Bursting the Federer Resurgence Bubble

[El Dude]

Federberg, I don't need to "defend my thesis" because you didn't really address it. All you did was say "wrong, you're dumb" in your own, charming way. You didn't actually say why or how I'm wrong. If you want to be taken seriously, then you probably want to explain why you think what you think, and not just spew vitriol.

This is so basic that I have a hard time understanding how someone could be so obtuse. I have concluded from this data that you are incapable of rational discussion without resorting to ad hominems, and thus not worthy of my time.

 

[Busted]

The only thing this nonsense shows is that it’s possible to collect data and completely misread the facts. If you can look at Federer in 2017 and think he wasn’t playing better quality tennis than in 2014-15 the obvious conclusion is that you don’t really understand tennis. It’s been clear for a while you don’t really understand how to use data anyway

I shrugged, too. Whatever. It feels like an excuse to crap on a great LIMITED season. I don't think there are too many Fed fans who are under the illusion that 2017 was one of Roger's greatest seasons ever. The simple fact that he skipped the entire clay season, skipped a total of 5 Masters events (including 3 on clay), and only played 12 tournaments dispels that notion fairly quickly. Anybody wanting to compare a "part-time" 2017 numbers to previous full seasons is going to find exactly what they're looking for - that Roger's 2017 wasn't the reinvention of the wheel.

 

[Federberg]

I shrugged, too. Whatever. It feels like an excuse to crap on a great LIMITED season. I don't think there are too many Fed fans who are under the illusion that 2017 was one of Roger's greatest seasons ever. The simple fact that that he skipped the entire clay season, skipped a total of 5 Masters events (including 3 on clay), and only played 12 tournaments dispels that notion fairly quickly. Anybody wanting to compare a "part-time" 2017 numbers to previous full seasons is going to find exactly what they're looking for - that Roger's 2017 wasn't the reinvention of the wheel.

Totally agree. It's not rocket science

 

[Federberg]

Federberg, I don't need to "defend my thesis" because you didn't really address it. All you did was say "wrong, you're dumb" in your own, charming way. You didn't actually say why or how I'm wrong. If you want to be taken seriously, then you probably want to explain why you think what you think, and not just spew vitriol.

This is so basic that I have a hard time understanding how someone could be so obtuse. I have concluded from this data that you are incapable of rational discussion without resorting to ad hominems, and thus not worthy of my time.[/QU

hahaha! You said that before mate. But here you are again. Methinks you protest too much

 

[El Dude]

Federberg, really look into "ad hominem fallacy." It might make you rethink--and hopefully evolve--your discussion style.

 

[Federberg]

You really are priceless. Do you really lack this much self awareness? I attacked your opinion. You really are the most defensive so and so. Simply can't hack anyone disagreeing with you can you? I'm too amused by your persistently engaging, when you claim that it's not worth your time, to be offended by your presumptions

 

[DarthFed]

This is just a situation where numbers don't tell the whole story. Look at Roger's play in big matches/events last year and it was well beyond 2014 and 2015. Roger was 20-1 in MS events and 18-1 in majors. Even taking Nole out of the picture in 2014-2015 and you have a record that doesn't come close to that.

Also what needs to be mentioned is that Nadal was weak those years, particularly 2015. A resurgent Nadal in essence replaced Nole as the main hindrance to Fed this year. Historically that wasn't a good thing for Roger to say the least, not until 2017 anyways.

 

[Shivashish Sarkar]

Alright, I see that you compared HC and GC win indices against non-Novak opponents.

I hope that your central idea is to compare his HC+GC results against non-Novak players across two seasons at a time.

Let's compare his HC+GC results without having to face Djokovic

2014 vs 2017:

2014 - 1masters, 0 slams
2017 - 3 masters, 2 slams

2015 vs 2017:

2015: 0 masters, 0 slams
2017 - 3 masters, 2 slams

So, in tournaments where he was given opponents other than Novak he won much more in 2017 when compared to 2014/15.

So, each piece of stat will represent something. And, it's up to the proponent of a thesis to qualitatively assess how meaningful a certain statistic is.

 

[El Dude]

@Shivashish Sarkar, your comparison is deceptive because Roger lost 8 times to Novak in 2014-15 at big titles. If he hadn't had to face Novak, he almost certainly would have won some of those titles, so you can't just compare how many big titles he won in those years without also looking at those he lost. More on that in a moment.

Here's the interesting conundrum: As I pointed out above, Roger won a higher percentage of Novak-less HC/GC matches in 2014-15 (93% vs. 91%), yet was far more successful in terms of titles in 2017 - and also better by consensus (including myself) using the eye-ball test. To get a sense of why this was, let's look at his results in big title finals:

2014:
Wimbledon: L to Djokovic
IW: L to Djokovic
Monte Carlo: L to Wawrinka
Canada: L to Tsonga
Cincinnati: W vs. Djokovic
Shanghai: W vs. Simon
WTF: L to Djokovic

Overall: 2-5 in big finals, including 1-2 vs. Novak, 1-3 vs everyone else

2015:
Wimbledon: L vs. Djokovic
US Open: L vs. Djokovic
IW: L vs. Djokovic
Rome: L vs. Djokovic
Cincinnati: W vs. Djokovic
WTF: L vs. Djokovic

Overall: 1-5 in big finals, all vs. Novak

2015 is particularly striking, but the overall result in big finals, 3-10 or 2-7 vs. Novak, is rather noteworthy.

2017:
Australian Open: W vs. Rafa
Wimbledon: W vs. Cilic
IW: W vs. Wawrinka
Miami: W vs. Rafa
Canada: L vs. Zverev
Shanghai: W vs. Rafa

Overall: 5-1, no Novak

So there's the big difference: Roger was better in big finals. We knew this, but this makes it absolutely clear. But what is also absolutely clear is that the main obstacle for him in big finals in 2014-15 was Novak; he played 9 of 13 finals against him, going 2-7.

So it is both: Roger played better in 2017 in big finals, but that is partially because he didn't have to play Novak.

 

[DarthFed]

Why are you just looking at his results in big finals? Look at the big tournaments which I mentioned in my post and it's a big difference with or without Novak. Also he beat Ferrer in 2014 Cincy final.

 

[Nekro]

@Federberg, I'm not the one throwing insults and ignoring the actual arguments. I'm not attributing motives - just pointing out the obvious: that when you feel threatened or challenged, or someone presents something you don't like, you resort to insults.

I liked your posts and the thought provoking data you selected...

Don't worry about Federberg, he's the most emotionally unstable poster here so he's posting around with his faithful shrink team BB and mrzz staying close to him, they want to prevent him from committing virtual suicide cause he was threatening us with stuff like that before.... If you see BB and mrzz liking completely shit posts by Federberg, it has nothing to do with the posts' content, it's all about emotional support for the suicidal Federberg...

BTW you were right, Federberg always has to troll someone, when i came to dt it was Ricardo, then he tried it with me but failed so he put me on ignore, then it was Obsi, now it's your turn.... he's doing it btw to live out his homo copulation urges like you know there are brave people like Fiero and closeted ones like Federberg.....

If you wanna see Federberg's true self, go to the politics section, like he sang odes about a totally shitty speech by some fat momma called Oprah? in a room so full of hebrews it reminded me of a synagogue about how her mom had to clean other people's houses!!!! like the fuck, that's real slavery stuff.......

Like if she asked me i would clean tossip's house for free cause i like to clean, it gives me cool opportunity to improve my mastery of zen, to hum "i want to break free" by Freddy Mercury, to shake my ass like a fag and feel cool ....

ok but back to the tennis part, as you see even for less emo guys like atttomole the Nadal thing was the real difference... It's really just an emo thing for the insecure Fedtards.. Like surely the BH improved some but already before the big improvement like in the WTF final where Fed owned Nadal the at BH worked just the same, Nadal even praised Fed for it...

So yeah, there were improvements but let's face it, in the AO final last year Nadal was obviously and visibly more exhausted and worse in general, he was moving like a constipated sloth......

And these very unbiased Fedtards are saying they don't like wouldha shouldha but then make up fairy tales about how Fed would have destroyed a well moving Djokovic the same way he beat a Nadal who was moving like a constipated sloth (and who was shit all season btw, yeah he won the USO with luck too thanks to non-existent competition)

DarthFed's try was weak too, like the non-novak field last year was complete shit compared to previous years, like everybody was tanking, injured or just complete shit....


Anyway, thanks for your posts Dude, they were really informative and it's good to see there are still some cool, unbiased and mentally stable Fed fans out there

 

[Shivashish Sarkar]

Let me try to reassess the situation again, this time along the following lines:

'Eye-ball' Test:

2017 Roger really seemed to be way above 2014/2015 Roger. Improved backhand, return of serve, and perhaps serve too. I still remember the way Roger was returning Rafa's serve at AO last year. Crisp, flat and devastating. I have never seen Roger do such things before. It was his best AO match against Rafa ever. At Indian Wells, he was just killing those winners from everywhere. Again at Shanghai. Roger also looked better against guys other than Nadal.

Injury consideration:

In the Montreal final, Roger was not able to move at all. The discomfort must have been present at USO too as it would be ridiculous that he would all of a sudden lose form after Wimbledon and gain form again at Shanghai. It's rational to say he was most probably injured at USO.

And that is one loss at least due to injury. This has contributed to the lower win-rate (on HC/GC events against non-Novak opponents) that El Dude has pointed out regarding 2017 as compared to 14/15.

Big Titles:

The most tangible of all stats are the numbers of slams and masters. Roger actually won 5 big titles in 2017 as compared to 2 in 2014 and 1 in 2015. How can it be overlooked?

And that Federer did not play a big event match with Djokovic in 2017 does not mean that if he did, he'd necessarily lose all, any or even a match against Djokovic. Although Ifs and Buts aren't good artefacts in the discussion of tennis, we know how those matches would have panned out really. It might be unfair to assume Roger would have won all four matches (assume) that they would have played but it would also be really unfair to assume Djokovic would have necessarily stopped Roger in a big event(s) considering especially Roger's form last year.

How I'd sum it up

IMHO:

It don't think it is very subjective. You've got to go by how it looks live, the average level of play, record versus top 10, no. of slams, no. of masters won across seasons to begin comparing them. Win-loss rates/indices should be considered after these. After all, we don't know legends by their win-rates, we know them by their collection of silverware and also by how their games looked. One more thing about win-loss rates is it does not tell us the level of play of that player as discerned by a trained eye, the brand of tennis played by him, the strategies employed, or even how good/bad the losses were.

Consider the opponents responsible to Roger's losses in 2017:

Donskoy (it was a crazy match by both and there could only be one winner)
Haas
Zverev (Roger couldn't move)
Del Potro (Roger possibly injured but controversial)
Goffin

At least 2 of the losses were not 'bad', not even close. I am not pointing this out to reiterate by point about low win-rate, this is to allow you to compare these losses with those suffered against non-Novak opponents on HC/GC in 2014/2015. He lost in poorer fashion to Isner, Vinolas in 2015. And there may be more such losses possibly.

I'd consider these quality-indicative factors too for my comparison of his seasons.

So, to conclude everything, I really believe Roger reinvented himself and actually resurged in 2017. And, in the end his 2017 season was better than both 14/15 seasons.

 

[Federberg]

You've got to go by how it looks live, the average level of play, record versus top 10, no. of slams, no. of masters won across seasons to begin comparing them. Win-loss rates/indices should be considered after these. After all, we don't know legends by their win-rates, we know them by their collection of silverware and also by how their games looked. One more thing about win-loss rates is it does not tell us the level of play of that player as discerned by a trained eye, the brand of tennis played by him, the strategies employed, or even how good/bad the losses were.

This.

You can look at all the data you want, but if you don't trust or understand what your eyes are telling you it becomes an exercise in futility. I would go further and say that what Roger was able to do with his aggressive mindset with his driving backhand completely changes the tactical and strategic possibilities available to him against someone like Novak. I can't know what such a match up would have looked like last year, but it's silly to say that because Novak had the better of him in 14 - 15 it means that Roger should basically asterisk his 2017. Think about it, if last year the main contests had been vs Novak and not Rafa with the same outcome. Rafa fans would have been justified - based on history - in saying that things would have been different if Roger had had to face Rafa instead. And it would have been difficult to refute that! Instead we had the year we had, and we're now being asked to tolerate the presumption that things would have been different if Novak had been present and playing at his absolute peak? It's just retarded...

 

[britbox]

I liked your posts and the thought provoking data you selected...

Don't worry about Federberg, he's the most emotionally unstable poster here so he's posting around with his faithful shrink team BB and mrzz staying close to him, they want to prevent him from committing virtual suicide cause he was threatening us with stuff like that before.... If you see BB and mrzz liking completely shit posts by Federberg, it has nothing to do with the posts' content, it's all about emotional support for the suicidal Federberg...

BTW you were right, Federberg always has to troll someone, when i came to dt it was Ricardo, then he tried it with me but failed so he put me on ignore, then it was Obsi, now it's your turn.... he's doing it btw to live out his homo copulation urges like you know there are brave people like Fiero and closeted ones like Federberg.....

If you wanna see Federberg's true self, go to the politics section, like he sang odes about a totally shitty speech by some fat momma called Oprah? in a room so full of hebrews it reminded me of a synagogue about how her mom had to clean other people's houses!!!! like the fuck, that's real slavery stuff.......

Like if she asked me i would clean tossip's house for free cause i like to clean, it gives me cool opportunity to improve my mastery of zen, to hum "i want to break free" by Freddy Mercury, to shake my ass like a fag and feel cool ....

ok but back to the tennis part, as you see even for less emo guys like atttomole the Nadal thing was the real difference... It's really just an emo thing for the insecure Fedtards.. Like surely the BH improved some but already before the big improvement like in the WTF final where Fed owned Nadal the at BH worked just the same, Nadal even praised Fed for it...

So yeah, there were improvements but let's face it, in the AO final last year Nadal was obviously and visibly more exhausted and worse in general, he was moving like a constipated sloth......

And these very unbiased Fedtards are saying they don't like wouldha shouldha but then make up fairy tales about how Fed would have destroyed a well moving Djokovic the same way he beat a Nadal who was moving like a constipated sloth (and who was shit all season btw, yeah he won the USO with luck too thanks to non-existent competition)

DarthFed's try was weak too, like the non-novak field last year was complete shit compared to previous years, like everybody was tanking, injured or just complete shit....


Anyway, thanks for your posts Dude, they were really informative and it's good to see there are still some cool, unbiased and mentally stable Fed fans out there

Yeah, because putting people on ignore is the definition of trolling, right?

 

[britbox]

Uh, that's exactly my point. Roger didn't play on clay or vs. Novak in 2017. What I did in the original post is remove Novak and clay from 2014-15. After doing that, he actually had a higher win percentage in 2014-15 than he did in 2017.

I think he'd trade the win percentage for the majors and masters titles... It's the only thing that counts for him at this stage of his career.

 

[Shivashish Sarkar]

First, my apologies to fellow Fedfans: What I am about to share with you is going to be painful and perhaps dispel the notion that the 2017 version of Roger is better than he's been in years.

And let me start with a caveat: Roger had a great year in 2017. By just about any standard, it was his best year since at least 2009, possibly 2007. Only four years were clearly better, his peak of 2004-07. 2017 is probably the best of his second trio of almost-great years: 2009, 2012, and 2017.

But there is a tarnish to this so-called resurgence of Rogerian greatness. What I'm going to show you is that he's actually closer to 2014-15 form. In fact, his performance is just about the same.

Wait a minute, what about those two Slams and three Masters titles? Roger hasn't won two Slams since 2009, and five big titles since 2007!

So let's compare 2014, 2015, and 2017 - Roger's last three healthy seasons.

2017: 2 Slams (2-0 in finals), 3 Masters (3-1 in finals), 52-5 (91%).
2015: 0 Slams (0-2 finals), 1 Masters/WTF (1-3 in finals), 63-11 (85%)
2014: 0 Slams (0-1 in finals), 2 Masters/WTF (2-4 in finals), 73-12 (86%)

Clearly 2017 was better, right? Maybe not as much as the record implies.

Let me put it this way: How was 2017 different than any other year for Roger? Aside from his dominance of Rafa - that is undeniable, and we'll get back to it. Well, in two ways: One, he didn't play a single clay match; and two, he didn't play Novak Djokovic.

In 2015, Roger was 3-5 vs. Novak, 13-4 on clay. Combining the two and he was 16-8 on clay and vs. Novak (he lost once to Novak on clay), which yields a 47-3 non-clay/Novak record, or 94%.

In 2014, Roger was 3-3 vs. Novak, 8-4 on clay, and 10-7 combined, yielding a 63-5 record otherwise, or 93%.

Overall in 2014-15 Roger was 110-8 off clay and vs. non-Novak opponents, or 93.2%. Compare that to his 91.2% record this year. In other words, taking away the two factors that were different, and Roger actually performed slightly better in 2014-15 than he did in 2017.

But what about Rafa? Roger was, as you know, 4-0 vs him in 2017, and 1-1 in 2014-15. So that would imply improvement, at least against his arch-nemesis. But I think it is a small enough sample that it doesn't impact the findings above. It may be that Roger simply solved the match-up problem with his improved backhand, or it may be that his 4-0 is just regression to the mean. I would argue that most of it is psychological, and that if Rafa had won the AO he might have won two or even three of the remaining matches.

Now of course none of this delves deeper into what actually happened on court. I'm not looking at serve percentages, return of serves, etc. And it goes without saying that win percentages only tell part of the story and don't differentiate matches (e.g. there's no difference between the first round of an ATP 250 and the final of a Slam).

But at the very least, I do think these numbers clearly show that Roger's resurgence wasn't quite as massive as we thought, and if we take these numbers at face value, they say that he only returned to his 2014-15 form--and maybe even a fraction below.

In other words, these numbers show us that Roger in 2017 was basically the same level of player as he was in 2014-15, but he had better results in 2017 only because he didn't have to face peak Novak, and also didn't play clay.

Sorry, my fellow Fedfans.

You say that if Rafa would have won the AO, then he would have won two or three more matches. So, what actually happened isn't important to you. You discard the actual reality and prefer your narrative/imagination to it which has Rafa going 3-1 or 4-0 against Roger in the season. Did you take notice of Roger's prominent dominance over Rafa in 2017 and that in two of those matches Roger thrashed Rafa? At least, it looks like you think 4-0 could have easily been 0-4/1-3. I don't know how that makes sense. Sorry.

You do admit Roger had an improved backhand in 2017. Hey.

You say that Roger "simply solved the match-up problem. This match-up problem was not 'simply' solved. This was a major problem until 2014. Yes the first win against Nadal after the AO loss came in 2015 but it was in 2017, that it was fiercely dealt with and solved. And it was a hard nut to crack. Now that Roger has registered successfully 5 consecutive wins against Rafa, it's something he had never done before. It's a big deal. You didn't take cognizance. If turning the tables against Rafa isn't resurgence, then I don't know what is. People used to say "Rafa owns Roger". Roger made sure they can't say that at the moment. It's part of the reason why people are calling it a resurgence.

 

[Nekro]

Yeah, because putting people on ignore is the definition of trolling, right?

Nah, first he tried to get me to troll Ricardo but i didn't want to then he started to insult me but i was kicking his ass everywhere, the tennis threads, the politics threads.....

Good you mention the ignore list, he made an ass of himself multiple times there too, first he needed your help to put me on ignore cause he's so ignorant then in another stupid and careless moment of his he busted himself for reading my posts..... Federberg is a pathetic creature

 

[DarthFed]

I liked your posts and the thought provoking data you selected...

Don't worry about Federberg, he's the most emotionally unstable poster here so he's posting around with his faithful shrink team BB and mrzz staying close to him, they want to prevent him from committing virtual suicide cause he was threatening us with stuff like that before.... If you see BB and mrzz liking completely shit posts by Federberg, it has nothing to do with the posts' content, it's all about emotional support for the suicidal Federberg...

BTW you were right, Federberg always has to troll someone, when i came to dt it was Ricardo, then he tried it with me but failed so he put me on ignore, then it was Obsi, now it's your turn.... he's doing it btw to live out his homo copulation urges like you know there are brave people like Fiero and closeted ones like Federberg.....

If you wanna see Federberg's true self, go to the politics section, like he sang odes about a totally shitty speech by some fat momma called Oprah? in a room so full of hebrews it reminded me of a synagogue about how her mom had to clean other people's houses!!!! like the fuck, that's real slavery stuff.......

Like if she asked me i would clean tossip's house for free cause i like to clean, it gives me cool opportunity to improve my mastery of zen, to hum "i want to break free" by Freddy Mercury, to shake my ass like a fag and feel cool ....

ok but back to the tennis part, as you see even for less emo guys like atttomole the Nadal thing was the real difference... It's really just an emo thing for the insecure Fedtards.. Like surely the BH improved some but already before the big improvement like in the WTF final where Fed owned Nadal the at BH worked just the same, Nadal even praised Fed for it...

So yeah, there were improvements but let's face it, in the AO final last year Nadal was obviously and visibly more exhausted and worse in general, he was moving like a constipated sloth......

And these very unbiased Fedtards are saying they don't like wouldha shouldha but then make up fairy tales about how Fed would have destroyed a well moving Djokovic the same way he beat a Nadal who was moving like a constipated sloth (and who was shit all season btw, yeah he won the USO with luck too thanks to non-existent competition)

DarthFed's try was weak too, like the non-novak field last year was complete shit compared to previous years, like everybody was tanking, injured or just complete shit....


Anyway, thanks for your posts Dude, they were really informative and it's good to see there are still some cool, unbiased and mentally stable Fed fans out there

What a tard. You used to be semi-entertaining...nah, on second thought you've always been just a tard. Keep talking about how other people are emotional, we all get a kick out of it.

 

[Nekro]

What a tard. You used to be semi-entertaining...nah, on second thought you've always been just a tard. Keep talking about how other people are emotional, we all get a kick out of it.

by "we all" you mean the clueless rogi fanboys?

Bro, real tennis fans know i always tell it like it is even about Rafa..

Anyway, i didn't want to disturb the circle-jerking Fedtards' toilet party here, i just informed El Dude what was going on and who he was dealing with

Dunno what ur upset about anyway, you know me, in ard 20 min i could post a pageful of Federberg fuckups, busted lies and other typical Federberg idiocies but i know BB has a soft spot for him so i just posted casual stuff for El Dude

 

[britbox]

Just the post where he asked you troll Ricardo....