Grand Slams - Taking An Early Bath Leads To the Sweet Smell Of Success

Truths, Lies and Tennis Statistics / Matthew Walton / 05 September 2007 / Leave a Comment

"Magical" Matthew Walton considers who is likely to win events the week after Grand Slams

There are stages of the season which have their own unique pattern of form - the early Australasian events, the European clay-court swing, the Grand Slams themselves and so on.

Finding ways of spotting this form, and using it to your own benefit, can give you a significant leg-up on our betting adversaries.

So it's timely, as the dust settles on another Roger Federer win at Flushing Meadows, to look at tournament form in the week following Grand Slam events. This, too, has its own characteristics which known and understood will aid your dealings on the exchanges.

To get a representative sample we started with the US Open from 2005, then took all four Slams from 2006 and the first three from this year, 2007. The result is two full years of form to study, consisting of 20 tournaments (those listed below for two consecutive years).

Australian Open: Vina Del Mar, Delray Beach & Zagreb (2006 & 2007)

French Open: Halle & Queen's (2006 & 2007)

Wimbledon: Gstaad, Newport & Bastad (2006 & 2007)

US Open: Beijing & Bucharest (2005 & 2006)

But before we reveal our findings, there are two important issues to address - one of which is obvious, the other less so.

The first point is simply that the best players don't tend to play the week after Grand Slam events.

In this sample period, the eight weeks following eight Grand Slam events, compromising a possible 20 events, Roger Federer has played one tournament (won Halle '06) and Rafael Nadal has played just three times (won Beijing '05, lost twice at Queen's).

Secondly, Grand Slams tend to mark the end of a particular 'mini-season'. For example, after the French Open there are no clay events and post-Wimbledon just one of the three tournaments (Newport) is on grass. Hence you might well expect different players to do well the week after Grand Slams because they're playing on different surfaces. Not always the case but well worthy of note.

Taking these 20 events we find some interesting statistics. Of the 20 winners the week after a Grand Slam, here's how those players did in the preceding Slam :-

Lost in R1 = 7
Lost in R2 = 7
Lost in R3 = 1
Lost in R4 = 3
Lost in QF's = 1
Lost in SF's = 0
Lost in Final = 1
Won the Final = 0

What we find is 70% (14 of 20) lost in either of the first two rounds of the Grand Slam. Not, in itself, unsurprising. You could argue that these guys, who lose early, have 10 free days to go off and prepare for the next event whilst the rest stay to carry on. In short, they get a head start in terms of rest and preparation.

However, the interesting fact is of those 20 winners, 17 were seeded. We had - number of winners in brackets - No.1 (3), No.2 (4), No.3 (3), No.4 (3), No.5 (2), No.7 (1) and No.8 (1).

And it's not as if these players lost early in the Slams because they were bad players, otherwise they wouldn't be seeded for these events. These 20 winners include Baghdatis (twice), Roddick, Ferrer, Haas, Hewitt, Gasquet, Robredo, Mathieu, Malisse etc.

In fact, this winning percentage for seeded players in these particular events, 85% (17 of 20), is actually higher than the average across the whole year. The seeds actually do better the week after Slams!

Therefore, in studying the form for events following Grand Slams take on board the fact that the winner is more than likely to have lost early at the preceding major but is mostly likely to be a seed for the event in question.

Certain players do occur more often than others on the stats, so this week it's worth looking to the likes of Marcos Baghdatis in Beijing along with Filippo Volandri in Bucharest. Both fit the profile of players who should be followed and early exchange prices of around 5.5 for Baghdatis represent fair value in events which, as we've seen, usually fall to a player with his characteristics.