Roland Garros 1998 + m.p. stats

Posted on November 21, 2012 by Voo de Mar
After three days, the tournament was already deprived of the best players of the 90s: Pete Sampras (his last reasonable chance to conquer Paris) and Andre Agassi. Former champion Thomas Muster wasn’t a serious threat on his beloved clay-courts anymore, it opened up the best opportunity for Marcelo Rios to get his maiden major title. He was a huge favorite, however, it was a time of Spanish emergence as a new tennis power. Spaniards had good players over 70s and 80s, but never so many in such a short period of time like in the late 90s; three of them advanced to semifinals at Roland Garros ’98 and Carlos Moya was the one who gained mastery among them. It was a tournament in which 18-year-old Marat Safin showed his tremendous potential for the first time. Read more…  
Here is the list of distinctive, retired players born in the 70s and their m.p. records (I’ve also included Marat Safin – the first player born in the 80s who emerged as a real deal in the 90s), I think you should adopt a +/- 2/2 error for players born before 1975 and a +/- 1/1 error for those who were born since ’75. At least seven matches of this type required.
(.888) 16-2 Nicolas Lapentti; (.818) 9-2 Marcelo Rios
(.750) 9-3 Jan-Michael Gambill; (.714) 10-4 Hicham Arazi; (.705) 12-5 Vincent Spadea; (.700) 7-3 Magnus Norman;
(.666) 12-6 Yevgeny Kafelnikov; (.666) 10-5 Alex Corretja; (.636) 7-4 Jiri Novak, Sjeng Schalken; (.647) 11-6 Todd Martin; (.625) 5-3 Younes El Aynaoui, Sargis Sargsian, Stefan Koubek; (.600) 15-10 Pete Sampras; (.600) 6-4 Nicolas Kiefer;
(.588) 10-7 Andre Agassi; (.583) 7-5 Patrick Rafter; (.578) 11-8 Michael Chang, Wayne Ferreira; (.576) 15-11 Tim Henman; (.571) 16-12 Goran Ivanisevic; (.571) 8-6 Paradorn Srichaphan; (.571) 4-3 Sergi Bruguera, Alberto Martin; (.565) 13-10 Carlos Moya; (.555) 5-4 Karol Kucera; (.545) 6-5 Guillermo Canas, Davide Sanguinetti; (.538) 7-6 Kenneth Carlsen, Mark Philippoussis; (.533) 16-14 Greg Rusedski; (.533) 8-7 Richard Krajicek, Max Mirnyi; (.529) 9-8 Gustavo Kuerten;
(.500) 11-11 Marat Safin; 10-10 Thomas Enqvist; 9-9 Thomas Johansson; 8-8 Marc Rosset; 7-7 Andrei Medvedev; 5-5 Nicolas Escude, Gaston Gaudio;
(.481) 13-14 Fabrice Santoro; (.466) 7-8 Jonas Bjorkman, Felix Mantilla; (.454) 5-6 Mariano Zabaleta; (.428) 3-4 Fernando Vicente; (.421) 8-11 Sebastien Grosjean; (.416) 5-8 Jason Stoltenberg; (.411) 7-10 Albert Costa;
(.388) 7-11 Jim Courier; (.333) 3-9 Bohdan Ulihrach; (.307) 4-7 Andrei Pavel;
(.250) 3-9 Dominik Hrbaty;
(.000) 0-9 Wayne Arthurs
# Most match points saved in the 90s:
10 – Alberto Martin d. Adrian Voinea 3-6, 6-4, 7-5 (Bucharest ’99)
9 – Albert Costa d. Sjeng Schalken 6-7, 7-6, 6-3 (Barcelona ’96)
9 – Felix Mantilla d. Alberto Berasategui 1-6, 7-6, 7-6 (Hamburg ’98)
9 – Martin Rodriguez d. Guillermo Canas 3-6, 6-3, 7-6 (Santiago ’98)
Comparison with players of the next generation
I needed a couple of years to have a possibility creating such a statistic and I know that making something similar given players born in the 60s or 50s is rather pointless due to the lack of proper database, however, there’s a solid database as far as the best players of the 80s are concerned, so I’m able to show you them with a suggestion to adopt a +/- 2/2 error looking at their records:
(.705) 12-5 Boris Becker; (.666) 4-2 Mats Wilander; (.642) 9-5 Stefan Edberg;(.600) 9-6 Ivan Lendl; (.416) 5-8 John McEnroe
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1 Response to Roland Garros 1998 + m.p. stats

  1. Voo de Mar says:
    November 21, 2012 at 3:19 am

    My remark about the probability of stats like the one above with the lack of solid database…

    I saw through so many activities that I know that if a player for example notched scorelines of this type:
    4-6 6-2 7-6(6) and 2-6 7-6(6) 6-3 and I haven’t got any info about match points saved in those matches, I know there’s 50% chance he won one of them after saving m.p.
    Adequately scorelines:
    4-6 6-2 7-6(7) and 2-6 7-6(7) 6-3, I’m prone to estimate 60% chance “m.p. saved” in one of them
    If in vital sets was a tie-break 10/8, I’d say it increases chances to 70%; 11/9 to 80%; 12/10 to 90%

    I know only two cases when a set was concluded 12/10 and a player who won it, wasn’t forced to save a set(match) point:
    Kiefer vs. Goldstein (Cincy ’99) and Murray vs. Djokovic (US Open ’12)

    So, when you don’t know anything about potential match points saved as you see scorelines
    4-6 6-2 7-6(11) or 2-6 7-6(11) 6-3,
    you can assume that winning those matches without a need to save match points is very improbable.

    Of course scorelines like 2-6 7-5 6-4 or 7-5 1-6 7-6(3) are tricky, I’d intuitively say there’s 10-20% chance that in one of those cases the winner saved m.p.

    Look at Rios’ 9-2:

    Jonsson 6-3 3-6 7-6(7) – ? mp
    Karbacher 4-6 7-6(2) 7-5 – 1 mp
    Nestor 7-6(6) 4-6 7-6(7) – 1 mp
    Zabaleta 6-7(5) 7-5 5-7 7-6(5) 6-2 – 1 mp
    Gumy 6-7(2) 7-6(6) 6-0 – 2 mp
    Pavel 6-3 4-6 7-6(1) – 2 mp
    Ljubicic 6-7(5) 6-3 7-6(1) – 7 mp
    Meligeni 3-6 6-4 7-5 – 2 mp
    D.Sanchez 7-5 4-6 7-6(7) – 1 mp

    Enqvist 6-2 2-6 6-4 3-6 6-7(7) – 1 mp
    M.Norman 6-2 3-6 5-7 – 4 mp

    I’m 100% sure about 4 out of 11 because I saw them. 10 out of 11 are very probable because it’s what I saw and what I read (database). I’m not convinced about the match with Jonsson but I’ve adopted ‘60% of probability’. Therefore you should treat Rios as a guy born in 1975 with a +/- 1/1 error. Maybe it’s 9-3 or 8-2, nonetheless you can be certain he won much more ‘m.p.down’ matches than lost ‘m.p.up’s.

    My m.p.stats considering players born since 1985 is actually 100% accurate due to the sea of database and multitude of streams which allow to follow in 2010s more matches than ever.

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