Truths, Lies and Tennis Statistics / Matthew Walton / 12 September 2008 /

We all know that any player on the ATP Tour can beat any other on "Any Given Sunday" but which players consistently beat the world's Top 10, asks "Magical" Matthew Walton.

The fundamental basis of any bet on any sport is the assessment of one player (or horse, rider, team, country etc) compared to another.

There is a requirement to create a ranking list which puts each competitor, whether an individual or a team, into some sort of pecking order - which then allows a better understanding of their respective chances (and so their market value and betting potential etc).

We may not create this list as a hard copy but mentally we're always thinking 'he's better than him, but not quite as good as he is' or 'they lost this but won that so they really should be better than them'. Might sound like a bit of a jumble but it's what we all do, consciously or sub-consciously, as we scan our eyes down any betting market on Betfair.

The key is to find statistics, performance data and evidence which turns this often haphazard and random process into a calculated, scientific study. This will surely create more consistent and, we would argue, better results.

When it comes to tennis, in our previous articles we've highlighted many such methods of 'calibrating' players. Well, here's another useful tool for assessing the true ability of any given player.

We're looking at the win-loss record of players against each other and, more specifically, against other players ranked in the top ten. Given the view that any player can beat a bad player, a much better way of sorting the wheat from the chaff is to see how they do against the very best players.

After all, as they say, you often learn more in defeat than in victory. If one guy beats the world's 232nd ranked player something like 7-5 6-3 and another beats him 6-2 7-6 what do we learn from that? Precious little. We surely find out more when they both play top ten players and one loses 1-6 7-6 4-6 whilst the other bombs out 2-6 3-6. Or one actually wins when the other loses. This is a much more accurate gauge of their respective abilities.

And, of course, over time they play more and more top players and so we see a pattern emerging as their win-loss records become greater in terms of number and significance.

Here's a few statistics to highlight the point. In the current top ten of the ATP rankings, which player(s) have a positive win-loss record against other top ten players?

Federer (69%) and Nadal (68%) are the only players to post a higher than 50% record against fellow top-tenners throughout their career to date. Of the rest, they come in at - Murray (48%), Nalbandian (43%), Gonzalez (38%), Ferrer & Roddick (36%), Djokovic (35%), Wawrinka (31%) and Davydenko (29%).

And, of course, if you want to be a top player - by gaining lots of ranking points and winning numerous tournaments - you're only going to do so by beating other top players as you get into the latter stages of events. If you don't then your stay in the game's elite will be brief.

Guys such as Ivan Ljubicic (1-3, 25%), Tomas Berdych (1-4, 20%) and Lleyton Hewitt (0-5, 0%) are examples of players whose decline we can track through 2008 as their record against the top ten steadily declines. The same three players back in 2006 had percentages of 41%, 38% and 50% respectively against top ten opponents.

Furthermore we can gauge players' improvement by the same token as Andy Murray, for example, was 4-4 (50%) in 2006, down to 5-6 (45%) in an injury hit 2007 but so far this year the Scot is 8-6 (57%) against players in the world's top ten.

Now you might well argue that such findings are self-fulfilling prophecies. Top ranked players do well against other top ranked players ... that's why they're top ranked players in the first place. And, vice-versa, bad players are bad players because they can only beat other bad players.

Well, to a point that's true. But the real point of this discussion is to be able to learn more about player than the bare facts of his ranking tell us.

Take Juan Martin Del Potro. Recent four-time tournament winner, the first man ever to win his first four titles back-to-back. What's his record against the top ten in 2008? That would be a fair barometer of his current standing in the game. It's 1-4 (20%). And many people had the world No.13 down as the winner when he played Murray in the QF's at Flushing Meadow.

Such statistics put his achievements into context - i.e. he didn't beat much to win his four titles (as good as that feat was).

And we're not just concerned with splitting hairs between the world's best players. Will Ferrer beat Wawrinka or will Wawrinka beat Ferrer. The same logic works further down the foodchain when we consider matches between players, say, ranked 75th in the world and 76th.

In this instance, you can even broaden the study to take in their records against the world's top 50 (because being this low in the rankings would suggest they don't get far enough in events to play the top players all that often). As such, this will give you representative sample of data on which to base an assessment of their relative claims to win a match.

We have Oscar Hernandez (75th) against Igor Kunitsyn (76th), two players you might not be overly familiar with. Against the world's top 50 this year we have Hernandez at 2-11 (15%) but Kunitsyn is 3-5 (37%).

Ok, not something on which to re-mortgage your house and load the lot into your Betfair account but it is just another small way to assess two players ability - and two players you might know little about to begin with.

So what we have here is a different method to approach the tricky subject of match betting analysis. We already have head-to-head results, surface records, tournament history, recent form, all the usual channels but this 'top ten test' is another layer of analysis which should help your trading on Betfair.

The data is readily available and there for YOU to benefit from.

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