Australian Championship 2022

"Most of the analytics with Novak, but the GOAT discussion is inherently problematic"

In the shadow of Djokovic's removal from Australia, Jeff Sakman - one of the network's top tennis researchers - analyzes the race numbers between the Serbian, Federer Vandal: "The gaps are so small that it feels wrong to put one ahead of the others."

And also: on the difficulty of discussion and argument in favor of each of the trio members

Ariel Cohen

16/01/2022

Sunday, 16 January 2022, 13:30 Updated: 15:02

• Share on Facebook

• Share on WhatsApp

• Share on Twitter

• Share on Email

• Share on general

• Comments

  Comments

Jeff Sackman was very fond of tennis as a child.

It was even the main sport he played, until baseball became the leader in the category.

Over the years, he also built a business around baseball analytics and research, but when he started looking for a database that would allow him to do exactly the same thing for tennis, he came across a very high wall.

In an age where data and analytics are integral tools in every major sport, most tennis enthusiasts are only exposed to statistics when they step on the screen at the end of sets or games.

Those who want to take love a step further and become analysts themselves, face a decentralized industry in which governing bodies (federations, rounds, tournaments) collect more and more information through technology systems (the Hockey among others), but do not allow the general public full access to data .

More articles and content about the big 3, and about tennis in general, are waiting for you on the Tennis360 website

More on Walla!

Djokovic "makes the decision", his father continues to incite.

Nadal the Great "Earner"?

To the full article

20 is the number.

Is there a difference? (Photo: Photo Processing: Doron Shiner)

This was just one of the reasons why Sakman founded Tennis abstract, a site that over the years has become a kind of bible for tennis mice that will find research, detailed statistics, alternative ratings, and also a wonderful blog and podcast through which the content is mediated to the audience. project - A huge Sisyphean project in which dozens of volunteers manually tagged about 10,000 tennis games - point after point, punch after punch - in order to solve the structural distress and independently create a database through which analysts, fans and professionals are updated, and even conduct research and comparisons themselves ( Those who are interested in getting an idea of ​​the scope of the possible data and segmentation provided by the project - here).

When Sakman is asked if the stars of the show themselves also use data that can be super meaningful to them more than any other factor, he replies in the story. "I once had a conversation with a tennis player who plays in Challenger competitions," he says. "He told me he was using the first set to decipher the opponent's serving patterns, and my first thought was - why wait for the second set? Most likely your opponent will not come up with new templates for the game in front of you but will use the ones he used yesterday and a week ago. "

"So, and although it's hard to know for sure, at this point I have to assume that if players make use of analytics, it's mostly very basic data," Sackman continues.

"In the moments when they did allow us to peek in as spectators - coaching sessions with players in WTA tournaments or live conversations between a coach and a player in NextGen - you hear mostly general statements like 'Come on,' 'Be aggressive,' 'Be ready with your feet. .

"As a fan you will not convince me that he is not the greatest of them all."

Federer (Photo: GettyImages, Cameron Spencer)

And here we come to the three elephants in the room. Or falls in the above case. Is it possible to have a conversation about tennis, to conduct an interview, without referring to Federer, Nadal and Djokovic? abstract includes over 100 chapters, all in a distinct analytical-research hue, all composed of burrows in statistics.

"How to ignore Twitter arguments is a good question, whether it concerns the GOAT debate or any other matter," he smiles. "I think if your mind is oriented to analytics, you pretty much ignore the background noise. You know that not everything has to respond and not with everything to argue. What's more, there are positive points in this discussion. I personally know some Djokovic fans who do detailed work to establish the case. "Smooth good work, the rest may be biased, but great to me that it happens. There is more research on this trio of players than on any other tennis player in history, and if arguments on Twitter cause people to research, learn code languages, and analyze data - it's wonderful."

"I just feel that the problem with this discussion is that even when it comes from an analytical place people tend to start it from the final conclusion," Sackman adds.

"We all have some tendency, something emotional that comes from the stomach. I see tennis enough years, and on an emotional level, as a fan, I think you can never convince me that Roger Federer is not the GOAT. You can always bring numbers that will say no, but somewhere in the heart Mine, deep inside me, it's clear to me that he is. Intellectually, I'm pretty sure that Djokovic is leading the race right now. I've also published articles on the subject. "".

There is not one point to his credit - there are several.

Djokovic (Photo: Reuters)

There is something in the argument that this is an argument that for most of us starts from the end. So in the absence of an agreed-upon finish line, and in light of the fact that for each of Federer, Nadal and Djokovic a thick data case can be constructed that testifies to their historical greatness, whether there is a statistic or achievement, which somehow does not speak enough, and is worth dwelling on or mentioning again ? Sakman provides his point of view for each of the trio members.

"One thing I would attribute to Federer and that may not stand out enough is that even though he has never been the best clay player in the world, for a long time he was definitely the second. "Another thing, I would repeatedly linger over the longevity of his career. Federer has a lot of weighted achievements that I think none of the current competitors will be able to achieve. The total number of degrees he has won, for example."

As for Djokovic, there is not a single point to be credited to him. There are several. First of all, most of the analytical arguments will go to him, but beyond counting wins in slams or Masters tournaments, one has to talk about the era he won them, and it was harder. Delve deeper into analytics, so we put more weight on the competition facing players in real time (using tools like ELO for example), and at least for me Novak's 20 slams should be worth more than Rafa and Roger's 20, maybe only 5 or 10 percent "But they're more equal. It's just math."

Want more?

Click here to read the second part of the interview with Jeff Sackman

So good on clay, that it's hard to measure.

Nadal (Photo: GettyImages, Darrian Traynor)

And what about the Spanish bull? "With Nadal, it's a little tricky," Sackman explains. "Putting it before Federer is one thing, a little harder to produce an argument that puts it before Djokovic in my opinion. If there is such a case for Rafa, I would say it may be so good on clay that it's hard to even measure it. I like to use it. In this analogy: Let's say Kevin Durant comes to play with your friends in the neighborhood. He'll score over 100 points and make a basket whenever he feels like it, right? "It will not tell you how smart you are, but at least how smart you are. But what if you're more than that?"

"Nadal has won everything on clay for so many years, and I feel like maybe we do not really know how good he is on this surface. It's an argument I have a hard time refining one decisive sentence, but if I tried I would say it like this: Rafa was, and maybe still is,"So good on clay that the numbers can't catch it at all."

"From my experience," Sackman concludes the subject, and the entire interview, "wherever we go it will always go back to 1A, 1B and 1C. This trio is so good that it just feels wrong to put either of them behind the other two. I even recorded. "Once a podcast that shows that you can argue for two hours about who the GOAT is, so maybe we should stop here."

• sport

• tennis

Tags

• Novak Djokovic

• Raphael Nadal

• Roger Federer