PacLife CC/Scout Report - Day 12

By TennisWorld Contributing Editor Andrew Burton

Morning, all.

Crunch time.

Two ATP Singles SFs today, and with due respect to Messrs Fish and Federer, the more highly anticipated match is the first SF, Djokovic-Nadal.  This is, of course, a rematch of last year's final: I'll have more to say later on about my thoughts on the likely outcome, but for now I want to explore two inter-related themes: consistency and confidence.

A little etymology: both words are of Latin origin.  Consistent comes from consist, 1526, from L. consistere "to stand firm," from com- "together" + sistere "to place," caus. of stare "to be standing."  Its companion, confident, appears slightly earlier, c.1430, from L. confidentia, from confidentem, prp. of confidere, from com- intens. prefix + fidere "to trust."  Both extracts above are from the Online Etymology Dictionary.

Standing firm, and acting faithfully: pretty good attributes.  Let's take a quick look at consistency.  In the last four GS tournaments, our current Big 3 - Djokovic, Nadal and Federer - have a combined 11 out of 12 SF places, with only a US Open R16 defeat of Nadal by Ferrer breaking the string.

And in the 9 most recent Masters tournaments, including the current one, the three men have reached the SF stage 16 times: Federer 6, Nadal 6, and Djokovic 4 times.  In two tournaments, Nadal and Djokovic met at the QF stage (Miami and Rome, 1-1): the distance between the Big 3 and number 5 on the ATP Rankings is more than 2000 points, so this isn't likely to happen again for a while.

So the Big 3 are pretty consistent in getting to the SF and beyond.  One consequence of this is that they're sucking ranking points away from their brethren in the top ten.  Compare what it took to get into the top 10 in March 2007 with what it takes now.

Statistics aside, we're witnessing, I think, a classic positive feedback loop, or virtuous circle: confidence begets, consistency, which begets confidence, and so on.  You can play a chicken-and-egg game with consistency and confidence: if you put a gun against my head, I'd probably say confidence comes first, but of course your mileage may vary.

As posters on this site have noted, the Lord seems to have handed out an abundance of confidence to Novak Djokovic.  Neither Roger Federer nor Rafael Nadal are shrinking violets, of course, but they seem to have a quieter self-confidence.  Djokovic wears his self-confidence like a well cut handmade suit: he looks good in it, and if you think it's a bit flashy or (whisper it) nouveau-riche, he doesn't give a fig.  I think Grant had it right when he talked about the effect Djokovic and his entourage have on people - you feel a little bit like a club member, cognac glass in hand, muttering "who let those people in?"

At his press conference after beating Wawrinka, Djokovic talked about how much more experienced he is a year on from his final in Indian Wells.  His confidence, of course, is backed up by results: when he came to IW last year, he had no victories over the then-Big 2.  Since then he's 4-5, 2-1 against Federer and 2-4 against Nadal.  Two defeats to Nadal, Rome and RG, were straight sets losses on clay; there was a SF retirement at Wimbledon, and a loss in Shanghai when the Serb was running on fumes.  His two victories were HC Masters matches in Miami and Montreal.

Last year I had Djokovic a 35%-65% underdog going into the IW final.  This year, I think the probabilities have flipped.  Nadal is coming off two hard fought 3 setters: I don't see Djokovic being nervous as he was last year.  I'm by no means writing Nadal off - it would be ludicrous to do this.  His defense against Tsonga and Blake was out of this world, as was his ability to seize the moment at the death against both opponents.  But on balance, today I see Djokovic just has an edge in confidence and consistency, so I'll go 65%-35% with the younger man.

Federer has cruised so far, dropping serve only once: none of his opponents have taken 5 games in a set off him.  You can read Pete's post this morning to get a feel for Mardy Fish's consistency and level of confidence: my one thought is that the gentleman probably feels like he's playing with house money, and has nothing to lose by going big on every point.

You never know.  Fish does have a chance today, if he plays out of his skull, and his opponent has other things on his mind.  But if you asked me, I'd describe Mardy Fish as a lesser version of Andy Roddick: Fish is 1-7 against his compatriot, his only win coming in their first meeting in 2003.  And Federer is 15-1 against Roddick, and 5-0 against Fish.  Long odds on an upset, I think.

Briefly, I'll just mention that I bumped into three guys from Hawkeye about twenty minutes ago, which led to a ten minute conversation about their work.  I'll try to follow up on this later, and see if I can do some reporting on the system as it's used for tennis.  As a stats geek, I'm all over this stuff.

Well our first two gladiators will be out in a few minutes.  Enjoy today's tennis!