ILE rolling non-slam Tennis thread

Djokovic/Tsonga was woeful quality last night

Nishikori completely crumbled after missing points for a double break against Nadal, why couldn't Zverev have just put away that volley???

Waking up to find Aga had managed to take 10 games off Serena counts as a win

vika! imprssed she could weather serenas comeback

the play level of novak/raonic is really insanely hi already

novaks dfense is so crazy

http://www.smh.com.au/sport/tennis/indian-wells-tournament-director-says-women-should-be-on-their-knees-thanking-men-20160320-gnmuay.html

gross. The Williamses (and the rest of the WTA too) should go back to boycotting them.

Novak is at it as well. wtf.

Moore is a pig and Novak is a bit of a div for wading in. Also: the ATP is already awash with more money than the WTA. Average prize money across 12 WTA Premier (=470 ranking points) events = $880k; average prize money across 13 ATP-500 events = $1.71m. Similar gulf at levels below that. It's only the Slams and the Premier Mandatory/ATP-1000 events where there is parity. So, Novak, you already get paid more because the sponsors deem the men's tour worth more investment (and that disparity is all in best-of-three events, lest we mention that particular favourite again).

Novak didn't even get that Moore was shading him as well ;_;

(Muguruza is such a gigantic disappointment this year. Third straight year where the previous year's breakout young player totally collapses, what is wrong with them?)

A considerable part of this could simply be what is somewhat inexactly called "regression to the mean".

Get a hundred dice. Number them with a felt-tip pen, thus giving them personalities of sorts. Throw each of them, say, 100 times, and record the totals.

Most will yield somewhere near 350 points. Some will be noticably worse and some will be a lot worse; some will be noticably better and some will simply be attention-catchingly good. Spray-paint these with gold paint, and watch them extra carefully the next season. That is, when you just throw all the dice 100 more times.

You will, most probably, find that the gold-painted dice do worse than in the previous season. Not necessarily worse than the average, but pretty much *all* of them will do worse than in their noticable breakout season. Do you see?

I'm not suggesting all players are equal (as dice are). The simulation above would work with loaded dice as well -- some dice could have a true average of 4 or 5, and some of 2 or 3, and they would perform differently in season 1. But the ones that most defied your expectancy (positively or negatively!) would probably fall back to their real expectation the next season.

But the players you notice most are the ones that have surprised you positively, rather than negatively! Why? Well, how does tennis tournaments work, as opposed to e.g. football leagues? The loser is eliminated, the winner plays again. There will be more throws of the (loaded) dice to notice the winners.

Yes, I am suggesting that a breakout season is an indication of a hell of a lot of luck. In addition to a hell of a lot of skill, let it be said. The luck is not sustainable. The skill is. I believe it is very, very, *very* hard to decide what the mix between skill and luck is, even if you watch the players closely; even if you *are* one of the players.

tl;dr version: *The* breakout player will almost always collapse, due to maths.

Yes, I am suggesting that a breakout season is an indication of a hell of a lot of luck. In addition to a hell of a lot of skill, let it be said. The luck is not sustainable. The skill is. I believe it is very, very, *very* hard to decide what the mix between skill and luck is, even if you watch the players closely; even if you *are* one of the players.

Yeah, this is an interesting way of looking at it, and I guess this is why I try to follow promising juniors as soon as I can so I can follow them in juniors and through the ITFs - a breakthrough season should be part of an overall pattern, a consistent arc in a player's career.

Even at the time a lot of tennis fans noted how Stephens' and Bouchard's breakthrough seasons owed a lot to draws falling apart and big names getting injured (neither exhibited elite-level results for their age as 15/16/17-yr-olds). Muguruza's been harder to assess because she hit the tour relatively late (due to sparing play rather than poor results) and her progress has been stalled by surgery etc.

The disproportionate attention on *Slam* breakthroughs is a hindrance imo. You can have a big Slam run, or even two or three, due to factors like draws falling apart and friendly seedings. But it's much more promising to gradually build up consistency week in, week out even though THAT headline-grabbing Slam run might elude you (as with Bencic so far). Azarenka had been top 20 for THREE YEARS before she made a Slam SF! That worked out much better in the long run.

The ATP does much better at marketing its young players based on tour performances rather than Slam performances (and as a group, so there is never *the one*). The Next Generation campaign atm is exactly how it should be done - Coric, Zverev, Chung et al haven't done shit at Slams yet but that's less important at this point.

Anyway it's been quite a year for tennis's mainstream presence, I'm quite glad the sexism row occurred because there's so much deeply entrenched misogyny in the tennis world, among the ATP players and even in the way the WTA markets itself, but it's is SO FRUSTRATING having to make the equal prize money argument yet again. Quite surprising that PR-slick Djokovic has embarrassed himself over this (particularly liked him waffling about hormones, then turning around and blaming his words on adrenaline in his non-apology). Quite heartening to see how many ATP players seem to have realised they at least need to be on the right side of history publicly. Very much enjoyed Murray dragging Stakhovsky in the press, on Twitter etc.

Nicole Gibbs and Alla Kudryavtseva = new faves

http://www.sportscribe.ca/home/tennis-players-set-twitter-ablaze-over-sexism-row

surely I will not see a worse tennis match this year than Zverev/Mmoh. Atrocious quality. I guess Zverev's still hungover from his Nadal choke but for a highly-touted 18yo, Mmoh did fuck all to make him pay for it

3rd set tiebreak and schwartzman is bleeding from both knees rn

uhh sloane was up 3-1 on watson.......and then lost 11 str8 games

haaaaaaa

Watson always used to own Stephens tho. Nice reversion to the norm!

kasatkina had p nice groundstrokes, first time im seeing this girl

can't stop watching this https://vine.co/v/ippiO22Lvjv

so casual <3

after her career Aga could make a fortune on the senior circuit as the female Bahrami if she wants

fed/del potro today should be interesting

yeah for once Delpo isn't the one most recently coming off surgery! I won't be in to see it though :(

Fritz has a shot vs Ferrer imo.

Saw a bit of Paul/Smyczek yesterday, surprised Smyczek won it after gagging so hard in the second set. Paul's game seemed kind of blah at first but he really started going for it when he made his comeback and it was like, why weren't you playing like this all along.

I really like Kasatkina's game too, the speed of her progress has been astonishing. Went from 370 to 72 during 2015 and is already up to 34 in the live rankings. Had played one WTA match in her life this time last year, now has two Slam 3Rs, two Premier SFs and a Masters QF.

She wasn't ranked highly enough to get into qualifying at RG or Wimbledon last year and this year she'll likely be a seed at both.

fed out w stomach props

LL zeballos takes the 1st set off delpotro!

& delpo may be hurt again :(

zeballos through

ton of upsets today

lmaoooooo @ Lisicki losing to Begu from 4-6 6-1 5-0 up

is there some sort of rule whereby only one Pliskova can do well in any given tournament?

Osaka thrashed Errani, fifth 1997 girl into the top 100. If she happens she could be huge for the game

enjoying this lefty battle zeballos/verdasco

wow @ that finish

super gutsy by zeb

so...apparently the ATP and WTA use different balls? and the women's balls are "smaller" and "livelier"? i had no idea about this!

pouille/ferrer each playing such attacking styles is cool.. pouille just took the tiebreak (1st ferrers lost this yr) to force a 3rd

I've been wondering when Pouille would make a move in a big event for a while now, good for him. End of Zeballos/Verdasco was ridic, yeah! Verdasco getting booed off court, lol.

V much enjoyed Niculescu utterly dismantling Vandeweghe. Made her look like she was lurching into every ball. Vandeweghe's volleys deserved a laughter track.

Today's tennis!

- Aga played a very tired third set vs Bacsinszky
- a peaking Kuznetsov is incredible to watch, so many highlight reel BHs from mid-second set onwards
- lmao @ Tsonga's meltdown at the end of the match, what was he thinking approaching on RBA's BH three times in the TB? Got burned every time. RBA is fun to watch, some great passes
- Serena looked completely disinterested towards the end of her match, Sweta was having a good day though. 3rd career win over Serena in a rivalry dating back to 2004

azerenka/muguruza has been great, v hi level

Dimitrov-Murray sounds messy. Dimi's response to a 1-7 tb loss was to win 16 of 18 pts for a double-break lead in set two. Murray almost got them both back, but Dimi just served out, saving a bp. My money is on a 6-1 Murray blow-out in the third.

not quite gregor just broke to go up 4-3

Ha! Murray led 3-1 and fell apart.

Losing from a break up in the third in two straight tournaments! At least we won't have to hear any nonsense about how fatherhood has transformed his game. Well, maybe in the bad way.

wow @ thiem seemingly breaking djoko @ 3-5, coverage going to commercial, only to comeback and say it was challenged and the shot was out

thiem currently 0/7 on break chances

they'd both sat down after that BP, neither thought it'd be in!

sveta looked so done in during that 2nd set, amazed she won it. some p cool points all in all.

same could be said for monfils, in this 3rd, tho showed sum guts & now onserve w the crowd behind him

this is a real battle, kei saved 4 mp's

each guy has separately looked cooked at pts, now tiebreak

nishi still pounding groundstrokes so deep was impressve

novak is only playing like a B- game and still ttly demoralized kei

Siegemund is SUCH a fun player to watch. This match vs Keys is v entertaining

sock has kind sulked his way into this L

super odd match

sock is exhibiting like intermittent chronic fatigue syndrome