In this ATP Tour Stats Case study we look at which ATP players are going to progress and which are going to regress in 2019?
Tennis is a game of fine margins, for example a tennis match can be lost even if you win more points than your opponent and conversely its possible to win a match even if you lose more than half of all points played. You could see a match where one player is on top but can’t take a break point to save his life and he then goes onto lose the match.
I look for matches like this over the course of the season when assessing progression & regression as they throw up lucky winners who will be over-rated and, on the flipside, unlucky losers who will be underrated by the market.
Lucky Winners 2018 (players who won the match despite winning 50% or less of all points)
Adrian Mannarino 5 times
Benoit Paire 4 times
Daniil Medvedev 4 times
Fabio Fognini 4 times
Feliciano Lopez 4 times
Francis Tiafoe 6 times
Grigor Dimitrov 4 times
Guido Pella 5 times
Laslo Djere 4 times
Malek Jaziri 5 times
Marco Cecchinato 4 times
Martin Klizan 4 times
Nick Kyrgios 6 times
Nicolas Jarry 7 times
Nikoloz Basilashvili 5 times
Pierre Herbert 4 times
Robin Haase 7 times
Taylor Fritz 4 times
As we can see Jarry, Haase, Kyrgios & Tiafoe all excelled at seeing out fluky wins or were they just being supremely clutch? In the case of Jarry & Kyrgios then in my opinion their serve digs them out of a lot of holes. Tiafoe is still young and has masses of potential but his appearance on this list five times tells me he still goes to sleep and lets his mind wonder during matches too often, he regularly dumps easy forehands into the net as anyone who has watched him will frustratingly know.
Let’s now have a look at who was constantly on the receiving end of these bad beats.
Unlucky Losers 2018 (players who lost the match despite winning 50% or more of all points)
Alexander Zverev 4 times
Aljaz Bedene 4 times
Denis Istomin 4 times
Denis Shapovalov 4 times
Dominic Thiem 4 times
Fernando Verdasco 4 times
Gael Monfils 4 times
Guido Pella 5 times
Jack Sock 5 times
Joao Sousa 4 times
John Isner 6 times
Kevin Anderson 4 times
Mackenzie Mcdonald 4 times
Marin Cilic 6 times
Marton Fucsovics 4 times
Matteo Berettini 4 times
Radu Albot 4 times
Roberto Bautista Agut 4 times
Sam Querrey 6 times
Tomas Berdych 4 times.
Isner’s lack of a return game is the reason why he suffers so many bad beats as his serve can only take him so far, it’s the nature of the beast really. Cilic & Querrey are two of the finest chokers on the list and they just love throwing away matches they should be winning.
To get a fuller picture of positive progression and negative regression I also like to look at who is over performing & under performing in momentum changing points of the match like break points for example.
The 2018 ATP mean for the TOP 50 players in BP conversion is 40.6%. These are the following players who are exceeding expectations.
Player M BPConv%
David Goffin 44 46.30%
Gael Monfils 49 46.10%
Rafael Nadal 49 45.80%
Malek Jaziri 53 45.00%
Martin Klizan 50 44.40%
Borna Coric 59 44.20%
Fabio Fognini 68 44.10%
The 2018 ATP mean for the TOP 50 players in BP saved is 62%. These are the following players who are exceeding expectations.
Player M BPSvd%
Rafael Nadal 49 70.30%
Steve Johnson 51 69.90%
John Isner 56 69.00%
Roger Federer 58 68.40%
Nick Kyrgios 38 67.60%
Karen Khachanov 66 66.30%
The next two tables will show us who is under-performing or just plain choking.
The 2018 ATP mean for the TOP 50 players in BP conversion is 40.6%. These are the following players who are well below expectation.
Steve Johnson 51 36.50%
Joao Sousa 59 36.40%
Jeremy Chardy 48 36.10%
Grigor Dimitrov 43 35.80%
Kevin Anderson 66 35.40%
John Isner 56 27.60%
The 2018 ATP mean for the TOP 50 players in BP saved is 62%. These are the following players who are well below expectation.
Alexander Zverev 77 57.50%
Richard Gasquet 57 57.10%
Joao Sousa 59 55.20%
Damir Dzumhur 56 55.10%
The last area I look at is tie-breaks and to see who is once again over performing and underperforming in these key areas of a match.
The following players won over 70% of their tie-breaks in 2018
Martin Klizan 50 19 78.90%
Kei Nishikori 64 22 77.30%
Alexander Zverev 77 23 73.90%
Taylor Harry Fritz 49 28 71.40%
The following players lost 60% and over of all tie-breaks they played in 2018.
Denis Shapovalov 63 30 40.00%
Roberto Bautista Agut 53 26 38.50%
Borna Coric 59 21 38.10%
Diego Schwartzman 58 15 33.30%
Fernando Verdasco 61 25 32.00%
So, how do we go about putting all this data together you may ask, well crudely we could see whose name pops up on each list.
Straight away we seen Klizan on the lucky winners list then on the break-point saved list exceeding expectations and finally on the tie-break list performing well over the mean. He is a great example of a player who should potentially show negative regression to the mean. So, we can look to oppose him in 2019 at some low-level events where he will be starting at heavy odds on.
Similar comments apply to Jaziri as he had 5 lucky wins and over exceeded on BP conversions in 2018, so I’ll be looking at opposing him in certain scenarios next season when priced odds on as reversion to the mean looks likely to bite.
Other players I think who could regress to the mean in 2019 are Fritz, Mannarino & Haase and we can look at taking those three players on in 250 events.
So, who are the players we could see progress in 2019?
The Portuguese world number 44 Joao Sousa is a prime candidate for some positive regression to the mean, he lost a number of tight matches he could have won and severely under performed taking and saving break-points, any reversion to the mean will see him notch a few more wins and he is a player we need to seriously consider in low level 250 events as he gets himself back inside the world’s top 40.
I also believe Canadian wonder-kid Denis Shapovalov will get a kinder rub of the green this season and he can secure himself inside the Top 20. I also think Alexander Zverev will consolidate his top 4 world ranking and could quite easily make the leap into the top 3 or higher. Pay special attention to him on the clay as I believe he is slightly under-rated on the surface, especially when playing the top players, he only lost 3 times on the dirt last season from 23 matches with Nadal, Thiem & Nishikori the only players to beat him and even then, he took all three of those losses to 3 sets.
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