Your Call, 3.1
***
By Rosangel Valenti, TW Contributing Editor
Hi everyone. Congratulations to yesterday's winners Venus Williams, Nicolas Almagro and Novak Djokovic. I must admit, I'm enjoying a day without much by way of high-level tennis going on, though I see that Mardy Fish will be taking on Evgeny Korolev in the title match in Delray Beach later today. Please use this space to discuss this and any other tennis-related matters.
I started to reflect on the posts that Pete and Andrew have made in the past two days, concerning the usefulness (or otherwise) of statistics in interpreting tennis matches, or matchups, and was originally intending to post here with my own take on the statistical issues at hand. But I find that I'm too much in agreement with both of them to add a whole lot to the debate. Of course, I'm among those who likes to review statistics, though I always think that the most important thing interpreting them is to be aware of their limitations - i.e. what they can't tell us. I think this is what Andrew means when he says that they can be useful when applied judiciously. For example, they can't tell us what will happen in the next match between the same two players, or what any player was thinking when he or she was putting away a decisive winner on a crucial break point against an opponent, or serving a double fault at match point down, as occurred to Fernando Verdasco in the Australian Open semifinal.
Of course, statistics can help in interpreting patterns of play, and looking at those patterns gives us some pretty strong signals regarding players' relative strengths, or choices made, in a matchup. Sometimes the differences are overwhelming (does anyone seriously believe that Florent Serra has the weapons to beat a reasonably in-form Rafael Nadal, for example?); at the other extreme, the margins of difference may not be significant at all, statistically speaking. After all, the way scoring works in tennis means that after a set is over, the score starts again at zero, at least until that set is over. I think the reason that so many of us love five-setters is that there's the chance for this specific narrative to play out over extra, crucial time, with each player being stretched to the limits, physically and mentally, after both have climbed a mountain already in simply reaching that decisive fifth. The specific scoring method also means that the winner can get bagelled and still come through, as did Novak Djokovic against Richard Gasquet during their (three-set) final in Estoril back in 2007.
However, once a match is over, it's over - previous patterns are not automatic predictors of the future, because we're dealing with human beings, people who can and do make voluntary changes. I've often said that the reason that I'm such a big fan of tennis is that it's a game of character. Specifically, of individual characters pitting themselves against each other - mentally, technically, strategically, physically and, in tight moments, emotionally. However, the one thing we, as observers, can't obtain after the match is over is a readout of each player's thoughts as it progressed. We may get some of their thoughts from post-match interviews, but ultimately we only get what they choose to show us or tell us. There's an information gap, which we fill in as best we can, though assumptions made about any given moment may be wrong. How many times have we seen a great champion go to serve out a match, and stride confidently to the baseline, all the body language saying that he or she intends to finish it off in short order? However, can we really know what the player is feeling, especially when it's happening with something huge at stake, and with a dangerous opponent across the net?
I think that maybe the reason that sometimes our discussions in TW can get awkward, when thinking about the outcomes of key matches, is that in tight encounters, often the final score may rest not only on technical abilities but on aspects of character, and what happens on big points, which may become turning-points. It's a one-on-one thing, which also makes it...well, personal, in a sense, when comparisons are made. It's sometimes tempting to articulate what we may see as home truths, especially for the player who lost. Yet many of us like to choose someone to root for, and become very involved in their outcomes, and while we may hope that he or she is a good guy or girl, those judgments are sometimes a little painful to absorb. They may be wrong, of course, because they are often based upon conjecture, which means that defensiveness (or at least, rigorously presenting a different point of view) in these situations isn't always irrational. When fans are feeling emotional, perhaps it's just easier to discuss technical questions than it is to discuss character, which is something we probably want to feel good about.
Some of us definitely relate to the known headcases, but usually the difficult discussions are not about those players. And after all, it's not as though those most likely targets of such a discussion, which tend to be the higher-ranked players on either the men's or the women's tour, haven't shown considerable character already in just getting to where they are. It doesn't make their characters (and I include their off-court decision-making in this, which so often feeds into outcomes, past and future) any less fascinating to try to analyse, though.
Enjoy the rest of the tennis. Pete will be back tomorrow.