Thursday 20 June 2013

A Genuine Four Horse Race?

With the start of Wimbledon just days away, it seems only right to take a minute to look ahead to what could be yet another fascinating Grand Slam tournament. 
It is not often that all of the big four can be considered to have a genuine chance of winning. Djokovic could win anything, Nadal is the world's form player, Murray comes off the back of a victory at Queen's and carries incredible home support while reigning champion Federer can simply never be written off on grass. I'm sure there will be suggestions of an outsider having a chance, someone like Tsonga, Berdych or Del Potro but the reality is that needing to be beat 2 or 3 of the top ten over 5 sets will be too much for anyone else. I believe we have a genuine four horse race.

A few years ago the men's tennis world was utterly dominated by Federer and Nadal, as the great rivals won 24 of the 28 majors from '04 to '10. Only with Djokovic's sudden and meteoric rise to prominence in 2011 was the stranglehold broken. Since then, the spoils have been somewhat more shared, in such a way that the four Slams are currently held by four different men, for the first time since 2003. Any of the four could quite possibly be holding the golden trophy aloft in a fortnight's time, but what is almost certain is that there will be some epic clashes in there. Nadal being ranked 5th may or may not have much of an effect as there are inevitably going to be multiple match ups of the top men however the draw throws them together. The last time there was a straight sets final between 2 of the 4 was the 2011 Aussie Open, and if you take Murray's streak of final defeats out of the equation, it's the 2008 French Open.

Obviously there's no telling when a Lukas Rosol might come along again and keep us all on our toes, but I for one hope that we'll be seeing the four of them battling it out in two weeks' time. 

For the geekier among you I've quickly worked out what ranking points they'll all be on at the end of the tournament depending on how far they make it:


R1 (10)
R2 (45)
R3 (90)
R4 (180)
QF (360)
SF (720)
F (1200)
W (2000)
Djokovic
11840
11875
11920
12010
12190
11830
12310
13110
Murray
7370
7405
7450
7540
7720
8080
8560
9360
Federer
5750
5785
5830
5920
6100
6460
6940
7740
Ferrer
6870
6905
6950
7040
7220
7580
8060
8860
Nadal
6860
6895
6940
7030
7210
7570
8050
8850
(current points, based on last year's performance is in bold)

And if you really like stats, here are their respective winning records, both for 2013 to date and all time at Wimbledon:

Djokovic 2013: 33-5 (86.8%) / Wimbledon all time: 32-7 (82%)
Murray 2013: 27-5 (84.4) / Wimbledon all time: 30-7 (81.1%)
Federer 2013: 26-7 (78.8%) / Wimbledon all time: 66-7 (90.4%)
Nadal 2013: 43-2 (95.6%) / Wimbledon all time: 36-6 (85.7%)

Relevance to Sunday 7th July = 0%