An interesting note about the 12 men left standing (at Roland-Garros)

Johnsteinbeck

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it's true that the Rafa and Borg are once-a-generation (or less) things, but i think AP might have meant a lower level of "super teenager" as well - the teenage slam winner. think of the late eighties, early nineties - Becker, Chang, Wilander, Sampras. Agassi had the goods to do it, won the Masters Cup equivalent at age 20, Hewitt came close as well, being #1 and winning the USO at barely 20. even Roddick started early-ish.
 

brokenshoelace

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Yeah, the super teenager bit is tricky. A-P is right in that there isn't one on the horizon. The bigger problem is, there doesn't seem to be a teenager with the potential to become great later in his career. For instance, Federer wasn't a "super teenager" in the sense that he wasn't winning slams when he was a teen. But the potential was there and he later developed into a great player. So yeah, these days, the problem isn't simply that there isn't a teenager who isn't having great results now, but that there doesn't seem to be someone with truly elite potential.
 

calitennis127

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I was actually going to make my own post about this, but I did not have the time.

I intended to challenge El Dude's age numbers, but he decided to challenge himself, and I must give him credit for that.

Well-done, El Dude.

This confirms exactly what I have been saying about what the biological science dictates as opposed to social custom. The capacity for physical potential in males remains very high up through the mid-30s range.
 

brokenshoelace

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calitennis127 said:
I was actually going to make my own post about this, but I did not have the time.

I intended to challenge El Dude's age numbers, but he decided to challenge himself, and I must give him credit for that.

Well-done, El Dude.

This confirms exactly what I have been saying about what the biological science dictates as opposed to social custom. The capacity for physical potential in males remains very high up through the mid-30s range.

Of course, this doesn't negate what we've all been saying forever: That while their physical potential can remain very high, they are not at their peaks in their 30's (see Federer's match today).
 

calitennis127

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Broken_Shoelace said:
Of course, this doesn't negate what we've all been saying forever: That while their physical potential can remain very high, they are not at their peaks in their 30's (see Federer's match today).

That may be the case, but the issue to me is about the causes. Is it physical potential, or is it more so social and psychological?

Clearly, it is much more so the latter if you ask me. Federer may be an exception because he played 7 trillion matches in his 20s due to rarely losing - which is causing his knees to be problematic for the slow surface events now - but still, far too much is made of age by all of you.

For crying out loud, John McEnroe said during the 2008 final that "this is probably Roger's last chance at winning the French". That was so ridiculously stupid, but hardly anyone disagreed with him at the time or called him on it afterward when it was disproved over and over - BrokenShoelace included.
 

brokenshoelace

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calitennis127 said:
Broken_Shoelace said:
Of course, this doesn't negate what we've all been saying forever: That while their physical potential can remain very high, they are not at their peaks in their 30's (see Federer's match today).

That may be the case, but the issue to me is about the causes. Is it physical potential, or is it more so social and psychological?

Clearly, it is much more so the latter if you ask me. Federer may be an exception because he played 7 trillion matches in his 20s due to rarely losing - which is causing his knees to be problematic for the slow surface events now - but still, far too much is made of age by all of you.

For crying out loud, John McEnroe said during the 2008 final that "this is probably Roger's last chance at winning the French". That was so ridiculously stupid, but hardly anyone disagreed with him at the time or called him on it afterward when it was disproved over and over - BrokenShoelace included.

I didn't disagree with him back then because I just didn't see how he would ever beat Nadal at RG (something that I was completely right about of course. Not in your view, since Roger can still crush every forehand and beat Nadal in a best of five on clay). I couldn't anticipate Nadal losing in the 4th round the following year and opening the path for Roger. So yeah, Mac's statement was hardly that outrageous.
 

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Broken_Shoelace said:
calitennis127 said:
Broken_Shoelace said:
Of course, this doesn't negate what we've all been saying forever: That while their physical potential can remain very high, they are not at their peaks in their 30's (see Federer's match today).

That may be the case, but the issue to me is about the causes. Is it physical potential, or is it more so social and psychological?

Clearly, it is much more so the latter if you ask me. Federer may be an exception because he played 7 trillion matches in his 20s due to rarely losing - which is causing his knees to be problematic for the slow surface events now - but still, far too much is made of age by all of you.

For crying out loud, John McEnroe said during the 2008 final that "this is probably Roger's last chance at winning the French". That was so ridiculously stupid, but hardly anyone disagreed with him at the time or called him on it afterward when it was disproved over and over - BrokenShoelace included.

I didn't disagree with him back then because I just didn't see how he would ever beat Nadal at RG (something that I was completely right about of course. Not in your view, since Roger can still crush every forehand and beat Nadal in a best of five on clay). I couldn't anticipate Nadal losing in the 4th round the following year and opening the path for Roger. So yeah, Mac's statement was hardly that outrageous.



Never mind that he played his best ever match against Nadal at Roland Garros 3 years later in the 2011 final - a match he was the better player for most of and should have won.

And never mind that the 2011 final came on the heels of what was arguably the best match Federer ever played at the French Open, his semifinal win over Djokovic.
 

brokenshoelace

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calitennis127 said:
Broken_Shoelace said:
calitennis127 said:
Broken_Shoelace said:
Of course, this doesn't negate what we've all been saying forever: That while their physical potential can remain very high, they are not at their peaks in their 30's (see Federer's match today).

That may be the case, but the issue to me is about the causes. Is it physical potential, or is it more so social and psychological?

Clearly, it is much more so the latter if you ask me. Federer may be an exception because he played 7 trillion matches in his 20s due to rarely losing - which is causing his knees to be problematic for the slow surface events now - but still, far too much is made of age by all of you.

For crying out loud, John McEnroe said during the 2008 final that "this is probably Roger's last chance at winning the French". That was so ridiculously stupid, but hardly anyone disagreed with him at the time or called him on it afterward when it was disproved over and over - BrokenShoelace included.

I didn't disagree with him back then because I just didn't see how he would ever beat Nadal at RG (something that I was completely right about of course. Not in your view, since Roger can still crush every forehand and beat Nadal in a best of five on clay). I couldn't anticipate Nadal losing in the 4th round the following year and opening the path for Roger. So yeah, Mac's statement was hardly that outrageous.



Never mind that he played his best ever match against Nadal at Roland Garros 3 years later in the 2011 final - a match he was the better player for most of and should have won.

And never mind that the 2011 final came on the heels of what was arguably the best match Federer ever played at the French Open, his semifinal win over Djokovic.

LOL, both irrelevant arguments.

A) Mac didn't say Federer's last chance "to reach a final." When I agreed with his statement, it was because it's based on the premise of Fed winning the tournament, something I couldn't see him do due to Nadal. Him beating Djokovic is completely irrelevant. The idea was not that he won't be able to play great tennis at the French Open, but winning the tournament, something that back then most of us thought would be dependent on Nadal (and in many ways, it was).

B) So? He played his best match against Nadal and... LOST. Thanks for proving my point. Him being the better player or not is irrelevant when it comes to this particular point. Again, the statement didn't talk about whether Fed would be able to outplay Nadal or not. The premise is beating him. As you know, it takes more than just a racquet to beat someone. After a 6-1 6-3 6-0 drubbing, I just couldn't see Federer recovering from that and beat Nadal again at the FO. Shock and horror, I was right.
 

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Broken_Shoelace said:
calitennis127 said:
Never mind that he played his best ever match against Nadal at Roland Garros 3 years later in the 2011 final - a match he was the better player for most of and should have won.

And never mind that the 2011 final came on the heels of what was arguably the best match Federer ever played at the French Open, his semifinal win over Djokovic.

LOL, both irrelevant arguments.

A) Mac didn't say Federer's last chance "to reach a final." When I agreed with his statement, it was because it's based on the premise of Fed winning the tournament, something I couldn't see him do due to Nadal. Him beating Djokovic is completely irrelevant. The idea was not that he won't be able to play great tennis at the French Open, but winning the tournament, something that back then most of us thought would be dependent on Nadal (and in many ways, it was).

B) So? He played his best match against Nadal and... LOST. Thanks for proving my point. Him being the better player or not is irrelevant when it comes to this particular point. Again, the statement didn't talk about whether Fed would be able to outplay Nadal or not. The premise is beating him. As you know, it takes more than just a racquet to beat someone. After a 6-1 6-3 6-0 drubbing, I just couldn't see Federer recovering from that and beat Nadal again at the FO. Shock and horror, I was right.


I think this is a clear case of your extreme literalism taking over your mind.

First of all, I understand your point about beating Nadal. By 2008, it was clear that Federer probably wasn't going to beat him at the French Open. However, when you are talking about "winning tournaments" - even clay tournaments in the Nadal era - you are not strictly talking about beating one player and one player only. There is always the possibility of someone getting hurt or upset. In Nadal's case, everyone has been harping on his knees since he was 20. There was always the possibility of him getting hurt.

But, more to the point, I think McEnroe's assertion had much more to do with Federer's overall level and potential than you are saying. In other words, I don't think his point was strictly about the Nadal H2H. On count #1, he was obviously proven wrong by 2009-2012; Federer was still among the absolute elite on clay in those years.

As for point #2, I would argue that 2009-2011 (and possibly 2012, though not probably) Federer undoubtedly had the quickness and physical prowess to beat Nadal on clay. He very nearly did just that in the 2011 final. That cannot be denied. So, again, McEnroe's 2008 argument was wrong. He basically said that Federer would no longer have the game to beat Nadal on clay moving forward. In 2011, he most certainly did. The final was played on a very high level and it came down to just a few points here and a few points there. The 2011 Roland Garros final was not the 2013 Rome final - pretty much the opposite actually in important respects.

As for you saying that Federer would not be able to psychologically recover from the 2008 Roland Garros final, well, that was just wrong. Federer beat him in Madrid the next year, won Roland Garros a couple weeks after that, and then Federer went on to make the excellent 2011 run. So, no, he DID recover psychologically from the 2008 final, quite well too, since his best run at the French came after that (2009) and his best match at the French came after that (2011 FO semis).
 

brokenshoelace

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Uh, when I said Federer wouldn't be able to recover, I was specifically referring to Nadal, not that his entire career would go down the toilet, so him winning the FO without playing Nadal is irrelevant to this particular argument. Also LOL @ you bringing up Madrid as evidence being able to psychologically recover against Nadal. Yeah, let's ignore those tiny matches they've played at Wimbledon and AO before that. I never said Federer would never beat Nadal again. Just that, after that point (the 2008 FO final), there would be a major shift, and there was.

Also, sorry, Federer did not very nearly beat Nadal at the 2011 RG final. Are you for real? If he outplayed him in patches, it doesn't mean he nearly beat him. After Nadal broke back in the first set, Federer was never ahead in the entire match. How on earth does that count as "very nearly beating him"? Again, outplaying him is only part of the issue, and again, it takes more than a racquet to beat someone. So again, I was right, since there were just so many things that would have to click for Fed to beat Nadal at RG (execution, strategy, mentality and physicality). They never did.
 

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johnsteinbeck said:
it's true that the Rafa and Borg are once-a-generation (or less) things, but i think AP might have meant a lower level of "super teenager" as well - the teenage slam winner. think of the late eighties, early nineties - Becker, Chang, Wilander, Sampras. Agassi had the goods to do it, won the Masters Cup equivalent at age 20, Hewitt came close as well, being #1 and winning the USO at barely 20. even Roddick started early-ish.

OK, sure, if that's what he meant, then I was interpreting "super teenager" at too high a level.

Broken_Shoelace said:
Yeah, the super teenager bit is tricky. A-P is right in that there isn't one on the horizon. The bigger problem is, there doesn't seem to be a teenager with the potential to become great later in his career. For instance, Federer wasn't a "super teenager" in the sense that he wasn't winning slams when he was a teen. But the potential was there and he later developed into a great player. So yeah, these days, the problem isn't simply that there isn't a teenager who isn't having great results now, but that there doesn't seem to be someone with truly elite potential.

I get your point, but this is also a bit of a hindsight is 20-20 situation: It's easy now to look back and see the elite potential in Federer, but did you honestly think that when he was, say, 18? Perhaps you did; I'm not saying you didn't. In general, though, I get suspicious when people say such things about potential when discussing someone who has already achieved great things.

Did you see him win the Junior Wimbledon, for example? And if so, was he that distinguishable from Dimitrov, when he won it?
 

herios

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El Dude said:
Interesting article. I'm not sure, though, that it isn't a cyclical thing. Notice the ATP numbers just compared over the last decade; the average age in the 70s, for instance, was much higher - at least in the top 10. This is not to say that I disagree with the basic premise of the article, or what herios is saying - I basically agree - but that we also need to look at at least two further factors: one, generational cycles, and two, different levels of players.

In terms of generational cycles, as we know just looking back over the last 20-25 years, there are periods in which there are a lot of great players playing at or near their peak level, and periods in which few elite players are at that level. The late 80s to early 90s was a bit of an unsung Golden Era, in my opinion. People always talk about the late 70s-early 80s as the Golden Age--with Connors, Borg, McEnroe, and Lendl--but a decade later you had Lendl, Becker, Wilander, Edberg, and then Courier, Sampras, and Agassi all playing at or near peak levels. In mid-to-late 90s the field dwindled and tennis went through a bit of a "dark age"--at least in terms of top talent--until the emergence of "Fedal" in 2004-05, and then "Djokoray" in 2007-08.

The point being, talent comes in cycles, and in order to make meaningful statements about age trends we have to look beyond a relatively short period such as a decade.

In terms of the latter, I think we should look at at least three levels: all-time greats (multi-Slam winners), near-elite players (Slam challengers, top ten players), and top 100 players. Regardless of what is happening right now, as I've said before historically almost all all-time greats peaked around age 24-25 and gradually declined after that so that they become more like top 10 players in their early 30s. I'm not sure this has changed; the only current all-time great that we can really look at (that is old enough) is Federer, who certainly supports the idea of a peak around 24-25, a half-step back around 27, and a plateau until a further decline sometime in the 30s. We'll know more about current trends in the next year or two as Rafa, Novak, and Andy all reach that "half-step back" phase. Rafa is entering it now and COULD be showing signs, but it is hard to tell. I think we'll know more by the end of the season.

But this doesn't necessarily oppose the idea that MOST players are peaking a bit later. As I suggest before, it is a very light hypothesis of mine that great players reach their absolute peak in their mid-20s, while second tier players more frequently peak a bit later - or at least don't decline from their peak established in their mid-20s in the same way that true elite players do. This might seem counter-intuitive, but think about it: the difference between the all-time greats (say, Federer, Nadal, and Djokovic) vs. near-elites (say, Tsonga, Ferrer, and Berdych) is a combination of greater consistency and an ability to tap into a "supra-level" of talent, but the baseline talent level isn't that different. What might happen is that once these elite players reach their late 20s their ability to tap into that supra-level diminishes and becomes less frequent, so they start falling back towards "mortal" levels like those of the near-elites, whereas the near-elites never reach those supra-levels, beyond a stray tournament or two, so are able to maintain their best.

In a way you could say that elite players reach a high peak in their mid-20s and then come back to a plateau in their late 20s, sometimes into their early 30s, whereas near-elite players reach a plateau but never a higher peak and just maintain that level throughout their late 20s. This could be similar to the difference between someone who is brilliant and a genius; a genius is also brilliant--that's their "baseline talent level"--but they are more frequently able to tap into an even higher level of brilliance, aka genius, whereas the "merely brilliant" can also tap into genius, just not nearly as frequently.

If we look at a near-elite player like Tomas Berdych we see the promise of an elite level in 2005 when he was 20 years old and won Paris Masters, his only ATP 1000 or higher title. But instead of continuing upward, he plateau-ed for a few years, and then went up a level in 2010 at the age of 24-25. Just about every elite player, however, keeps rising in their early 20s.

Other near-elite players like Tsonga and Ferrer broke into the pro tour a bit later. Ferrer didn't reach the top 20 until 2005, the year he turned 23; for Tsonga it was 2008, also the year he turned 23. Ferrer has a few years outside the top 10, but both have been essentially been top 10 players since age 23, with Ferrer having his strongest run in the last year or two at age 30-31. Tsonga has pretty much played at the same level since 2008.

My tentative conclusion, or at least theory based upon the initial hypothesis, is that there's a crucial developmental range in the early 20s when it is determined whether a very talented player will become elite or not. If you haven't shown elite status by age 22-23, chances are you'll never get there; this doesn't mean that players can't improve after 22-23, but that they'll almost certainly never be elite unless they show that level in their early 20s.

A bit rambling, but I hope that makes sense! I might put it all together with further research in my much-neglected Tennis Frontier blog!

El Dude, I may guy into your thory regarding the cyclicality of the elite players (GS winners), however i stand behind mine that these days the vast majority of the players develop and peak and also retire 2-3 years later, a few decades ago.
The article posted by moxie is backing my theory, mentioning that the top 100 average age advanced in the last decade by 2.5 years. That is even more than I thought it would be.
For example, of the 8 QF;ists here at RG, with that huge average > 29, I think only 3 are clearly past their prime: Roger, Tommy Haas, and Robredo (although the last 2 are writing a wonderful Cinderella chapter).
Rafa is on a plateau,w ith an undertain near future, Nole and Ferrer right at their peak years, Tsonga just a little below his peak Last year he topped at 5t), slipped back to 8, but now with his results is back at 7, with chances to climb further in case he makes the final)and Wawrinka almost at his peak (ranked 10, with 9 his highest), but i think in his case his best is yet to come.