Roland Garros 2013 Seeding Scenarios

One of the major debates raging in the tennis world these days is whether the Roland Garros seeding committee should depart from the regular ATP rankings and seed Rafael Nadal higher than his current (and possibly future) #5 ranking. What happens if they don't? With two big tournaments left to play - Madrid and Rome - the rankings might still change in several ways. David Ferrer and Rafael Nadal will contest the #4 spot, while Andy Murray and Roger Federer will fight over the #2 ranking. If ranking calculations are not your forte, here are the major possible scenarios.

The Basic Numbers

All four players will be seeded in both Rome and Madrid, and will get first round BYEs. Therefore, the points they can earn (in each of the tournaments) are:
R2 loss - 10
R3 loss - 90
QF loss - 180
SF loss - 360
F loss - 600
W - 1000

David Ferrer & Rafael Nadal

First of all, it's important to note that Ferrer's Estoril results won't be relevant to these caculations - he already has an ATP250 tournament win (worth 250 points) that he can't count, so even if he wins Estoril his current points total won't change.

Stripping away the points Ferrer and Nadal are defending in the two clay Masters 1000 tournaments, Ferrer has 6380 points, and Nadal - 4895 points. That's a difference of 1485 points between the two, which Nadal will have to overcome in order to get to #4. Thus, we can start analyzing.

If Ferrer gets at least 515 points in both tournaments combined, he'll stay #4 until the French Open, regardless of Nadal's result. Thus, Ferrer will be #4 if:

• He reaches the final of either of the tournaments
• He makes at least a QF in one tournament and at least a SF in the other

Furthermore, Nadal has to get extremely good results to even have a chance of getting the #4 ranking. If he wins less than 1485 points in both tournaments combined, he'll stay #5. Thus, Nadal has to win one of Madrid/Rome and make the final of the other, and even that might not be enough if Ferrer's results are good enough. If Nadal fails to win Madrid, Ferrer only has to win two matches during the two events to stay #4. 

Andy Murray & Roger Federer

Without the points of Madrid and Rome, Andy Murray has 8480 points (he didn't play in Madrid last year, and lost early in Rome), while Federer has 7310 (he won Madrid and reached the Rome SF in 2012). That's a difference of 1170 points in Murray's favor. 

If Murray gets at least 830 points in both tournaments combined, he'll guarantee himself the #2 seed for the Roland Garros. Murray will be #2 anyway if:

• He wins either Madrid or Rome
• He reaches the final of one tournament and the SF of the other

Federer, like Nadal, has to make it far if he wants to get to #2. If he wins 1180 points or less, he'll remain #3. Therefore, Federer has to do one of the following to have a chance at #2:

• Make the finals at both tournaments
• Win one tournament and reach at least SF at the other 

The more matches Murray wins in Madrid, the farther Federer will have to go - if Murray wins three matches (Madrid SF), Federer needs W+F, if Murray reaches the Madrid final, Federer has to win both tournaments to stand a chance.

Of course, all of those scenarios can't all happen together - out of the four players, at most one can win each of the two tournaments. The draw in Madrid might even make some of these options unreachable. But until then, you can at least know what you want your favourite player to do.

Edited on May 9: Federer's loss means that he won't be seeded #2 in France; but at most #3 (can even fall down to #4 if Ferrer does really well in Rome and Federer does not).

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Personally, I think the Roland Garros seeding committee should follow the rankings as they are. The concept of protected ranking exists in the ATP for cases just like this one, when a player has been away with an injury for a long period of time. The rule, not accidentally, states that protected ranking will be used only for determining entry lists, not for seeding. There's no good reason to deviate from that rule now, and changing the seeding to fit a specific player (or a specific group of players, in this case) is a dangerous and unfair precedent.

Time Between Points and Nadal-Djokovic Matches

One of the talking points in men's tennis in 2013 is the not-entirely-new rule about the allowed time between points - 25 seconds and not a moment more. The ATP changed the rule to a lighter version - ducking a serve, not a point, if the server goes over the time limit for the second time in the match - and tightened the enforcement of the rule considerably. Much attention has been drawn to the effect of this change on the game's pace. Carl Bialik, on the Wall Street Journal's blog, suggests that matches in 2013 have gotten faster by an average of about 7%, compared to last year's tournaments.

It has been widely suggested that one of the catalysts for the implementation of the new rule was the disproportionally long 2012 Australian Open Final between Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic, which lasted  a record breaking 5 hours and 53 minutes. Steve Tignor wrote about their first match in 2013, the Monte Carlo finals:

The tour decided to crack down on slow play in large part because of these two. Their six-hour Australian Open final was the catalyst, but their 4-hour, three-set Madrid semi in 2009 also lives in plodding-play infamy as well. Their points are long, of course, but in the past, when they faced each other, they seemed liberated to take even longer between them than they did against anyone else.

Yesterday was different. This Monte Carlo final lasted 21 games and took 1 hour, 52 minutes. Last year’s Rome final between these two also lasted 21 games, but took 2 hours, 20 minutes. There were, as far as I saw, no official time warnings handed out by chair umpire Mohamed Lahyani, and both guys were moving with dispatch.

These statistics - 1:52 and 2:20 for 21 games - are clearly not enough by themselves, and seemed misleading to me. Taken to the extreme, if every game ends after 40-0 (or 0-40), the match will be much quicker than if every game goes to deuce. Therefore, I checked the number of points played in both matches, and was surprised to see them nearly equal - the 2013 Monte Carlo final had 139 points, and the 2012 Rome Final - 143 points. This piqued my interest, and I decided to compare all of the 34 Nadal-Djokovic matches in terms of the average elapsed time per point^ - the overall match length divided by the total number of points played.

There were several questions that seemed interesting to me before doing the analysis:

• Will the pair's longest matches (AO '12 for five-setters, Madrid '09 for best of three) be the ones with the longest time per point?
• Will their Monte Carlo match be the shortest, as we might expect?
• How did the time/point change over time in the rivalry?
• Does surface play a part?

Here are the results, sorted by time/point (in seconds) - from shortest to longest:

Yr	Tourn*	Surface	Win	Final Score	Pts**	Time	Time/pt
07	Wimb	Grass	Nad	36 61 41 RET	132	1:41	45.91
08	Queen	Grass	Nad	76(6) 75	172	2:16	47.44
13	MC	Clay	Djo	62 76(1)	139	1:52	48.35
07	IW	Hard	Nad	62 75	116	1:34	48.62
07	Miami	Hard	Djo	63 64	119	1:37	48.91
07	RG	Clay	Nad	75 64 62	181	2:28	49.06
08	OG	Hard	Nad	64 16 64	160	2:11	49.13
09	WTF	Hard	Djo	76(5) 63	144	1:58	49.17
09	Cincy	Hard	Djo	61 64	111	1:32	49.73
07	WTF	Hard	Nad	64 64	125	1:44	49.92
11	Wimb	Grass	Djo	64 61 16 63	177	2:28	50.17
07	Canada	Hard	Djo	75 63	132	1:51	50.45
08	Cincy	Hard	Djo	61 75	102	1:26	50.59
08	RG	Clay	Nad	64 62 76(3)	198	2:49	51.21
08	IW	Hard	Djo	63 62	101	1:28	52.28
10	USO	Hard	Nad	64 57 64 62	255	3:43	52.47
09	Paris	Hard	Djo	62 63	88	1:17	52.50
09	DC	Clay	Nad	64 64 61	169	2:28	52.54
07	Rome	Clay	Nad	62 63	113	1:41	53.63
08	Hamburg	Clay	Nad	75 26 62	203	3:03	54.09
09	Rome	Clay	Nad	76(2) 62	136	2:03	54.26
06	RG	Clay	Nad	64 64 RET	126	1:54	54.29
10	WTF	Hard	Nad	75 62	123	1:52	54.63
12	MC	Clay	Nad	63 61	86	1:19	55.12
11	IW	Hard	Djo	46 63 62	158	2:26	55.44
11	USO	Hard	Djo	62 64 67(3) 61	268	4:10	55.97
09	MC	Clay	Nad	63 26 61	174	2:43	56.21
12	RG	Clay	Nad	64 63 26 75	241	3:49	57.01
12	AO	Hard	Djo	57 64 62 67(5) 75	369	5:53	57.40
11	Miami	Hard	Djo	46 63 76(4)	205	3:22	59.12
12	Rome	Clay	Nad	75 63	143	2:21	59.16
09	Madrid	Clay	Nad	36 76(5) 76(9)	245	4:03	59.51
11	Rome	Clay	Djo	64 64	130	2:13	61.38
11	Madrid	Clay	Djo	75 64	133	2:18	62.26
Yr	Tourn.	Surface	Win	Final Score	Pts	Time	Time/pt
	Average				161	2:23	53.17

* AO = Australian Open, Cincy = Cincinnati, DC = Davis Cup WG R1 ESP-SRB, IW = Indian Wells, MC = Monte Carlo, OG = Beijing Olympics, RG = Roland Garros, USO = US Open, Wimb = Wimbledon, WTF = Masters Cup/World Tour Finals
** Pts = Total points, Time = match time (hours:minutes), Time/pt = average elapsed time per point (seconds)

Several interesting observations can be made at first glance -

• Monte Carlo is in the top 3 of 'quickest play' between Nadal and Djokovic, while the other two matches in the top 3 were played on grass.
• The bottom of the table is rich in clay matches (more on that later). 
• The pair's 2011-2012 matches are all (together with Madrid 2009 and Monte Carlo 2009) at the bottom of the table, except for Wimbledon 2011 (which is played on... grass). 

Here's a graphical way of looking at the data. You can compare the time/points and the overall match length for each of the matches:

Curiously, from the 2010 US Open and through the 2011 clay season, the period of Djokovic's ascendancy to the no. 1 spot, the time/point steadily rises. It drops in Wimbledon 2011, and never gets to the same peak again. Of course, time/point includes both the time of play and the time between points, and during the four Masters 1000 tournaments of 2011, Nadal and Djokovic played some of their most grueling matches in terms of rally length (it would be interesting to get those numbers, if they exist anywhere in the hawk-eye archives). Notably, the time/point during the 2012 Australian Open wasn't as high as during Miami, Madrid or Rome in 2011 (although it's, of course, quite high).

Now, let's take a look at the surfaces. If we simply divide the above table into two halves ('quicker' and 'slower' matches), with 17 matches in each, and count the surfaces in each half, this is what we get:

	Hard	Clay	Grass
Top half (time/point < 52.52)	11	3	3
Bottom half (time/point > 52.52)	5	12	0

Without going into statistics too much, the numbers for hard courts and clay courts suggest that there's a significant difference between the two halves. In other words, hard court matches between Nadal and Djokovic tend to be in the top half (i.e. quicker), while the clay court meetings tend to be in the bottom half (slower). Generally, 3 matches on grass are not a large enough sample to draw statistical conclusions of this kind, but it's not surprising that the grass matches they did have are in the top half, especially since two of them are the quickest matches they had in terms of elapsed time per point. The overall conclusion is, of course clear - hard courts (and grass, most likely) meetings between the two players are quicker, clay court matches are slower.

It will be interesting to see if future matches between the two, especially on clay, continue the Monte Carlo trend (which goes against the usual pattern of play) and become quicker than what we (and the players) are accustomed to.

What other statistics and information would you like to see about those matches? Are there any more type of matches you'd like to see analyzed that way? Questions and comments will be very much welcomed. 

^ Methodology:

Sources: I extracted the data of the Djokovic-Nadal head-to-head from Jeff Sackman's wonderful TennisAbstract website. The missing data for their lone Davis Cup meeting was manually filled in from the official match scorecard, which is available on the Davis Cup website.

Data: The ATP statistics include the overall match time (in hours and minutes), as well as the total number of points played during the match. For each match, I calculated ((match time in minutes)*60)/(total points) to get the average elapsed time per point, in seconds. The time measured by tennis officials includes changeovers, medical timeouts and various other stops in play, and therefore the time/point statistic does not reflect the actual time the ball is in play (especially since time between points, as we know, is somewhat volatile).

Graphic representation: Working with excel sucks. The X axis in the graphs is a category axis (and not a time axis), the points on it are equidistant and do not reflect the actual time between Nadal-Djokovic matches.

Raw data, in chronological order of the matches:

Yr	Tourn.	Surface	Win	Final Score	Pts	Time	Time/pt
06	RG	Clay	Nad	64 64 RET	126	1:54	54.29
07	IW	Hard	Nad	62 75	116	1:34	48.62
07	Miami	Hard	Djo	63 64	119	1:37	48.91
07	Rome	Clay	Nad	62 63	113	1:41	53.63
07	RG	Clay	Nad	75 64 62	181	2:28	49.06
07	Wimb	Grass	Nad	36 61 41 RET	132	1:41	45.91
07	Canada	Hard	Djo	75 63	132	1:51	50.45
07	WTF	Hard	Nad	64 64	125	1:44	49.92
08	IW	Hard	Djo	63 62	101	1:28	52.28
08	Hamburg	Clay	Nad	75 26 62	203	3:03	54.09
08	RG	Clay	Nad	64 62 76(3)	198	2:49	51.21
08	Queen	Grass	Nad	76(6) 75	172	2:16	47.44
08	Cincy	Hard	Djo	61 75	102	1:26	50.59
08	OG	Hard	Nad	64 16 64	160	2:11	49.13
09	DC	Clay	Nad	64 64 61	169	2:28	52.54
09	MC	Clay	Nad	63 26 61	174	2:43	56.21
09	Rome	Clay	Nad	76(2) 62	136	2:03	54.26
09	Madrid	Clay	Nad	36 76(5) 76(9)	245	4:03	59.51
09	Cincy	Hard	Djo	61 64	111	1:32	49.73
09	Paris	Hard	Djo	62 63	88	1:17	52.50
09	WTF	Hard	Djo	76(5) 63	144	1:58	49.17
10	USO	Hard	Nad	64 57 64 62	255	3:43	52.47
10	WTF	Hard	Nad	75 62	123	1:52	54.63
11	IW	Hard	Djo	46 63 62	158	2:26	55.44
11	Miami	Hard	Djo	46 63 76(4)	205	3:22	59.12
11	Madrid	Clay	Djo	75 64	133	2:18	62.26
11	Rome	Clay	Djo	64 64	130	2:13	61.38
11	Wimb	Grass	Djo	64 61 16 63	177	2:28	50.17
11	USO	Hard	Djo	62 64 67(3) 61	268	4:10	55.97
12	AO	Hard	Djo	57 64 62 67(5) 75	369	5:53	57.40
12	MC	Clay	Nad	63 61	86	1:19	55.12
12	Rome	Clay	Nad	75 63	143	2:21	59.16
12	RG	Clay	Nad	64 63 26 75	241	3:49	57.01
13	MC	Clay	Djo	62 76(1)	139	1:52	48.35
Yr	Tourn.	Surface	Win	Final Score	Pts	Time	Time/pt
	Average				161	2:23	53.17

Sports and Remembrance

Every year, a week after Passover, Israel commemorates Yom HaShoah ("Day of Holocaust") - the Holocaust Remembrance Day. It is a day of both grieving for the six million who were murdered in the Holocaust, and of telling the story of those who survived. As such, it is a day on which ceremonies are held all over the country, and it's marked by the 10am remembrance siren, during which the whole country halts for two minutes of silence.
This day is also characterized by all forms of entertainment being closed - theatres, pubs and restaurants are shut down for the day, most of the television channels stop their transmissions, and the ones that do work are dedicated to documentary and Holocaust-related films and shows.

Sports, of course, are a form of entertainment. That means that no sports events are staged in Israel on the memorial day, and Israeli national teams usually try to avoid participating in sporting events abroad on that day (and similarly, a week later, during the remembrance day for fallen soldiers). However, while the popular sports, football or basketball, have fairly flexible schedules, which often allow the Israeli teams not to play on Yom HaShoah, the tennis schedule is much more rigid. There's a tournament every week, it almost always starts on Monday, and if a player wishes to avoid playing on a specific day, he or she might as well skip the whole tournament.

Israeli players - Shahar Peer, Dudi Sela, Jonathan Erlich and Andy Ram among them - have encountered this situation frequently, ever since turning pro. They usually submit requests to the tournament directors, asking not to play during certain national days (both memorial days and the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur). However, the schedule restrictions often do not allow for such accommodations, forcing the players to decide whether they are willing to play, while also subjecting themselves to criticism.

Criticism? Yes, indeed. The issue of whether athletes should compete on either of the memorial days is a controversial one in Israel. Teams, players and even coaches (Avram Grant, when he managed English teams, for example) are expected to do everything they can to avoid participation in any sporting events. One point of view says that athletes are just doing their job (the Holocaust Remembrance day is a regular work day for most people in Israel), and therefore there's no reason why they can't compete. The opposing view is that the day is a special one, and should be respected by all, especially by players who represent the country. And so, practically every year, raging debates occur over tennis players' decision to keep on playing.

Why now, you ask? Today was the 2013 Holocaust Remembrance Day. Today, Shahar Peer played a final round of qualifying match in Katowice, Poland. She did it after posting the following status on her Facebook page:

I am in Poland, which makes the upcoming Yom Hashoah all the more real. My heart goes out to all the innocent people who lost their lives during the Holocaust. Never again.

Peer also played with a black ribbon with the words "Never again" on it. She ended up losing 6-4 6-1 to Slovak Anna Schmiedlova, though she will still enter the main draw as a lucky loser, to play Tsvetana Pironkova in the first round.

Was she right to play? Some people commended her for donning the ribbon, thus commemorating the day in her own way. Others said she deserved to lose, since she shouldn't have played, as a representative of the Country of Israel, which mandates avoiding any kind of entertainment. A tennis match (or any sports event), they say, is entertaining other people, and thus disrespecting the spirit of the day.

Personally, I feel like this is a very individual decision. I don't think that during a regular WTA tournament (as opposed to Fed Cup or the Olympics) Peer is playing as a representative of Israel. Tennis is a solitary sport, and every player represents herself, no one else. Moreover, there's little doubt in my mind about the importance of Holocaust Memorial to Shahar herself. Three years ago, she took part in the "March of the Living" that's held every year at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp on Yom HaShoah. She was accompanied by her mother and also her grandmother, who had survived Auschwitz. The experience was documented in a special feature produced by the Tennis Channel, which is available online. With Katowice a mere 40-minute drive away from Auschwitz, is there a better way to honor this day than by living it to its fullest, playing and fighting for a win?

Shahar Peer and her grandmother, Yolina Eckstein, during the March of the Living, Auschwitz 2010
Photo by Troy Borruso  

Edited to add: A day after this post was published, the WTA posted an interesting piece on their website, with Peer's quotes about what playing on the Holocaust Remembrance day means to her,. Among other things, she says she makes sure to observe the two minutes of silence at the same time of the memorial siren in Israel.