Title Shares (a preliminary system)

[El Dude]

OK, here's a little system I devised that I mentioned in another thread. The basic idea is that the 14 big tournaments - the Slams, WTF, and Masters - as the big leagues of tennis, total 100 "Title Shares." Each year there are 100 Shares to go around, and depending upon how a player does his Shares equals a percentage of the total (I was going to use ATP 500s and 250s as "bonus shares" up to +5, but I'm holding off for now and keeping it to the big tournaments only and a nice clean 100 shares; I might have to do something with the Olympics as well).

Here's the point structure:
Grand Slam: 14 (x 4 = 56 total)
World Tour Final: 8
Masters: 4 each (x 9 = 36)
= 100 total Title Shares/year

This, of course, doesn't account for runner's up, but the point here is to get a sense of what percentage (or share) of the year's big tournaments did a player win? This, I think, will allow us to better ascertain dominance, eras, etc.

By way of example, here are the Shares for 2014:
38 Djokovic
18 Nadal
18 Wawrinka
14 Cilic
8 Federer
4 Tsonga

You can see how this system isn't all that impressed with Federer's steady performance, and thus agrees with DarthFed's view.

I actually went back all the way to 1990, so calculated the Title Shares for 25 seasons. It was interesting to look at how the distribution changed. Here are some findings:

- Fewest players receiving Shares: 2013 (Nadal, Djokovic, Murray)
- Most players receiving Shares: 1990, 1991, 1996, 1997 (ten players)

Right there you can see just how the game has changed. Actually, from 2005 to the present--the last ten years--no season has had more than six players accruing shares. From 1990-2004, only two years--1994 and '95--had six or fewer players; every other season was 7-10, with lots of single Masters winners.

Here are the ten highest Share seasons of the 25 years:

2006 Federer (66)
2011 Djokovic (62)
2004 Federer (62)
2007 Federer (58)
2010 Nadal (54)
2013 Nadal (48)
1994 Sampras (48)
2005 Federer (44)
2008 Nadal (40)
2014 Djokovic (38)

The most unbalanced season was 2004 when Roger Federer had 62 Shares and #2, Gaston Gaudio, had 14, Safin 8, and four players 4 each. There were a few other seasons where the highest shared player had 3x or more the #2 player: 2011 (Djokovic), 2006 (Federer), 1997 (Sampras).

Also, there were a couple seasons where there was a tie for first place: 2003 (Roddick, Federer, Ferrero), and 2001 (Hewitt, Agassi, Kuerten).

Finally, let's address the so-called "Novak Era." Here are the total shares for 2011-14:

168 Djokovic
106 Nadal
46 Federer
40 Murray
18 Wawrinka
14 Cilic
4 Tsonga, Ferrer

That's a nice lead on Novak's part, but not total dominance. If we slim it to the 2012-14, we get a different picture:

102 Djokovic
88 Nadal
34 Federer
32 Murray
18 Wawrinka
14 Cilic
4 Tsonga, Ferrer

If we expand it to include 2010 (the last five years) we get:
168 Djokovic
160 Nadal
72 Federer
48 Murray
18 Wawrinka
14 Cilic
4 Tsonga, Ferrer, Roddick, Ljubicic, Soderling

So there you have it. It really depends upon where you want to draw the line. I do think it is valid to consider the current era to be 2010 to the present, as 2009 was the last year of Federer being the top player. So 2010-14 has certainly been the Nadal-Djokovic Era.

p.s. to tented. I promise I'll clean this up and streamline it for a blog at some point soon; this was just rough, and writing aloud here.

 

[TsarMatt]

You should be hired by the ATP to work as a statistician, brah. Great stuff!