Many tennis players are good, even really good. Maybe they even win a grand slam or some master’s tournaments. But, few tennis players are great. Serena Williams, Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer – possibly, Carlos Alcaraz, quickly come to mind as the greats. What makes them different? Let’s dive into what separates them from the pack by the numbers.
The key factor is consistency. Good players can have moments of greatness but great players are consistently phenomenal tennis players.
Let’s go through an example. Novak Djokovic is undeniably a great player, while we view Stan Wawrinka as a good player. Djokovic has won a record 24-grand slams while Wawrinka has won a respectable 3. But, Wawrinka could lose in the first round one tournament, then win the next, while we can expect Djokovic to at least make the semifinals of nearly every slam he plays in.
In the charts below we show the career evolution (2007-2024) of Djokovic and Wawrinka. We categorize performance at grand slams based on percentage of matches* won per slam, with a column each year for each tournament*.
Chart 1: Novak Djokovic
Chart 2: Stan Warwinka
While consistency does a lot to explain greatness, defining good vs great requires a lot of nuance. Is a player who won all four grand slams in one year but never wins another grand slam great? What if the player is consistently good for ten years then constantly ranks below 100 for the next five years?
We aim to answer these questions using statistical data and models. Tune into the rest of our articles to explore tennis by the numbers, including defining a great tennis player. We will dive deep into specific players, matches, and strategies, with an emphasis on data itself.
Notes:
*Grand slam percentage of matches won are rounded to the nearest clean number. For example, losing the second round means winning one-match or 14.28% of potential tournament matches. We round to 15%. Qualifying matches are excluded and walkover matches are counted as a win for consistency.
*Abstaining or if the tournament is not held is counted as a blank.