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Long-time readers of this forum probably know that I enjoy creating pretty charts that depict the performance of tennis players over the years. It is one thing to look at formulas like GOAT Points and Elo, quite another to see a visual representation that depicts a player's performance.
Several years ago I did something similar to what I'll do in this thread, but this one is updated and cleaned up.
Format: Every player is depicted by a color, with four different shades. The darkest is Slam wins; the second darkest is big titles (Tour Finals, Alternate Tour Finals, Masters, Olympics), the lightest are minor titles (ATP 500/250), and gray equals QF, SF, and F results at Slams.
In terms of the cell size of each rectangle, they roughly correspond with current ATP points:
So far I've done the general consensus top 40ish men of the Open Era, with a few recent younglings to round things out. But to start, here is the top 20:
CHART A: TOP 20 MEN'S PLAYERS OF THE OPEN ERA
Now you might quibble with the players I selected to include (or exclude) - and my apologies to those who just missed the cut, including Stan Smith, Gustavo Kuerten, Lleyton Hewitt, Andy Roddick, and others. I think there's room for disagreement on the last two or three slots in the top 20; but the top 15-16 (regardless of order) would probably be agreed upon by almost everyone. I'll touch upon excluded guys and others - to round out a rough top 40 or 50.
While this chart is, by necessity, small enough to fit on a screen and thus might be different to really examine closely, we can glean some info from it:
I'll also try to post the same chart, but with the "mid-line" extended to fit their whole career, from first to last match. Currently it only extends from their first to last Slam QF or title.
Several years ago I did something similar to what I'll do in this thread, but this one is updated and cleaned up.
Format: Every player is depicted by a color, with four different shades. The darkest is Slam wins; the second darkest is big titles (Tour Finals, Alternate Tour Finals, Masters, Olympics), the lightest are minor titles (ATP 500/250), and gray equals QF, SF, and F results at Slams.
In terms of the cell size of each rectangle, they roughly correspond with current ATP points:
8: Slam title
6: Tour Finals title
5: Alt Tour Finals title, Slam Final
4: Masters title
3: Olympics Gold, Slam Semifinal
2: ATP 500, Slam Quarterfinal
1: ATP 250
I started this project because I wanted to visually depict the relative dominance of the current Big Three to other eras - starting with Connors-Borg-McEnroe, but then spreading from there. I'll present these in a variety of ways, and am also open to requests. That is, if you want to see a certain group of players alongside each other, let me know and I'll copy and paste.So far I've done the general consensus top 40ish men of the Open Era, with a few recent younglings to round things out. But to start, here is the top 20:
CHART A: TOP 20 MEN'S PLAYERS OF THE OPEN ERA
Now you might quibble with the players I selected to include (or exclude) - and my apologies to those who just missed the cut, including Stan Smith, Gustavo Kuerten, Lleyton Hewitt, Andy Roddick, and others. I think there's room for disagreement on the last two or three slots in the top 20; but the top 15-16 (regardless of order) would probably be agreed upon by almost everyone. I'll touch upon excluded guys and others - to round out a rough top 40 or 50.
While this chart is, by necessity, small enough to fit on a screen and thus might be different to really examine closely, we can glean some info from it:
- The relative representational sizes of different players across careers. One of the things that stands out is that the Big Three literally dwarf everyone else - even Pete Sampras. If we were to extend back during the Pro/Amateur Era, Laver and Rosewall would look similar. It is also interesting to note that Sampras doesn't look that much more dominant than the trio of Bjorn Borg, John McEnroe and Ivan Lendl, with Connors a bit behind - with his career being more spread out, and thus not the same "dominance bulk" as those four. Then Agassi's interesting career, which really looks like two smaller careers, followed by Becker, Edberg, and Wilander, whose prime period was relatively short. Furthermore, this chart also shows how Andy Murray's career looks closer to those three than it does to the next group down.
- The array of different players across time, with that huge gap in the late 90s to early 2000s, when the careers of Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi were winding down, before the rise of the Big Three. The proverbial "Wild West" era. On the other hand, this also illustrates the clustering of all-time greats in the mid-80s to early 90s. You can also see how the first half decade of the Open Era was still dominated by top players from before (most notably Laver and Rosewall), as well as a group of lesser greats, before the new cohort (lead by Connors and Borg) really took over in 1974.
- The Big Three are similar. On first blush, it is hard to say one looks more dominant than the other, with the caveat that I'd probably give Novak the slight edge over Rafa and Roger, who are very close, simply with a different pattern of dominance.
- The Late Careers of the Big Three. Finally, I have mentioned this before, but in this chart you can clearly see one way the Big Three are different than all the other greats of the Open Era: All had a point in their 30s when it looked like--if they had followed typical career arcs--they would have wound down. For Roger it was 2013 or 2016, for Rafa 2015-16, for Novak 2018. Before those points, they'd still have more impressive careers than anyone else before them, but with less of a gap between them and the pack. It is the "extra padding" they added that put everyone else far in the rearview. We can also see that Murray didn't have the same bounce-back, with very little after his big 2016 season.
I'll also try to post the same chart, but with the "mid-line" extended to fit their whole career, from first to last match. Currently it only extends from their first to last Slam QF or title.