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Posts concerning tennis

Baseball and Luck in Competition

22:30 26 Aug 2010

Aptly-named Yankees blog It’s About the Money has an excellent post up about luck and competitive balance in the baseball post-season. One of its key points concerns how likely a given team is to win a particular series, and how that translates into their odds of winning the whole thing.
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Andre Agassi’s Open

08:58 17 Aug 2010. Updated: 15:46 17 Aug 2010

I read Agassi’s autobiography during a five-hour layover in Philadelphia airport this weekend, and have to say I was impressed—with the book, not the layover. I had expected it to be of interest mainly for its hardcore tennis content, with some celebrity stuff thrown in, but I found it gripping throughout and was very impressed with Agassi’s voice.
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Nadal’s Second Wimbledon/Eighth Grand Slam

19:34 04 Jul 2010

Tomas Berdych overcame the world number two, Roger Federer, and the world number three, Novak Djokovic. But he couldn’t get anywhere near the world number one, Rafael Nadal, who dismantled him in three sets and made it look fairly easy.

It wasn’t a great match to watch. Berdych claimed not to be nervous, but he certainly looked tight. Against Federer and Djokovic he prevailed with heavy serves and heavy power strokes, but those weren’t evident today. Many of his groundstrokes were landing inside the service line, and Nadal is simply too good not to punish that. So he did. 6–3, 7–5, 6–4.
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Federer Falls at Wimbledon

22:55 01 Jul 2010

Of the top four seeds, three are through to the semifinals—making it all the more shocking that the only one not to make it is Roger Federer. Tomas Berdych beat him in the quarterfinals 6–4, 3–6, 6–1, 6–4. Losing at the quarterfinal stage in Paris is one thing, but at Wimbledon, where Federer had been in the finals for seven consecutive years? That’s absolutely an upset. The problem is it wasn’t a hugely surprising upset in that Berdych was clearly going to trouble Federer, playing the same kind of power game that Söderling and Del Potro (and, in a more limited way, Davydenko) have been able to hurt him with over the past year. A shocker, but one that you could almost sense coming.
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Wimbledon 2010 Midpoint Notes

15:08 27 Jun 2010

For all the drama in this tournament, most of the big names have survived into the second week. Federer, Nadal, Djokovic, Murray, Roddick, and Söderling are all still in it, while on the women’s side both Williams sisters, Wozniacki, and Jankovic, the top four, are still in, as are Sharapova, Henin, and Clijsters (although those last two play each other next).
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478–502

23:33 24 Jun 2010

Those numbers are the points for John Isner and Nicolas Mahut, respectively, in their ludicrously epic first-round Wimbledon match, the longest professional tennis match in history (by some margin) either by total games or total time. Twice suspended due to darkness, the match ended today, 6–4, 3–6, 6–7 (7), 7–6 (3), 70–68 to Isner.
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Nadal Wins Fifth French Open

09:21 06 Jun 2010

Robin Söderling, after knocking out the defending champion, was again unable to put up much resistance in the final. This match had a different pattern from last year’s final; this year, Söderling had important chances early but could not break the Nadal serve, and once those early chances were gone they didn’t reappear.
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Marginal Advantage in Game Design

18:39 04 Jun 2010

I was impressed by this article on marginal advantage by Sean Plott, who among other things is a high-level competitive Starcraft player. It discusses some more general points, suggesting that “a good competitive game should test a player’s skills and minimize the element of chance”, which I agree with, despite my long interest in Magic: The Gathering.

I also agree with his corollary that in a good competitive game, “the probability of a weak player defeating a good player should be as close to zero as possible”. Notions of “weak” and “good” players here should be as diverse as possible.

I’m not sure how this applies to tennis, the game I’m currently most interested in, but the winner of the match is often not the player with superior strokes.

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Federer’s Semifinal Streak Over

20:58 03 Jun 2010

One of the most amazing streaks in sports history ended Tuesday, when Robin Söderling beat Roger Federer in the French Open quarterfinals. 23 straight appearances in semifinals or better. The last time Federer failed to make the semifinals of a Grand Slam was at the French Open in 2004. Six years ago. Near the end of George W. Bush’s first term.
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French Open 2010 Midpoint Notes

13:05 30 May 2010

So far, it’s been an uneventful tournament on the men’s side. Roddick’s departure was shocking only because he lost to a qualifier. Steve Tignor wrote an excellent piece on that loss and the part environmental conditions played. Apart from that the biggest story was Murray’s win against Gasquet, coming back from two sets down. I recommend what Tignor wrote about that too.
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sabbatical.close()

23:36 16 May 2010

After a highly enjoyable, productive, and extended period, it’s time for me to return to the world of paid work.

I’m quite happy with the things I’ve done during my time off. Many of them are important only to me, but then, it’s been my time off.
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Women’s Tennis Should be Best-of-Five

22:09 14 Mar 2010

How long should tennis matches be? At the Grand Slam level, five sets. That’s the traditional answer, and all of the best matches I’ve seen have been five sets long. That’s long enough to be challenging, but not so long as to be ridiculous.
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“Salsa, the serve looks like salsa”

23:56 12 Feb 2010

I know I’m something of a Federer partisan, but wow, does this commentator take it to a ridiculous level (note that the translation may not be entirely accurate). There’s some excellent tennis in there too, but the commentary really is amazing.

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Sweet Sixteen Down Under

15:04 31 Jan 2010. Updated: 01:24 01 Feb 2010

Roger Federer put more space between first and second place in men’s tennis history by collecting his (record) 16th Grand Slam victory, 6–3, 6–4, 7–6 (11) over Andy Murray last night. Pete Sampras has 14 Grand Slams, and now it seems as if Federer will be looking to match the all-time greats in women’s tennis—Margaret Court has 24.

I thought it would take Federer four sets to overcome Murray, and maybe five. Instead, Federer again underscored the disparity between his game and everyone else’s.
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Federer GS SF Streak: 23 and Counting

12:28 28 Jan 2010

Absolutely one of the most amazing achievements in sports history, and terribly underappreciated. The last time Roger Federer hasn’t reached at least the semifinal stage of a Grand Slam: the 2004 French Open. Almost six years ago! In addition, the only people he’s lost to in that span were the eventual champions. This on grass, clay, different varieties of hardcourt, in quite varied conditions—it hasn’t mattered. He’s always gotten at least to the semifinals, i.e. to the sixth round.
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Australian Open 2010 Midpoint Notes

15:02 25 Jan 2010. Updated: 11:44 30 May 2010

On the men’s side, for the most part the top seeds have been rolling along. Six of the top eight are in the quarterfinals, the most notable absence being that of Juan Martin Del Potro, who was taken out in a tough five-setter by #14 Marin Cilic, who now faces #7 Andy Roddick. #8 Robin Söderling went out in the first round, and the quarterfinalists are rounded out by #10 Jo-Wilfried Tsonga.
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Serena Williams’ Fine

15:09 11 Dec 2009. Updated: 18:59 12 Dec 2009

Serena Williams was recently fined $82,500 by the International Tennis Federation for the actions leading to her exit from this year’s US Open. The ITF fine is in addition to the $10,500 she was fined by the USTA soon after the incident.

The fine from the ITF is the largest ever in tennis, and there’s significant controversy over the whole affair. I’ve read quite a few claims that racism and sexism are key drivers for the decision to fine her so much. I’m somewhat skeptical of those claims.
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Davydenko Wins 2009 Tennis YEC

13:10 30 Nov 2009. Updated: 16:26 28 Dec 2009

Nikolay Davydenko won the 2009 ATP Finals yesterday with a surprise 6–3, 6–4 win over Juan Martin Del Potro. While Davydenko was seeded 6, just one behind Del Potro at 5, this was a significant upset. Del Potro looked very strong after his initial round-robin loss to Andy Murray, and won the last Grand Slam of the season, the US Open.
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Tennis YEC: Swiss Better than Round-Robin?

23:52 27 Nov 2009. Updated: 16:25 28 Dec 2009

The 2009 ATP year-end championships have finished the first, round-robin, stage, where the field of eight is split into two groups of four, and each group plays round-robin to winnow it down to the two who go to the single-elimination rounds (semifinals and final). There have been some interesting effects of running the tournament this way, and I wonder whether a different setup would be superior.
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Del Potro Defeats Federer for 2009 US Open Title

23:11 14 Sep 2009

Well, I didn’t see this one coming. I really thought that Federer would be too relaxed, too experienced, and just too good to lose this final.

He wasn’t. He lost 6–3, 6–7 (5), 6–4, 6–7 (4), 2–6 in a match that was actually closer than the scoreline reflects—Federer really had multiple chances to close the door on Del Potro and just couldn’t seem to quite take them.
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US Open 2009: Del Potro, Federer, Clijsters

21:29 13 Sep 2009. Updated: 13:10 11 Dec 2009

Rain delays over the last few days mean that the US Open men’s final isn’t until tomorrow, with the men’s semifinals and women’s final today. Those three matches produced some excellent tennis, although none of them were particularly close.
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US Open 2009 Midpoint Notes

09:29 07 Sep 2009

The biggest story so far is Andy Roddick getting knocked out by John Isner in a battle of big servers. I was somewhat surprised, as I’d thought that Roddick would do well, and that he was a likely semifinalist. But in coming up against another big server in a five-set match in New York, he had to face a final set tiebreak against someone he didn’t have a serving advantage against. Isner took it with a single point against the Roddick serve and without losing any on his own serve, 7–5.
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There’s No ‘t’ in ‘Wimbledon’

23:16 06 Jul 2009

I tried listening to this podcast by Bill Simmons and Jon Wertheim, but Simmons’ pronunciation drove me nuts. I actually like some of his writing, but listening to him proved incredibly irritating.

If you don’t follow tennis, well, you might not know how it’s pronounced, fine. There’s nothing wrong with that. We all screw up pronunciations of unfamiliar and foreign words, and clearly something about American placenames pushes Americans to devoice that consonant. No problem.

Wimbledon has a “d” in it. No “t”. Not all Americans pronounce it with a “t”—Wertheim pronounced it properly without difficulty—but I’ve only ever heard Americans do this. Simmons doing it in this podcast was all the more annoying because he was talking to someone who was pronouncing it correctly.

If you’re a major sports journalist talking about it, and you’re talking to another sports journalist who’s pronouncing it correctly, what the fuck is your excuse? Either Simmons is unbelievably oblivious, or he’s doing it on purpose as some kind of schtick—which would be even worse. Deliberately pronouncing it the wrong way to show that you’re “a common man” who doesn’t have any truck with the educated types and their high-falutin’ ways of talking is just horrible. See, for example, “nucular”.

I don’t know if Simmons is actually doing it on purpose, but what, nobody ever took him aside and said, “look, Bill, it’s ‘Wimbledon’”?

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