Yes, there's a discussion at the former bird website about tennis, and I think that's a good example too. (Though I think with tennis, the overall point distributions will tend to be flatter because serve is such a big advantage, so I guess the right metric might consider both points on and off serve separately)
Doing a straight % points won in men's tennis is a bit misleading, in so far as roughly half the points played (actually more, for a dominant player, since his service games will be shorter) will be on the opponent's serve. Even the best returners ever to play struggle to win more than 25% of points against their opponent's 1st serves.
Best of 5 singles tennis is about the least random* an individual sport can be in a knock-out format as the favourites/better players have many advantages under the scoring system, not least of which is the importance of fitness and mental stability as the match gets longer (as, unlike in time-limited sports like football or rugby, a player/team can't win by grabbing an advantage and hanging on - they have to sustain a higher level of performance than their opponent for hours until they win). That's why there's been an extraordinary period of the same few players (Big Three + (to a much lesser extent) Murray and Wawrinka) monopolising mens' Slam titles for 20 years (allowing for the occasional upset and illness/injury/retirement creating openings).
Although I agree there's a big random element in tennis which has a much bigger impact in the best of three format, it's just smaller than in almost any other sport at Slam level.
*F1 is even less random, but that's greatly influenced by car specification.
The stat that I always look at to predict which player is likely to win is the % of points won on 2nd serve return in previous matches. At the pro men’s level, the server on average only wins 55% of second serve points. And I recall a stat by Brad Gilbert (a player who made a lot of not very much and became a top coach to Murray, Coco Gauff and others) that even at the pro level you’re doing well to hold serve 80% of the time.
Of course for the top players the numbers are higher - because they’re the top players. But it’s always amazing how narrow the margins are. You can watch Djokovic slog away against someone and get no idea of whether the overall score is 7-6 7-6 or 6-2 6-2: the points won/lost don’t reveal that much.
That's really interesting, thanks! There's a Bill James quote along similar lines in Moneyball:
"One absolutely cannot tell, by watching, the difference between a .300 hitter and a .275 hitter. The difference is one hit every two weeks…in fact, if you see both 15 games a year, there is a 40% chance that the .275 hitter will have more hits than the .300 hitter in the games that you see. The difference between a good hitter and an average hitter is simply not visible —it is a matter of record."
Yes, one of the weird quirks of tennis' scoring system is that some points are worth more than others. I think you'd enjoy this blog from Matthew Willis:
Rahul Dravid one of the greatest batsman ever, once said - 'I batted 604 times for India. I didn't cross 50 runs 410 times out of those innings. I failed a lot more than I succeeded. I'm more a failure than a success. I'm quite qualified to talk about failure'
Nice quote! I think there's also an effect where these things can cluster together - sometimes by form, sometimes by random chance. I think Amarnath wasn't quite in Dravid's league, but he was a very good batsman .. who managed to score 1 run in a 3 match series! https://www.espncricinfo.com/records/most-ducks-in-a-series-284051
I see some similarities between elite batting (perhaps other sports too) and trading markets. Success is not built on how often you are right (indeed an obsession with that can be your downfall) but how you manage the slightly more frequent occasions you are right, and critically, how you manage the inevitable failures in between.
A similar analysis could be applied to golf. The chances of winning any tournament is small even for the best players, but the chances of winning one of the Majors must be very small. Over the years, though, the edge that the best players have allows them to accrue tournament and major wins in spite of having what might look like a modest win%
In Novak Djokovic's utterly dominant calendar year 2015, in which he won three Grand Slams and lost in the final of the other, he won just 56.1% of his points in slams. (Source: https://www.tennisabstract.com/cgi-bin/player-classic.cgi?p=NovakDjokovic&f=A2015qqC2 )
Yes, there's a discussion at the former bird website about tennis, and I think that's a good example too. (Though I think with tennis, the overall point distributions will tend to be flatter because serve is such a big advantage, so I guess the right metric might consider both points on and off serve separately)
Doing a straight % points won in men's tennis is a bit misleading, in so far as roughly half the points played (actually more, for a dominant player, since his service games will be shorter) will be on the opponent's serve. Even the best returners ever to play struggle to win more than 25% of points against their opponent's 1st serves.
Best of 5 singles tennis is about the least random* an individual sport can be in a knock-out format as the favourites/better players have many advantages under the scoring system, not least of which is the importance of fitness and mental stability as the match gets longer (as, unlike in time-limited sports like football or rugby, a player/team can't win by grabbing an advantage and hanging on - they have to sustain a higher level of performance than their opponent for hours until they win). That's why there's been an extraordinary period of the same few players (Big Three + (to a much lesser extent) Murray and Wawrinka) monopolising mens' Slam titles for 20 years (allowing for the occasional upset and illness/injury/retirement creating openings).
Although I agree there's a big random element in tennis which has a much bigger impact in the best of three format, it's just smaller than in almost any other sport at Slam level.
*F1 is even less random, but that's greatly influenced by car specification.
The stat that I always look at to predict which player is likely to win is the % of points won on 2nd serve return in previous matches. At the pro men’s level, the server on average only wins 55% of second serve points. And I recall a stat by Brad Gilbert (a player who made a lot of not very much and became a top coach to Murray, Coco Gauff and others) that even at the pro level you’re doing well to hold serve 80% of the time.
Of course for the top players the numbers are higher - because they’re the top players. But it’s always amazing how narrow the margins are. You can watch Djokovic slog away against someone and get no idea of whether the overall score is 7-6 7-6 or 6-2 6-2: the points won/lost don’t reveal that much.
That's really interesting, thanks! There's a Bill James quote along similar lines in Moneyball:
"One absolutely cannot tell, by watching, the difference between a .300 hitter and a .275 hitter. The difference is one hit every two weeks…in fact, if you see both 15 games a year, there is a 40% chance that the .275 hitter will have more hits than the .300 hitter in the games that you see. The difference between a good hitter and an average hitter is simply not visible —it is a matter of record."
Yes, one of the weird quirks of tennis' scoring system is that some points are worth more than others. I think you'd enjoy this blog from Matthew Willis:
https://theracquet.substack.com/p/the-first-four-shots-meme
My kind of Substack! Thank you.
Rahul Dravid one of the greatest batsman ever, once said - 'I batted 604 times for India. I didn't cross 50 runs 410 times out of those innings. I failed a lot more than I succeeded. I'm more a failure than a success. I'm quite qualified to talk about failure'
Nice quote! I think there's also an effect where these things can cluster together - sometimes by form, sometimes by random chance. I think Amarnath wasn't quite in Dravid's league, but he was a very good batsman .. who managed to score 1 run in a 3 match series! https://www.espncricinfo.com/records/most-ducks-in-a-series-284051
I see some similarities between elite batting (perhaps other sports too) and trading markets. Success is not built on how often you are right (indeed an obsession with that can be your downfall) but how you manage the slightly more frequent occasions you are right, and critically, how you manage the inevitable failures in between.
Happy new year Oliver. Great reading and my 13 year old lad doing probabilities at school at the moment found this very relatable so thanks again.
Happy New Year to you too - and I'm glad he liked it!
A similar analysis could be applied to golf. The chances of winning any tournament is small even for the best players, but the chances of winning one of the Majors must be very small. Over the years, though, the edge that the best players have allows them to accrue tournament and major wins in spite of having what might look like a modest win%
Yes, I'm sure the same is true there. Plus I think there's probably something of the ".400 hitter" effect going on there too - apart from Tiger Woods all of the top 10 major winners were last century or earlier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_men%27s_major_championships_winning_golfers and looks like nobody's won the same tournament three times in a row since 1956 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men%27s_major_golf_championships#Consecutive_victories