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Relative inexperience is no barrier to making Grand Slam finals

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"Magical" Matthew Walton tells us why you don't need to have racked up numerous ATP titles to be at the business end of a Grand Slam

When faced with the study of Grand Slams we're naturally dealing with the 'blue riband' events of the ATP tour. The best players in competition, over the longest matches and the most rounds, often in gruelling conditions - all with the aim of landing the biggest titles the sport has to offer.

The natural assumption, therefore, is that the best and most experienced players always win. After all, shouldn't the cream rise to the top given such testing circumstances?

Most recent memory would bear this theory out as Rafael Nadal cleans up on the clay of Roland Garros and Roger Federer mops up the titles pretty much everywhere else.

That said, every winner needs to start somewhere. Despite winning 14 Grand Slam titles, Pete Sampras had to get off the mark at some point (as he did in the US Open of 1990).

The question, however, is how much experience Sampras had before he won this maiden Slam. Was he, like many other major winners, already a seasoned tour pro with numerous titles under his belt? And, if so, do we then have to draw a line through this year's young pretenders such as Andy Murray, Richard Gasquet and Novak Djokovic?

We endeavour to find out.

The table below shows the number of ATP tournaments the last 20 different Grand Slam winners had won before they landed their first 'big one'. This takes in all four Slams and covers the past 12 years.

The surprise is that 'No' you don't need masses of winning tournament experience to land a Grand Slam title.

For sure, we now recognise Pat Rafter, Boris Becker and Pete Sampras as household names but when they landed their first major titles they were hardly prolific tour winners - Becker was barely out of short trousers, literally, before he won at SW19 in 1985.

In fact the more interesting fact on the basis of these findings is that Roger Federer took so long to get off the mark - a rather high figure of 8 regular tour titles before he won the Wimbledon title in 2003. Andre Agassis took an age, 15 career titles before he won the first of his eight Slams (Wimbledon 1992).

Such findings offer more than a little hope to the aspiring Grand Slam winners who will assemble in Melbourne for the first major event of the year. Players don't need to serve their apprenticeship, requiring a dozen career wins under their belts, before they can be considered as realistic contenders. The young guns can console themselves with the knowledge that players have won with relatively little winning experience on the ATP tour.

And although these figures deal solely with Grand Slam winners, the same applies when you look at the runners-up in these tournaments.

Take the likes of Marcos Baghdatis (2006), Rainer Schuettler (2003) and Arnaud Clement (2001) in Australia or Martin Verkerk (2003) and Mariano Puerta (2005) in Paris, David Nalbandian (2002) at Wimbledon and arguably Novak Djokovic (2007) in New York - all of them could be considered as novices in terms of the number of career titles they had won before making these respective finals. Djokovic was the highest, at the time, with 5 career wins.

Now you might think that a few scattered examples doesn't represent a huge sample from which to draw conclusions but remember there are only four Grand Slams per year and the seven players above represent a 'novice' finalist in 25% of the Grand Slams in the last 7 years. It bears some interest on account of this figure.

Turning this analysis onto this year's Slams and it does suggest that a Murray, Gasquet or a Ferrer will be capable of making a run to the final (if not the title itself). Make use of this fact when you're working the exchanges during the next few days.

In summary, the answer has to be a 'Yes' that experience does seem to be the starting point for study when it comes to the Slams but a total ignorance of the newcomers on the scene is potentially a missed opportunity.

All will be revealed over the next fortnight at Melbourne Park.