The Curious Case of Rajeev Ram

He is primarily a Doubles player who occasionally dabbles in Singles and turned ATP Pro in 2004.

Singles Career W/L is 51/80, with a 2016 W/L of 8/7. He has two career titles, one each in 2009 and 2015 in Singles. He also has 1 ATP Final.

In 2015 he also has a rare distinction/achievement. His Service Games Won percentage is 90% on Grass (he is at #22 in the list in 2015 of players who have 90% or higher as mentioned in http://www.atpworldtour.com/en/players/rajeev-ram/r548/player-stats?year=2015&surfaceType=grass )

The way it was achieved was by winning Newport RI (beating Isner, Sugita, Mannarino, John-Patrick Smith and Karlovic) and Manchester Challenger (beating Bemelmans, Nielsen, Milton and losing to Groth in SF.  http://www.atpworldtour.com/players/rajeev-ram/r548/player-activity?year=2015&matchType=singles) .

The highest round at Wimbledon he has been to is R64 in 2013 (http://www.atpworldtour.com/players/rajeev-ram/r548/player-activity?year=all&tournament=540&matchType=singles)

The second and more significant achievement on 606v2 that he has attained, is that he has struck fears in the hearts of Wimbledon aficionados. He is considered a danger and a poster child for why courts should not be sped up .

Profile - http://www.atpworldtour.com/en/players/rajeev-ram/r548/overview

PS: For the record, he has the following numbers over the years.

2014 - 80%
2013 - 83%
2012 - 87%
2011 - N/A
2010 - 77%
2009 - 89%
2005-2008 - N/A
2004 - 63%
2003 - N/A

Please so silly. Sometimes I am amazed how people who play and follow tennis all their lives can make these types of arguments. You again misstate the problem completely. Lets take Ram, or better yet Isner as the argument. The problem is not that the faster conditions will allow them to dominate on grass. It is that the faster conditions make a huge server, remember most big servers are really bad returners, be able to play anyone to virtual tie. It takes the mystery out of the sport if Isner/Raonic/Andersen is almost certain to hold every service game on grass and simultaneously highly unlikely to ever break his opponent regardless of whether it is the world #1 or just some other pro. So the problem is not the big servers will dominate Wimbeldon, the problem is that today's big servers with juiced conditions will play any and every opponent to a virtual tie that is decided by one or two break points. To me that isn't indicative of quality, it turns ever match into f--ing crap shoot. From now on if you want to debate me on the speeding up etc. issue I will post on the other thread. No need to fragment the discussion. Its amazing to me how on so many issues how many of you can't see the forest from the trees.

You keep quoting statistics but have no context. Playing 9 matches in Challengers, a player can get to 100%, and you ignore the context and quote 22 players with such numbers. Do some research before you put numbers out.

This thread is to expose the context.

Hi Laverfan - it is not clear what your thesis is. Do all the stats relate to grass or are they averages across different surfaces.

Nore Staat wrote: it is not clear what your thesis is.

This is purely a Grass set of numbers. There is a desire to extrapolate the numbers from Grass to other future fast surfaces, if ATP chooses to speed up courts.

Thesis - Grass is the fastest, and players have 90% or higher Service Games Won percentage, and are unbreakable. Making courts faster is doomsday for Tennis, because players will become similarly unbreakable and returners/baseliners will have no chance at Wimbledon (or any other fast court).

Sub-thesis - Without a TB at W, MahIsner + Unbreakable means 3 days of non-stop serve fest.
Sub-Thesis - Unbreakbility leads to serve-fests.

Anti-Thesis - Service Games Won on Grass is irrelevant to other Fast surfaces because it does not account for the context (number of matches) played. It does not account of BPs saved on the same surface by the same player which is a measure of breakability.

Sub-Thesis - Of all Grass tourneys that survive today, only W does not have a fifth set TB. It has TBs in the other four sets. There is no MahIsner possible on any other Grass surface as of now. Other Fast surfaces (if ever created) can follow the same model as say Halle, or Den'Bosch or Newport.

Socal is obviously well aware that the grass season is short. However, double the number of players holding at over 90% in 2015 compared to 2000 suggests that serve is harder to break now than then.

Rajeev Ram can, of course, be compared to Richard Fromberg in 2000 who was equally as unlikely to win Wimbledon yet held at over 90%. However, both are utterly irrelevant in themselves to this debate.

The simple question is whether you accept:

1. Players hold serve more regularly on grass today than they did when SV was predominant in 2000;

2. Speeding up the grass courts will increase that discrepancy even further.

Obviously (if that is agreed), then the next point for debate would be whether that is a good thing. My view, of course, is that it would be dreadful for tennis.

I still don't really understand the point being made. I suspect this thread is a response to another thread that I lost interest in.

Surely if the serving stats are 90% or over that makes grass more competitive, and people prefer competitive matches rather than 6-0 6-0 6-0 matches.

Born Slippy wrote:Socal is obviously well aware that the grass season is short. However, double the number of players holding at over 90% in 2015 compared to 2000 suggests that serve is harder to break now than then.

This implicitly implies that I have to address both of you jointly. . Your original claim that 2000s would be higher that 2015 is not supported.

You are married to Service Games Won, but refuse to look at Break Points Saved (or more accurately 100 - Break Points Saved Percentage).
Taking Fromberg from 2000 (http://www.atpworldtour.com/en/players/richard-fromberg/f164/player-stats?year=2000&surfaceType=grass) he saved 72% BPs, which implies that he was broken 28% of the time. There is no such thing as unbreakable.

Born Slippy wrote:Rajeev Ram can, of course, be compared to Richard Fromberg in 2000 who was equally as unlikely to win Wimbledon yet held at over 90%. However, both are utterly irrelevant in themselves to this debate.

The simple question is whether you accept:

1. Players hold serve more regularly on grass today than they did when SV was predominant in 2000;

2. Speeding up the grass courts will increase that discrepancy even further.

Obviously (if that is agreed), then the next point for debate would be whether that is a good thing. My view, of course, is that it would be dreadful for tennis.

If a player holds serve after being dragged to deuce, vs a 40-0 hold, are two different situations. You need to distinguish between such situations. None of your statistics do that, or can.

You are missing the point of Grass. This notion that Grass is being speeded up is also fallacious. I am suggesting creating new tourneys which have faster courts. I am not suggesting touching Grass and tweaking it.

Your view is clear, but let us not inflict your view on thousands who flock to Murray/Henman Hill. I watch Clay and Grass. I enjoy both. I set my expectations according to the surface that I am watching.

laverfan wrote:

Nore Staat wrote: it is not clear what your thesis is.

This is purely a Grass set of numbers. There is a desire to extrapolate the numbers from Grass to other future fast surfaces, if ATP chooses to speed up courts.

Thesis - Grass is the fastest, and players have 90% or higher Service Games Won percentage, and are unbreakable. Making courts faster is doomsday for Tennis, because players will become similarly unbreakable and returners/baseliners will have no chance at Wimbledon (or any other fast court).

Sub-thesis - Without a TB at W, MahIsner + Unbreakable means 3 days of non-stop serve fest.
Sub-Thesis - Unbreakbility leads to serve-fests. ...

Wrong methodology then. You need to include stats on service games broken. This will reveal that service games are not unbreakable.

Nore Staat wrote:Wrong methodology then.  You need to include stats on service games broken.  This will reveal that service games are not unbreakable.

BPs saved percentage is an aggregate of such. Take a look at http://www.atpworldtour.com/en/players/novak-djokovic/d643/player-stats and suggest an alternative measure.

This ? - http://www.atpworldtour.com/en/stats/break-points-converted/2015/grass/all/

I repeat wrong methodology. You have to analyse on a match by match basis and identify the cause of defeat for each match. We know for certain that matches don't go on forever - your statistics are missing the essentially statistics that give rise to the match result.

Nore Staat wrote:I repeat wrong methodology.  You have to analyse on a match by match basis and identify the cause of defeat for each match.  We know for certain that matches don't go on forever - your statistics are missing the essentially statistics that give rise to the match result.

SB used Average Rally length - https://www.606v2.com/t62797-average-rally-length . This is where the debate originated (and I can understand why you lost interest. ).

Apparently 50% of 606v2 threads are below average.