Is Djokovic dominating in a weak era?

[Obsi]

Only an imbecile would consider this a strong era.

Only an idiot would consider 2004-2006 a strong era.

Nadal has beaten Djokovic just once in their last 11 matches.
Murray has beaten Djokovic just once in their last 12 matches.

How in the name of hell does that make this a strong era?

Djokovic ended 2011 with 10-1 record against Nadal and Federer. Following your logic 2011 was a weak year.

 

[El Dude]

I'm playing with a model that tries to weigh the strength of a given year, based upon who is in the top 20, how good they are, and how close they are to their peak. It is quite imperfect, and I'll try to share it in a blog once I develop it further, but some interesting initial findings.

I looked at every year from 2004 to 2015. I found that the weakest year was 2004, followed by 2015 and 2014. The strongest years, surprisingly, were 2005-09, with 2010-13 in-between. In order of strongest to weakest:

2005 (strong)
2006-09 (somewhat strong)
2011-13 (moderate)
2010 (slightly weak)
2014-15 (weak)
2004 (quite weak)

Now the model so far doesn't really adjust for where a player was at in their career, that is how strong they were in a given year relative to their best - so it considers Federer in 2013 equal to 2006, which we all know is not the case, or it consider Agassi in 2004-05 as peak Agassi. So I need to play with adjustments for that sort of thing. But the above gives a sense of what caliber of player each year included in the top 20.

 

[Obsi]

I found this post on another forum


Insofar that it's possible to measure eras, let’s put to rest that Djokovic is winning all his majors in a weak era. His competition may have declined a little in 2015 (mainly it was just Nadal), but one year does not an era make. Djokovic started his run of majors in 2011 and we only have a full year’s data through 2015, so let’s look at 5-year periods and compare Djokovic’s 2011-2015 competition to Federer’s 2004-2008 competition in majors. 2004 is the year that Federer started his run of majors. This does exclude Federer's (last) superb 2009 year, but once Djokovic's 2016 is done, we can fairly compare a 6-year span.
The assumption is the better players perform in the majors, the more competition they mean for Djokovic and Federer at the majors. So I looked at how far the most competitive players in 2004-2008 and 2011-2015 progressed in all majors played during those periods and gave them points. Losing in the first round gave them 1 point, which is to distinguish them from not playing in the major at all in which case they receive 0 points. Losing in the second round garners 2 points, the third round 3 points and so on. Here are the two tables showing how 2004-2008 and 2011-2015 players performed.

Right away, you’ll see that Djokovic had much tougher competition who were able to consistently get further in the majors. The 11 players after Novak score 768 points. The 11 players below Federer score only 595. Djokovic’s competition performed a very significant 29% better than Federer’s in the majors. Federer's competition was 57% more apt to lose in the first 3 rounds than Djokovic's competition. Most striking is that Federer’s toughest competitor, Nadal, played worse in the majors than Djokovic’s toughest three competitors in Murray, Federer himself, and Nadal himself. Even with his poor 2015, the Nadal of 2011-2015 is 1 point better in majors than the Nadal of 2004-2008. Federer’s second toughest competitor, Hewitt, performed worse in majors than Djokovic’s sixth toughest competitor, Berdych. Federer’s third toughest competitor, Roddick, performed the same as Djokovic’s seventh toughest competitor, Tsonga, with 77 points each. Djokovic’s weakest competitor on the list, Nishikori, is still better than Federer’s four weakest competitors: Safin, Gonzalez, Blake, and Ancic.
So if anyone is arguing that Djokovic is winning majors in a weak era, Federer won his in a notably weaker era.
Some notes:
The 2004-2008 Djokovic, while listed as missing 0 majors, did not play any in 2004 and started his Grand Slam career in 2005 (he hasn't missed one since). So he was Federer’s 6th toughest competitor despite playing 4 majors fewer than possible for everyone else.
Why look at 11 players instead of another number? Because after the 11th player, both the 2004-2008 and 2011-2015 groups even out in relative mediocrity.

 

[El Dude]

Good stuff, Obsi. A few thoughts come to mind.

One, I'm not sure why you insist on five year spans. It seems relatively arbitrary, especially when Roger had a sub-par year in 2008. Further, there's no sense of differentiation between each year. As I've said before, it seems that 2014-on has been weaker than 2011-13, which your research doesn't account for. I'd at least like to see each year differentiated, so we can get a sense of which years in particular were more or less competitive. For instance, 2012 was probably the one year when all of the "Big Four" were closest to peak level, and it is also the one year in which all four won a Slam.

Also, the numbers themselves end up not being super meaningful. For example, Tomas Berdych has 81 in the second chart compared to David Nalbandian with 72 in the first. Does anyone really consider Berdych a more dangerous player than Nalbandian? Berdych's relatively strong Slam results COULD be because the field was overall weaker. I'm not saying it was, but there's no way to tell if that is true or not if we just look at the numbers in a vacuum.

It isn't that different from looking at Slam titles as the only element of greatness. By doing that, we would have to say that Johan Kriek was as good as Marat Safin or Andy Murray, and better than Vitas Gerulaitis or Andy Roddick. But everyone who knows tennis history knows that Kriek wasn't that good. He was a solid player, but he never even finished a year in the top 10 and won his two Slams when the AO was about as deep as an ATP 500 is today. I would say he was about as good as contemporary players like Tommy Robredo and Gilles Simon.

I'm not meaning to criticize you, Obsi, just pointing out some of the problems inherent in this sort of thing, and some of things I've tried to consider in my research to approach the issue. The biggest one, in my mind, is that it is so hard comparing players across eras (the Berdych-Nalbandian problem I mentioned). And of course there's the possibility that great players rise to whatever the challenge is before them. Roger beat some relatively weak Slam finalists in his day, but we can't say he wouldn't have beaten better ones as well, given the chance. Just as we can't say that Novak c. 2015 wouldn't have been able to dominate in 2004, given the chance.

 

[Front242]

Only an imbecile would consider this a strong era.

Only an idiot would consider 2004-2006 a strong era.

Guess that makes El Dude, the site's best blogger/statistics expert an idiot so if you read the posts above. Actually, no, I'll take his stats over an angry poster with a Novak Djokovic avatar any day of the week

Nadal has beaten Djokovic just once in their last 11 matches.
Murray has beaten Djokovic just once in their last 12 matches.

How in the name of hell does that make this a strong era?

Djokovic ended 2011 with 10-1 record against Nadal and Federer. Following your logic 2011 was a weak year.

You're just being an idiot now as clearly 2011 was a fantastic year for Novak and nobody is disputing that but clearly beating Nadal in 2011 7 straight times took a lot more effort than it does in 2015-2016. You're too caught up with numbers and not taking performance into account in any of your angry 8 year old girl silly rants. 2012 and 2013 Djokovic won just 1 slam each year and yet this is included in part of your "era" of 2011-2016. While there are tons of players out there who would kill to have a slam, 2 years of winning "just" (relative to how good Novak is) 1 slam doesn't exactly cut it as legacy type stuff compared to 2011 when he won 3 when all the top guys were playing very well.

 

[nehmeth]

To all us who are considered idiots and imbeciles by others due to the fact that our opinions differ....
:celeb:

 

[dante1976]

Yes currently the rest of the field is simply not competitive on a regular bases (for example, only Wawrinka, Roger and even Murray beat him in 2015th important matches). And yes he is that good right now (since last quarter of 2014). He is waaaaaay better than 2011 even though Rafa was still in prime back then but back then he didn't know how to put the "right dosage" in every match he played so he is now waaaay more experienced/mature, waaaaay better serve than in 2011 (in clutch moments that is), waaaaaay better behavior when he win or lose, waaaaay better overall player in general
We'll see what happens when "his Rafa" (or couple of them) "step up" and challenge him on a regular basis and (more importantly) on a big stage

 

[Front242]

Unfortunate use of the words "right dosage" above could easily be mistaken for something else :s Personally I don't think he's way better than 2011 at all. He was way more energetic and dynamic back then. Recently he's been beatable but no one has taken advantage, eg Indian Wells and Miami he wasn't too impressive. Compare the level at both tournaments in 2011 versus this year.

 

[Riotbeard]

Unfortunate use of the words "right dosage" above could easily be mistaken for something else :s Personally I don't think he's way better than 2011 at all. He was way more energetic and dynamic back then. Recently he's been beatable but no one has taken advantage, eg Indian Wells and Miami he wasn't too impressive. Compare the level at both tournaments in 2011 versus this year.

Overall, I think your right, but I am not convinced that Djokovic has been pushed to need to reach his highest level, so whether or not he would is pretty unknowable. Given the level of competition, I think Djokovic is very smart to conserve his mental and physical energy throughout the season.

 

[Obsi]

One, I'm not sure why you insist on five year spans.

Firstly, I'm NOT the author of that analysis (I stated this at the begining of the post). Secondly, I think five span makes sense because Federer started his run of majors in 2004 and Djokovic in 2011 hence 2004-2009 versus 2011-2016.

Further, there's no sense of differentiation between each year. As I've said before, it seems that 2014-on has been weaker than 2011-13, which your research doesn't account for. I'd at least like to see each year differentiated, so we can get a sense of which years in particular were more or less competitive. For instance, 2012 was probably the one year when all of the "Big Four" were closest to peak level, and it is also the one year in which all four won a Slam.

Also, the numbers themselves end up not being super meaningful. For example, Tomas Berdych has 81 in the second chart compared to David Nalbandian with 72 in the first. Does anyone really consider Berdych a more dangerous player than Nalbandian?

I believe Nalbandian at his best was tougher to beat than Berdych at his best but Tomas is more dangerous on a consistient basis.

Berdych's relatively strong Slam results COULD be because the field was overall weaker. I'm not saying it was, but there's no way to tell if that is true or not if we just look at the numbers in a vacuum. It isn't that different from looking at Slam titles as the only element of greatness. By doing that, we would have to say that Johan Kriek was as good as Marat Safin or Andy Murray, and better than Vitas Gerulaitis or Andy Roddick. But everyone who knows tennis history knows that Kriek wasn't that good. He was a solid player, but he never even finished a year in the top 10 and won his two Slams when the AO was about as deep as an ATP 500 is today. I would say he was about as good as contemporary players like Tommy Robredo and Gilles Simon.

Every model is imperfect but I'm yet to be convinced there is a more reliable model than this one.

Guess that makes El Dude, the site's best blogger/statistics expert an idiot so if you read the posts above.

Obsi: "What about Federer? Would say there was a period during his domination that you would call a "weak era"?"
El Dude: "Overall it was relatively weak"

You're just being an idiot now as clearly 2011 was a fantastic year for Novak and nobody is disputing that but clearly beating Nadal in 2011 7 straight times took a lot more effort than it does in 2015-2016.

You are being affected with extreme mental retardation. I was responding to your argument that is based on Djokovic's recent record against Nadal and Murray.

You're too caught up with numbers and not taking performance into account in any of your angry 8 year old girl silly rants.

I do take into account level of competition. But it's something that can NOT be proven so what is really silly is your claim it's OBVIOUS Top in 2004 were stronger than the current Top 10.

2012 and 2013 Djokovic won just 1 slam each year and yet this is included in part of your "era" of 2011-2016. While there are tons of players out there who would kill to have a slam, 2 years of winning "just" (relative to how good Novak is) 1 slam doesn't exactly cut it as legacy type stuff compared to 2011 when he won 3 when all the top guys were playing very well.

Federer only won 1 slam in 2008 but I included that year in 2004-2009 era.

 

[El Dude]

Thanks for the reply, Obsi. Not much to add at this point. I'm going to fiddle around with some models, try to come up with something.

 

[Front242]

Obsi: "What about Federer? Would say there was a period during his domination that you would call a "weak era"?"
El Dude: "Overall it was relatively weak"

It appears the mental retardation is actually all yours, buddy. Btw, I've quoted it properly for you here. He did not say it was relatively weak apart from 2004 and disagreed with you completely regarding your claim that 2011-2016 was stronger competition than 2004-2009 if you actually reviewed his comments below next to the span of years. None of the years below have been graded as highly in the Djokovic "era" which incidentally can't really be an era since he won just 1 slam in each of 2012 and 2013.

Obsi Wrote: (Yesterday 12:17 PM)

Front242 Wrote:
Only an imbecile would consider this a strong era.


Only an idiot would consider 2004-2006 a strong era.

Front242 Wrote:
Guess that makes El Dude, the site's best blogger/statistics expert an idiot so if you read the posts above.

2005 (strong)
2006-09 (somewhat strong)
2011-13 (moderate)
2010 (slightly weak)
2014-15 (weak)
2004 (quite weak)

^ That's El Dude's synopsis above.

 

[mrzz]

As I said before, I really don´t like this discussion, as in general we will always have fans of one player saying that the period that the other dominated was weak. But I´m posting not to repeat this, but to make the following points:

1) I am pretty convinced that it is impossible to come up with any statistical model to measure the "weakness" of an era, simply because you are always comparing the players with themselves. You can tell if the era is more or less competitive, but that´s all. Dominance by one player, or a few, is not a necessarily a measure of quality. I´ll give one simple example situation to illustrate that:

Take one "era" where the titles and finals are shared by, say, the top 20 players of the world (an era some would call weak, because it is not just the top 5 getting to the finals). Now, consider an alternate reality where we get rid of 15 of those top 20 players. This alternate reality is weaker by definition, right? After all, we removed 15 of the top 20, what is left is surely worst. And what would happen? The remaining 5, from the original top 20, would basically concentrate all finals and titles. So, in this situation, the weaker field is the one dominated by a few.

So, dominance is not necessarily a sign of strength of the field. It is also easy to show that competitiveness is also not necessarily a sign of strength.

So, the study Obsi brought above shows that the 2011-2016 era is dominated by fewer players, but this does not mean the field is stronger. We generally believe that dominance is strength, as we think that lack of dominance means that nobody was good enough to dominate. But we could also say that the field was good enough to stop anyone (or any group) from dominating...

But, ok, there´s a reason why we feel that an era dominated by a few is stronger: because we identify those few as "winners", and that is surely a factor of relevance.

However, if we have a dominant #1, what is easier for him? Keep beating the #2, #3 and #4 all the time (that is, always the same players), or to face different, unknown and unpredictable competition?

That´s basically why I don´t think any model would do the job. I guess that all we can do is look at players who were "competition" and compare them, one by one.

 

[El Dude]

mrzz, good post and I agree with you. But really, what you say applies to just about everything...no statistical model works for anything but really simple assessment, but it is fun and interesting (for me at least) to come as close as possible to "approximating truth." And that is really all that statistics can do. I see them as just another angle at looking at the sport.

Baseball is the stat-lovers sport, and over the last few decades there have been a variety of statistics that are meant to encompass total value. The current one is called WAR, or Wins Above Replacement, and there are several different versions of it. People seem to either love it or hate it, and there's a real divide in baseball between the "old school" folks who focus on eye-witness accounts, player grit, and traditional stats, and then the "new school" who focus on sophisticated statistics. The fallacy is that it has to be either/or, one or the other.

I think it is the same with tennis, but in a much more...primitive manner, mainly because there just isn't the same level of statistical analysis. I don't really expect to see that change. But a lot of the same discussions happen, and there are some basic similarities. In the end, though, I personally think it is a mistake to be either fully for or against statistical analysis, or for thinking that any of these questions--like weak era theory, GOAT, the order of the best players, etc--can every be definitively answered. But the discussion is fun, imo!

 

[mrzz]

I see ypur point, but I can't help but feel that this is particularly true in the era discussion. For the goat discussion, ypu can assume that the Field is constant, so the numbers mean something (and you get models with intuitive resultados, as yours).

But for the Field itself... What can you do? Separate the ATP and Challenger tour completely. How cpuld you tell one is better than the other just by looking at "inner" statistics?

Enviado de meu MotoE2(4G-LTE) usando Tapatalk

 

[isabelle]

What do you think?

I think he didn't dominate Vesely at all !!

 

[the AntiPusher]

mrzz, good post and I agree with you. But really, what you say applies to just about everything...no statistical model works for anything but really simple assessment, but it is fun and interesting (for me at least) to come as close as possible to "approximating truth." And that is really all that statistics can do. I see them as just another angle at looking at the sport.

Baseball is the stat-lovers sport, and over the last few decades there have been a variety of statistics that are meant to encompass total value. The current one is called WAR, or Wins Above Replacement, and there are several different versions of it. People seem to either love it or hate it, and there's a real divide in baseball between the "old school" folks who focus on eye-witness accounts, player grit, and traditional stats, and then the "new school" who focus on sophisticated statistics. The fallacy is that it has to be either/or, one or the other.

I think it is the same with tennis, but in a much more...primitive manner, mainly because there just isn't the same level of statistical analysis. I don't really expect to see that change. But a lot of the same discussions happen, and there are some basic similarities. In the end, though, I personally think it is a mistake to be either fully for or against statistical analysis, or for thinking that any of these questions--like weak era theory, GOAT, the order of the best players, etc--can every be definitively answered. But the discussion is fun, imo!

I would think your anaylsis would have been based on the top ten players H2h records against the top 10-20 players of that era. e.g. Djoker H2h would show that this is an extremely weak era whereas 2008-2014 era would show a very strong era. IMO

 

[Obsi]

Obsi: "What about Federer? Would say there was a period during his domination that you would call a "weak era"?"
El Dude: "Overall it was relatively weak"

It appears the mental retardation is actually all yours, buddy. Btw, I've quoted it properly for you here. He did not say it was relatively weak apart from 2004 and disagreed with you completely regarding your claim that 2011-2016 was stronger competition than 2004-2009 if you actually reviewed his comments below next to the span of years. None of the years below have been graded as highly in the Djokovic "era" which incidentally can't really be an era since he won just 1 slam in each of 2012 and 2013.

Obsi Wrote: (Yesterday 12:17 PM)

Front242 Wrote:
Only an imbecile would consider this a strong era.


Only an idiot would consider 2004-2006 a strong era.

Front242 Wrote:
Guess that makes El Dude, the site's best blogger/statistics expert an idiot so if you read the posts above.

2005 (strong)
2006-09 (somewhat strong)
2011-13 (moderate)
2010 (slightly weak)
2014-15 (weak)
2004 (quite weak)

^ That's El Dude's synopsis above.

You are a bigger idiot than I thought

08-Apr-2016 02:52 PM Obsi Wrote:
"What about Federer? Would say there was a period during his domination that you would call a "weak era"? " http://www.tennisfrontier.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=4699&pid=226978#pid226978

08-Apr-2016 04:44 PM El Dude Wrote:
"Overall it was relatively weak"
http://www.tennisfrontier.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=4699&pid=226992#pid226992

 

[El Dude]

I see ypur point, but I can't help but feel that this is particularly true in the era discussion. For the goat discussion, ypu can assume that the Field is constant, so the numbers mean something (and you get models with intuitive resultados, as yours).

But for the Field itself... What can you do? Separate the ATP and Challenger tour completely. How cpuld you tell one is better than the other just by looking at "inner" statistics?

Particularly true about eras, yes. But again, it is still fun to talk about!

I would think your anaylsis would have been based on the top ten players H2h records against the top 10-20 players of that era. e.g. Djoker H2h would show that this is an extremely weak era whereas 2008-2014 era would show a very strong era. IMO

Not necessarily. It could also mean that Novak has just been that good over the last year and a half.

Anyhow, it probably requires few angles to get a decent read.

 

[Riotbeard]

Obsi: "What about Federer? Would say there was a period during his domination that you would call a "weak era"?"
El Dude: "Overall it was relatively weak"

It appears the mental retardation is actually all yours, buddy. Btw, I've quoted it properly for you here. He did not say it was relatively weak apart from 2004 and disagreed with you completely regarding your claim that 2011-2016 was stronger competition than 2004-2009 if you actually reviewed his comments below next to the span of years. None of the years below have been graded as highly in the Djokovic "era" which incidentally can't really be an era since he won just 1 slam in each of 2012 and 2013.

Obsi Wrote: (Yesterday 12:17 PM)

Front242 Wrote:
Only an imbecile would consider this a strong era.


Only an idiot would consider 2004-2006 a strong era.

Front242 Wrote:
Guess that makes El Dude, the site's best blogger/statistics expert an idiot so if you read the posts above.

2005 (strong)
2006-09 (somewhat strong)
2011-13 (moderate)
2010 (slightly weak)
2014-15 (weak)
2004 (quite weak)

^ That's El Dude's synopsis above.

You are a bigger idiot than I thought

08-Apr-2016 02:52 PM Obsi Wrote:
"What about Federer? Would say there was a period during his domination that you would call a "weak era"? " http://www.tennisfrontier.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=4699&pid=226978#pid226978

08-Apr-2016 04:44 PM El Dude Wrote:
"Overall it was relatively weak"
http://www.tennisfrontier.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=4699&pid=226992#pid226992

Thank god you and Front are strengthening your arguments with name calling :cover :hug