Weird Tennis H2Hs

[britbox]

So, while Roger's H2H with Rafa has improved a little, it's still lopsided... although the number of meetings on clay goes some way to providing an explanation.

Here are a few weird ones....

Santoro 7 Safin 2

One of Safin's wins came on a retirement. The Magician was kyptonite to the big Russian.

Edberg 10 Muster 0

Four of Edberg's wins came on clay, Muster's favourite surface.

Becker 25 Edberg 10

Becker kind of ran away with this, winning 12 of the last 14 (and one of the losses was a retirement). Edberg enjoyed a 3-1 H2H in the majors though including 2 Wimbledon titles.

Mecir 7 Wilander 4

The Big Cat Mecir was known as the Swede Killer. Edberg eventually got his number (leading the H2H 10-5), but he enjoyed a H2H over most of the top vikings.


Any other weird H2Hs spring to mind?

 

[Moxie]

The Santoro-Safin one is funny. Safin definitely said that he was never happy to see Fabrice on the other side of the net. I always thought that it was odd that Borg-McEnroe finished at 7-7. For such a rivalry, they really didn't play each other that much.

 

[Murat Baslamisli]

I never understood how Muster could not muster one win against Edberg

Also, Davydenko-Nadal 6-5 is not normal. I know why people think it is the hard courts, style of play etc but Nikolay was beating Nadal on hard courts way after Nadal figured that surface out. Nadal was already beating Roger on hards at that time FFS. And Roger is 19-2 against Nikolay ! Go figure...

 

[Moxie]

I never understood how Muster could not muster one win against Edberg

Also, Davydenko-Nadal 6-5 is not normal. I know why people think it is the hard courts, style of play etc but Nikolay was beating Nadal on hard courts way after Nadal figured that surface out. Nadal was already beating Roger on hards at that time FFS. And Roger is 19-2 against Nikolay ! Go figure...

Davydenko was the very first one to figure out how to take Nadal's ball early. Or anyway, it was just his style. Davydenko didn't really have to play Rafa on clay (once?) but, yeah, the triangle between the 3 of them is a funny one.

 

[mrzz]

Hrbaty having a positive H2H against Nadal, Federer and Djokovic (if you count a challenger win Hrbaty has over Djokovic).

 

[Front242]

I actually googled Hrbaty last night as I knew he had a winning h2h over Federer but didn't realize against the other 2 also. Federer of 2000 was nothing special though.

 

[mrzz]

He has a win over Federer in 2004. You Hrbaty haters are always trying to find excuses...

Correction: Counting the challenger (a match is a match) the Djokovic H2H is 1-1. Considering that he has a 1-0 H2H against Murray, he is the only living guy to have a non-negative different than zero H2H with all members of the Big 3 + 1.

 

[brokenshoelace]

I think Wawrinka vs. Djokovic is a really weird h2h actually. It's laughably lopsided in Djokovic's favor (19-5) except you know, it feels very different with Wawrinka having some huge wins. And this is not strictly a case of Novak amassing a lot of wins pre-2014. I mean, he did, but he still won all of their non-grand slam meetings since, 2 of which in absolutely dominant fashion, and yet, Stan has inflicted some pretty big blows.

I agree that Davydenko having a winning h2h over Nadal is a little weird, especially how dominant he was over him in some of their hard court match-ups. He was a bad match-up for Rafa to be sure, but Nadal has/had winning h2h records over many of his supposed bad match-ups.

 

[Murat Baslamisli]

Davydenko was the very first one to figure out how to take Nadal's ball early. Or anyway, it was just his style. Davydenko didn't really have to play Rafa on clay (once?) but, yeah, the triangle between the 3 of them is a funny one.

They played 4 times on clay. Rafa won all of them.

 

[Front242]

He has a win over Federer in 2004. You Hrbaty haters are always trying to find excuses...

Correction: Counting the challenger (a match is a match) the Djokovic H2H is 1-1. Considering that he has a 1-0 H2H against Murray, he is the only living guy to have a non-negative different than zero H2H with all members of the Big 3 + 1.

lol, my point was it was no surprise he beat Federer in 2000 as he wasn't a great player by any means then so it doesn't actually stand out much as a weird stat as it's not like he beat a brilliant prime Federer in 2000. Far from it. Fair enough with 2004

 

[Busted]

The Becker\Edberg matchup became like Lendl\McEnroe. Becker just had too much power for Edberg to handle at net.