Week 47 - Challenger 80 (€44,820) - Bari, Italy (outdoor hard)

GBJ · Club Coach

Week 47 - Challenger 80 (€44,820) - Bari, Italy (outdoor hard)

Stircrazy · Tennis legend

L16: (7) Thomas Fabbiano (ITA) WR 213 defeated Jack Draper WR 259 by 4 & 3 cry

Julia Carrot · All-time great

Oh Boo. He seemed to go a bit backwards after walking up and questioning some call with the Umpire. Didn't help anyway.

Priesty · Challenger level

Disappointing looking scoreline especially considering he had a break in the first set. I expect that AO qualies are out of the equation now?

indiana · Tennis legend

Priesty wrote:
Disappointing looking scoreline especially considering he had a break in the first set. I expect that AO qualies are out of the equation now?

Who knows with covid. I imagine that the AO entry list will be a fair bit weaker than in normal times.

If he's up for it I think he could well make it into qualies ranked in the 250s.

Coup Droit · Tennis legend

L16: (1) Lloyd Glasspool & Harri Heliövaara (FIN) CR 146 (66+80) def. (PR) Toshihide Matsui & Kaito Uesugi (JPN/JPN) CR 1056 (374+682) 7-5 6-2

Stircrazy · Tennis legend

QF: (1) Lloyd Glasspool & Harri Heliövaara (FIN) CR 145 (80+65) vs Marco Bortolotti & Sergio Martos (ITA/ESP) CR 360 (207+153)

GBJ · Club Coach

Priesty wrote:
Disappointing looking scoreline especially considering he had a break in the first set. I expect that AO qualies are out of the equation now?

A thought on how insightful/misleading match stats are versus observing the match:

Do others find themselves thinking about how the deuce scoring system skews the stats in favour of those winning more of the break points (by denying the server the chance to play and win more service points)?

I'm sure we all agree that someone winning more of the big points is much more likely to win the match.

But then you could also look at a match and say 'they won 54% of the points versus 46% by their opponent and THAT was the difference - they won just cos they were winning more points'.

I'm trying to decide how true the latter really is and here's why:

Let's take the second set from Jack Draper v T Fabbiano here as an example to make my point:

I watched most of the set and it seemed very much like one of those sets where both players have a lot of chances to break and it is just down to who takes their chances better - who plays the big points well.

Jack won 1/7 bp

TB won 2/4 bp

so you could say that of 11 big points that set jack won 3 and TB won 7 and that's why TB won it 6-3

Another perspective would be that TB won the set because he won 54% of the points 46% by Jack - he won 8% more of the points than Jack did; he won 59% of his service points to Jack's 54% so it seems fair that he won more of the games and the set - he won more points and played better overall.

But is it that simple? What about this:

Let's say that Jack did happen to win more of the big points;

let's say that he happened to win both of the bp he had where he was 30-40 up (which he was both at 2-3 and 3-5 before losing the next 3 points (I think) to lose the game both times). If he had won the 30-40 bps then this would not only mean ONE point more for Jack and one less for TB but would mean TB WOULD ALSO NOT HAVE HAD THE CHANCE THE WIN THE NEXT TWO POINTS and therefore TB's service points won would not just go down from 22/37 TO 20/37 (54%) but right down to 16/33 or down from 59% to 48% service points won - just by Jack taking those two bp!!!!

To me this is a fascinating feature of the tennis scoring system.

This would have only moved the bp stats to 3/7 and 2/4 so TB would still have won 6 of the big points to Jack's 5 but Jack would have been a break ahead and serving for the set at 5-4 up instead of having just lost it 3-6.

Clearly I've been thinking about this far to much (in the early hours whilst trying to keep my newborn asleep so my wife can sleep) but I quite often think about this when looking at match stats and wonder - do others think of it this way too?

I guess in this case all this thinking leads me to conclude that what looks like a disappointingly one sided result on paper can often be much more down to a couple of points here or there than it looks like it was even from some stats.

I just thought I'd put this out there to see what others' perspective is on this if anyone has thoughts to share.

GBJ · Club Coach

Julia Carrot wrote:
Oh Boo. He seemed to go a bit backwards after walking up and questioning some call with the Umpire. Didn't help anyway.

Yeah looked pretty bad from the two officials tbh. It was Deuce on Jack's first serve with him 4-3 up with a break. He then went on to lose the next 6 points on his serve to lose the set although not through obvious bad play so much but he had not faced a bp til that point and seemed pretty comfortable in his lead til then. The serve looked clearly in from replaying it on https://livestream.com/atp/events/9951691/videos/227630620 (at 104min if you wanna see it). Jack looked shocked it had been called out and for good reason. The line judge called fault then immediately corrected himself putting his arms out flat. The umpire though shouted fault straight after the line judge - it appeared to me that he was doing this to clarify to Jack that it was called out. The umpire then looked over to the line judge who just as the umpire looked for some reason then stuck one arm out like it really was a fault - it kinda looked like he was embarrassed and didn't wanna disagree with the umpire who appeared to have called it out for himself but then kept saying to Jack (of the line judge) 'I was just overcalling him' by which he seemed to me to mean he was just calling what the line judge called a bit louder - rather than overuling. It took Jack a while to as questions to work out what had actually gone on and what the umpire meant and whether the umpire was overuling the originally out call like he should have etc.

Coup Droit · Tennis legend

GBJ, hope you new baby slept a decent amount......never easy....magical times though.....

I'm really the last one you should talk to about stats so, forgive me, but I didn't follow this:

"Jack won 1/7 bp
TB won 2/4 bp
so you could say that of 11 big points that set jack won 3 and TB won 7 and that's why TB won it 6-3"

Is the first 7 in line 3 a typo? And it should be 6?

You're saying all the bps are the important points and TB won more AND saved more?

I would like to know what are the odds of winning a point on serve - a point is not 50:50 obviously, so overall, across all ATP, say, what are the odds for winning any point on serve. AND then, what are the odds for winning a point when it's break point against you (saving break point). Which, it seems to me, are far higher (although that might be especially amongst the better players - you'll often seem them play one way at 15-15 and then quite differently at 15-40, or pull a super serve out the bag at 15-40 - it's certainly part of the training with many coaches).

Anyway, it's not much response, GBJ, sorry, but enjoy your musings about the nature of tennis and its scoring And enjoy the baby

-- Edited by Coup Droit on Thursday 25th of November 2021 09:08:16 AM

JonH comes home · Tennis legend

Lloyd and Harri lost the opening set, perhaps surprisingly, 6-4

GBJ · Club Coach

Thanks CD

it was bad maths on my part. I just was adding together the 7 bp jack had against the Fabbiano serve and the 4 TB had against jack and calling those big points (obvs you can argue that various others are big points too but I?m simplifying) to make 11 played total in the set. TB won 8 of these (not 7 like I said) and jack won only 3.

Stircrazy · Tennis legend

Stircrazy wrote:
QF: (1) Lloyd Glasspool & Harri Heliövaara (FIN) CR 145 (80+65) vs Marco Bortolotti & Sergio Martos (ITA/ESP) CR 360 (207+153)

Match suspended on account of darkness.

indiana · Tennis legend

Lloyd & Harri were seeing the ball well enough. Had just broken to love.

4-6 *4-2

The TNNS App says that play has "temporarily stopped" and there's another doubles looking quite close to a conclusion on an indoor court so I wonder if they might finish indoors tonight

-- Edited by indiana on Thursday 25th of November 2021 04:49:23 PM

indiana · Tennis legend

Hmm, they appear to have started a fresh doubles QF indoors rather than conclude Lloyd & Harri's match.