "this is about right", "this is too long".

If someone says "current tennis has rallies that are too long" and you can prove to them that in fact tennis always had rallies of the same length, then fair enough, you are indeed providing a counterargument.

But you cannot say "oh, but we have only 21% of 7+ shot rallies rallies" and use that as a counterargument.  The number itself provides no reference for whether 21% should be judged as too much or too little.

Born Slippy wrote:
basically half the points are over in 3 or less shots - ie over in, at most, a 1-2 punch.
- 87% of points are over by the time each player has hit the ball 5 times.
- 13 out of every 100 points (probably 6 or 7 a set) are more than 10 shots  

You think that the final stat is "insanely high"?

Yes, 13/100 of 10+ strikes me as very high.  I understand that if someone likes watching baseline rallies they may prefer even longer points.  But you should also appreciate that if someone grew up enjoying Wimbledon in the 80s, they may well view these stats as too high.

I have been planning to (though have not yet got around to it) pick a few matches from Wimbledon and check average length of a point in each.  I would pick a couple of matches that I remember enjoying very much (maybe Borg-McEnroe and Becker-Edberg), then maybe some that I considered having too short points (Sampras-Ivanisevic?, maybe some more?) and then something more recent (Djokovic-Nadal, Djokovic-Federer?)

I strongly suspect that I will find that the average length of the rally went down from the 80s to 90s, and then increased to above where it started from.

I grew up watching Wimbledon in the 80s. Unsurprisingly, I don't consider an average of one rally over 10 shots every two games unreasonable. If anything, it seems too low to me.

summerblues wrote:

In isolation the number does not say much.  People do not watch tennis and say "I think we need to have x% of rallies of length y".  People watch tennis and develop feeling "this is too short", "this is about right", "this is too long".

Lol SB, I am obviously in the latter category too, I hope your impression of me isn't someone sitting watching tennis with a calculator out screaming 'argh we need 4% more of 7-9 rally shots for this to be good' !
But yes, I do get the feeling that too many of the points are decided within 5 seconds, and a much lower percentage of points are decided in a decent rally. I have a feeling that I want some more variety within a match itself, with more of a balance.
And having looked at the statistics closely, my feelings were not baseless.
People talk about wanting variety, and then they say that having only 50% of points that are decided within 5 seconds is too few, and apparently 87% of points being over before each player can hit 5 shots is also too few ! This isn't variety, this is wanting a monologue of less than 5 second points !

Born Slippy wrote:I grew up watching Wimbledon in the 80s. Unsurprisingly, I don't consider an average of one rally over 10 shots every two games unreasonable. If anything, it seems too low to me.

Maybe you hated Wimbledon in the 80s?

I hope you are not suggesting that a typical Wimbledon match in the 80s had 13% points with 10+ strokes?  I do not mind matches like that at the French Open, but now we have them everywhere.

A typical match wouldn't but a match between Connors and Borg? I honestly don't know but it seems a relatively low number for a match on a slow hard court between the two best defensive players of this generation. Certainly not evidence of "endless rallies".

Just watched a little bit of the 77 Wimbledon final between Connors and Borg. Two of the first 12 points are 10+ shots. I can't be bothered watching any more - the standard is very poor compared to today. However, given both stayed back on second serves I would be surprised if that proportion changed dramatically.

Yeah, it will probably be somewhat painful counting it.  Still, I will give it a good go for those 5 matches that I mentioned.  Maybe not full matches, and I do not know when but once I have some numbers I will post them on this forum.

I will also note that in order to pick a typical 1980s Wimbledon match you went all the way to 1977 and picked two baseliners

Anyway, this comment is more in jest than serious. Looking at Connors vs Borg is reasonably fair - alongside other players too - as they were among the top players back then.

I chose a match between the top 2 baseline players of that era. It happened that the 1977 final came up first on a quick YouTube check. No point comparing Nadal v Djoko to Edberg v Becker - the comparison there would be to something like Fed v Tsonga.

Haddie-nuff wrote:Well on the basis of that result.. Rafa can take some comfort.
At least Novak knew he had been in a match.
Raonic gave him a practice session

Lol.

Tsonga gave Djokovic the toughest 2 sets in the tournament 7-6 7-6. One fanbase seems to avoid this fact

But how many Fed vs Tsonga Wimbledon finals do we get now?  To make it a fair comparison, you do not want to pick "two 1980s baseliners vs two current baseliners" but "typical 1980s match vs typical current match".  And if a typical game in 1980s was S&V and now it is baseline, then you should be comparing S&V vs baseline.

I am willing to believe that typical baseline tennis back then was producing rallies at Wimbledon that were as long (if not longer) than now, but there was less baseline tennis to start with.  So I would think that typical tennis was producing shorter rallies then than now.

Anyway, as I said, one of these days I will put an effort to collect enough data from a handful of matches so that we have more direct evidence.  For now, this is all from me on the topic as I do not really have anything else to say.

Somewhat unrelated, but I will say that when comparing current baseline game to the baseline game of the 1980s, I do prefer the current edition.

I'm not basing my claim on what happened in the past, if tennis was faster or slower in the past that's ok by me but I don't see how it's relevant, nor will it change my opinion on the type of tennis I want to see now and in the future.

I have a gift for Federer fans, and if I can watch and appreciate, I'm sure everyone else will be able to as well.
Some ridiculous shots there by Roger, but I would make this point: the vast majority of points shown in this amazing compilation are rallies that are 5 or more shots. The first 2 are 4 shots, and I think there are 5 more that are 3 shot rallies throughout the video, but the vast majority of points are longer ones. And Federer is a big server, so it's not as if they didn't have plenty of 1-2 punches and unreturnables to choose from.

6-2 6-0 Djokovic with an easy win against Raonic to pick up another Masters title.

Josiah Maiestas wrote:

Haddie-nuff wrote:Well on the basis of that result.. Rafa can take some comfort.
At least Novak knew he had been in a match.
Raonic gave him a practice session

Lol.

Tsonga gave Djokovic the toughest 2 sets in the tournament 7-6 7-6. One fanbase seems to avoid this fact

I didn't say Tsonga didn't only that Nadal did.. get off my case Maiestas..Nadal's name to you is like a red rag to a bull.
Nasty!!!

summerblues wrote:

Born Slippy wrote:I grew up watching Wimbledon in the 80s. Unsurprisingly, I don't consider an average of one rally over 10 shots every two games unreasonable. If anything, it seems too low to me.

Maybe you hated Wimbledon in the 80s?

I hope you are not suggesting that a typical Wimbledon match in the 80s had 13% points with 10+ strokes?  I do not mind matches like that at the French Open, but now we have them everywhere.

This. See the issue I have when people moan about "serve fests" is that they all my seeming watched just Wimbledon in the 80's and 90's and then make a uniform opinion across the whole game based on that one tournament. 

Comical really.

Respect to Novak for the ongoing level of his achievement but tennis feels as flat as a pancake right now.

For me, that's nothing to do with Novak. In fact, he's maybe the biggest bright spot tennis has right now - an historically great player at the peak of his career. I know he's not to everyone's taste stylistically but he is doing certain things on court that haven't been seen before and producing a scale of accomplishment that doesn't come along very often. I'm trying to savour it because it is becoming increasingly clear that, once they're gone, we aren't going to see the likes of Federer, Nadal and Djokovic again for some time.

And that's the root of tennis' problem. Where's the competition?

The complete failure of a generation (or more) of tennis players to break through is not only making every tournament feel like Groundhog Day (Ooh! A QF v Tsonga! Again.) it's condemning us to a tennis wilderness in a few years time.

Who are we looking forward to watching?

Kyrgios has completed his transition from exciting talent to pantomime villain to full blown jackass who I would not wish any success upon.

The case for Thiem seems based upon him possessing a game that is watchable rather than high quality. He's the Midsomer Murders of the ATP.

Zverev, I suppose, has time on his side but I don't get any sense of him having that extra something that the elite have. We're looking for the next Beatles but we probably have Gerry and the Pacemakers.

I'm not a tennis fan in the pure sense. I don't derive pleasure simply from the watching the game in the way that some can. I want to see great players and I'm beginning to realise that I may not be watching in the not too distant future.

Haddie-nuff wrote:

Josiah Maiestas wrote:

Haddie-nuff wrote:Well on the basis of that result.. Rafa can take some comfort.
At least Novak knew he had been in a match.
Raonic gave him a practice session

Lol.

Tsonga gave Djokovic the toughest 2 sets in the tournament 7-6 7-6. One fanbase seems to avoid this fact

I didn't say Tsonga didn't only that Nadal did.. get off my case Maiestas..Nadal's name to you is like a red rag to a bull.
Nasty!!!

I apologise I read your post "the only time Novak knew he had been in a match".

Lets face it, Djokovic was quite poor by his standards all week. I didn't see the final, but it appears he played a bit better then.

Quite worrying for the rest of the tour that Djokovic won a big tournament whilst in poor form.

I would guess Murray or Federer, if anywhere near their best, would have beaten him this week.

The problem here that Novak has is a psychological one I think.
He must keep telling himself (albeit it would seem unnecessary) that he must watch his back.. otherwise he could get a little too complacent and sit back on his laurels.

Yet on the other hand........... the rest of the field already have

HM Murdock wrote:Respect to Novak for the ongoing level of his achievement but tennis feels as flat as a pancake right now.

For me, that's nothing to do with Novak. In fact, he's maybe the biggest bright spot tennis has right now - an historically great player at the peak of his career. I know he's not to everyone's taste stylistically but he is doing certain things on court that haven't been seen before and producing a scale of accomplishment that doesn't come along very often. I'm trying to savour it because it is becoming increasingly clear that, once they're gone, we aren't going to see the likes of Federer, Nadal and Djokovic again for some time.

And that's the root of tennis' problem. Where's the competition?

The complete failure of a generation (or more) of tennis players to break through is not only making every tournament feel like Groundhog Day (Ooh! A QF v Tsonga! Again.) it's condemning us to a tennis wilderness in a few years time.

Who are we looking forward to watching?

Kyrgios has completed his transition from exciting talent to pantomime villain to full blown jackass who I would not wish any success upon.

The case for Thiem seems based upon him possessing a game that is watchable rather than high quality. He's the Midsomer Murders of the ATP.

Zverev, I suppose, has time on his side but I don't get any sense of him having that extra something that the elite have. We're looking for the next Beatles but we probably have Gerry and the Pacemakers.

I'm not a tennis fan in the pure sense. I don't derive pleasure simply from the watching the game in the way that some can. I want to see great players and I'm beginning to realise that I may not be watching in the not too distant future.

That's quite key. Djokovic isn't to blame for the short-comings of other players. If you look at say Dimitrov/Nishikori/Raonic. All broke through that Tier that shared with others like Gulbis/Janowicz and made strides towards the top 10. Showed some early promise (albeit not a big fan of them myself), it seemed like that's what the future would look like. Since that initial breakthrough, what have they done? Dimitrov/Gulbis/Janowicz have fallen off a cliff. Now they can't beat the players around them. Nishikori/Raonic, yes have been more mainstays, but they haven't kicked on and won a big title. Not capitalised on poor form or injuries to the big guns and rolled over.

I feel when Djokovic finishes and the GOAT debate kicks around, I feel he will be held in high scrutiny and will divide opinion because of the lack of competition he faces now. It's a real dark place right now for the sport. I am hoping Thiem will continue to make progression as I do enjoy his game.

It's like the mortals don't want to kick the gods off Mount Olympus and become gods themselves!

legendkillarV2 wrote:I feel when Djokovic finishes and the GOAT debate kicks around, I feel he will be held in high scrutiny and will divide opinion because of the lack of competition he faces now.

Federer would also have a mark against him on those terms!

But I think recent history has killed the "weak era" as an argument against a player.

The idea that Djokovic wouldn't be winning so much if he was facing peak Federer and peak Nadal may well be true. But it's also a recognition that in order to stop him winning so much, you need to put him against great players. Therefore, he must himself be a great player!

Same with Fed. If we stuck peak Nadal and peak Djokovic in a time machine and sent them back to 2004-2006, maybe Federer wouldn't have won so much. But if that's the calibre of player we think is required to dent Fed's numbers, that's hardly a mark against Federer!

Is Djokovic so good he's making a strong era look weak?

Or

Is the era so weak it's making Djokovic look so good?

Can go on forever. No correct answer.

He looked like he couldn't be arrsed until the final and still didn't drop set after his first match.

Not good for the ATP.

Guest82 wrote:Is Djokovic so good he's making a strong era look weak?

Or

Is the era so weak it's making Djokovic look so good?

Can go on forever.  No correct answer.

The flaw in the above is the assumption that one aspect is illusory.

Both statements can be true. The competition can be weaker and Djokovic can still be excellent.

Djokovic is an all time great playing at a world class level, and right now the competition is not very strong, weaker than he's ever had to deal with.

HM and Socal both are Djokovic fans, and don't get offended by that claim, something to reflect on.

No need to rag on the current generation so much. look at raonic and the rests recent performances, they've been great and shown massive strides of improvement. Novak just makes them look poor. What's more likely? One player is an all time great? Or EVERYONE else are simultaneously bad?

It's the same situation as 2004-2007 when roger was making stellar players look average. Suggestions of the weak era there are still met with a lot of derision and nastiness. Might I therefore suggest some consustency and we give novak his props here

It Must Be Love wrote:Djokovic is an all time great playing at a world class level, and right now the competition is not very strong, weaker than he's ever had to deal with.

And when those factors combine, you get numbers like 82-6.

In fact, it's hard to argue that Federer 06, Mac 84 or Connors 74 saw the opposition at its best level either. Doesn't alter the fact their own level was superb.