Year-end Tennis Statistical Analysis

Over at Tennis Magazine, Peter Bodo has created a metric to see how closely the year-end ATP rankings match up with each player's statistical performance. I was amazed at how close the correlations were. Based on his system, the top 10 rankings were identical to their statistical performances, with Janko Tipsarevic and Mardy Fish being the only exceptions (and they were just transposed with one another).

I was glad to see somebody do this. In comparison to most other sports, cumulative tennis stats aren't mentioned very frequently. You often see the match-by-match stats (aces, double faults, first serve percentage, etc.), but they vanish into the ether afterwards. Bodo's results showed that not only did their rankings hold true, but so did the relative distance between each player. Djokovic was dominant, and Nadal had a substantial lead over Federer. After Andy Murray, there was a significant drop-off before #5 David Ferrer.

I guess this shouldn't be too surprising, but I suppose I didn't expect to see the correlations be so strong. I like to think of this as a validation of tennis's ranking system and its superiority over, say, the college football rankings. At least it's obvious that their performances over the course of the year completely justify their computer rankings.