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Rather than clogging up the General thread with my various historical odds and ends, I thought I'd start a thread in which to place random thoughts about tennis history. Feel free to contribute - either through response or posting your own stuff.
To start, here is a response to @the AntiPusher - as a second part to this post.
As some of you know, I've been dabbling with a stat called "Premier Event Points" (PEP) that is a handy way to compare seasons, and both simplifies Ultimate Tennis Statistics' GOAT points and emphasizes better results by emphasizing Slams more and cutting out some of the extraneous bits and "doubling up" that comes from adding rankings to results. I've calculated them for about 120 players of the Open Era, and have adapted the formula to pre-Open Era players, which has got me interested in the greats of bygone eras.
One thing I have found is that the "tiers" of players extend all the way back, at least through the beginning of the pro circuit in 1927. Before then and it gets hard to compare - at Wimbledon, for instance, the previous year's winner only had to play one match - the "challenger round." So how to account for a single match win that earns you a Slam title? Certainly it was the biggest match of the year, as Wimbledon was THE event until the other Slams gradually caught up decades later. But on the other hand, does the challenger winner deserve more credit for winning one big match vs. the guy who won seven to face him? I mean, imagine that happening today: Carlos Alcaraz would be the challenger next year. Let's say Jannik Sinner wins his seven matches, including beating Novak in the "final," then to add insult to injury, has to then face Alcaraz in the challenger round (and of course Alcaraz has to come in cold to defend his title). Sort of a fun rule, but not a very reasonable one.
Anyhow, as far as tiers go, it is clear that Tilden, Gonzales, Rosewall and Laver belong in the "GOAT tier" with Roger, Rafa, and Novak. Those seven players stand above everyone else in tennis history, with a gap in-between them and the next tier.
In the second tier you find a group of players who either have GOAT-tier peaks or great, longer careers: Sampras, Lendl, McEnroe, Borg, and Connors in the Open Era, who are joined by players like Jack Kramer, Don Budge, Ellsworth Vines, and if we want to add the greatest early player, Tony Wilding.
Vines is a good example of how challenging it is to compare across eras. When using today's standards, if you look at his record the first thing you notice are only three Slams - amateur ones, that is. Going a bit deeper and you find four pro Slams and over a dozen Masters-level titles, plus a sprinkling of minor ones. But what made him so great wasn't (as much) the Slams as it was his five World Pro Series championships (WPS) in a row. A lot of folks don't even know about these, but they were the centerpiece of the professional circult for about 35 years. Here are the champions in chronological order of their first championship, with the years they won:
1 Karel Kozeluh (1928)
3 Bill Tilden (1931-33)
5 Ellsworth Vines (1934-38)
3 Don Budge (1939, 41-42)
1 Bobby Riggs (1946)
4 Jack Kramer (1948-51, 53)
7 Pancho Gonzales (1954, 56-61)
1 Ken Rosewall (1963)
The great Pancho is another player whose surface stats don't tell the whole picture; in fact, his surface record is probably the most deceiving: just two Amateur Slams, but 12 Pro Slams and a record 7 World Pro Series championships.
There are a few years missing due to the war and an occasional skip, but in some years the American Pro Tour rose to a similar level. Anyhow, the tours would take up the bulk of a season - sometimes as much as six or seven months. They varied widely in terms of participation and matches played, but generally involved the best of the best. In some years it was just two players, like the US tour in 1950-51 that saw Jack Kramer and Pancho Segura play 92 times, Kramer winning 64-28. Oh, and there were a bunch of other tours - Asia, South America, Australia, etc, of lesser level.
So it is hard to compare these to Slams, as they were essentially "seasons within seasons" - and some of them seasons in their own right (e.g. In 1949-50, Kramer played 123 matches in the world tour, with a record of 94-29).
Another problem with comparing eras is that pro circuit players tended to have lower win percentages because most of their opponents were good to great players. I ran into this problem when I tried to adjust my raw PEP scores with a "quality" element, with W% being the easiest way to do it. There were lesser pros, but the overall "talent density" was very high, which means even the best players lost more often on the pro circuit than on the amateur or even Open Era tours.
You could see this in how almost every top amateur went through an adjustment process once they went pro. For example, as everyone knows, Rod Laver won the amateur Grand Slam in 1962, with an astonishing overall match record of 152-15 (91%), which is a record for most matches won in a single season (Laver has the second highest too, with 147 in 1961; Vilas has the Open Era record with 134 in 1977; of the Big Three, Roger's 92 in 2006 is the highest).
The discrepancy here between, say, Laver's 167 matches played in 1962 and Roger's 98 played in 2006 can be illustrated as follows:
LAVER 1962: 167 matches (152-15); 38 events including 4 GS, 5 other big titles, 15 mid-level, 13 low-level.
FEDERER 2006: 97 matches (92-5); 17 events including 4 GS, 1 Tour Final, 7 Masters, 2 ATP 500, 2 ATP 250
For Laver's events, I used Tennis Base's categorizations of "A, B, C, D, E" - with A being major, B being other big titles, C being mid-level (ATP 500 equivalent) D being low-level (ATP 250) and E being the equivalent of today's challengers.
As you can see, the main difference is that Laver played fewer big titles--5 to Roger's 8--but a ton more mid and low-level: 28 to Roger's 4. I believe, also, that while Slams were usually seven rounds, a lot of tournaments were just 2-4, with first round byes. So a lot more shorter tournaments.
Anyhow, in 1963 Laver went pro. His match record that year was 89-77 yielding a rather pedestrian 53.6 W%, but in 1964 he righted the ship and went 97-33 (74.6%) and up to 101-19 (84.2%) in 1965. Laver played in the last WPS tour in 1963, but lost to Ken Rosewall, going 4-14 against "Muscles" in the playoffs (that tournament had a qualifying part in which 6 players played a total of 123 matches over two months; the top two players, in this case Rosewall and Laver, faced off in 18 matches over four weeks).
We can't simply assign the same value to every WPS tour because they varied in length year to year. Furthermore, just as with Slams, we can't simply assign points to the winner and ignore everyone else...they were sometimes very close, and even players who didn't figure into the finals would sometimes win dozens of matches. In some cases, the player with the best overall record in a tour didn't win it, because they had a losing H2H against the eventual winner. And I'm also minimizing the fact that in some tours, a match consisted of only one set (though usually was best of three).
So in my system, these tours are taken individually and points are awarded depending upon number of matches won, with a bonus for the title. In my work-in-progres formula, some of them were more than double an Open Era Slam (I give 10 points for OE Slams, 5-7 for Amateur depending upon rounds, and Pro Slams range from 4-8, depending upon rounds...I treat those similar to modern Tour Finals). Kramer's WPS in 1950 in which he went 94-29 earned him 33 points - the most for any tournament in my system, while Bobby Riggs only got 10 points for his 1946 championship in which he went 25-22.
Going even further back to before the pro era, you have the rich person's era in which even the top players would often only play a handful of tournaments every year. It was akin to a serious hobby, not far from competitive corporate golf trips.
So tennis history really has three long eras:
1877-1926: Amateur Era
1927-67: Amateur/Pro Era
1968-present: Open Era
There were transitional periods, especially in the late 20s, and each era had its own evolution, but as a general rule those three are relatively distinct. You can kind of compare the second and third big eras, but it is very hard to compare the first and third.
Going back to the tiers, the next two are a bit muddled, with various shades of "lesser great." The tricky part here is the changing nature of Slams. As modern tennis fans, we tend to be overly "Slam-centric" and, whether consciously or not, tend to equate Slam title count with greatness. But we also know that this is problematic: Andy Murray was a far greater player than Jan Kodes, despite both winning three Slams (in a follow-up post, I'll share some charts that illustrate this).
Anyhow, in these next two tiers you have modern players like Murray, Agassi, Becker, Edberg, and Wilander as clear members; and then, perhaps, in the lower (fourth) tier you have players like Courier, Vilas, Nastase, Ashe and maybe Newcombe (though he could belong up a tier).
In the Pro/Amateur Era (1927-47) you add in guys like Roy Emerson, Lew Hoad, Tony Trabert, Frank Sedgman, Fred Perry, Bobby Riggs, Pancho Segura, Jaroslav Drobny, Henri Cochet, Rene Lacoste, Jean Borotra, and possibly one or two others.
The fifth tier would be "near-greats" - players who aren't guy all-time greats, but better than garden variety top ten players. Recently I'd include Daniil Medvedev, Stan Wawrinka, Lleyton Hewitt, Andy Roddick, Marat Safin, and then going back a bit, Gustavo Kuerten, Michael Chang, Goran Ivanisevic, Michael Stich, Vitas Gerulaitis, Stan Smith and maybe one or two others.
Fifth and sixth tier aren't simply differentiated by being a Slam winner, though I'm loathe to include Slamless players like David Ferrer, Alex Zverev, and Tom Okker in the above category, despite being a cut above regular lesser elites. It is also differentiated by how "deep" their resume goes in terms of big titles and PEP. So players like Marin Cilic, Tomas Berdych, and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga all belong in this tier. I haven't yet investigated these players before the Open Era, however.
Anyhow, the above is a long-winded post that started as a reply to poor Antipusher and become more of a preliminary discussion that will lead to more, with charts a-plenty comparing across eras.
To start, here is a response to @the AntiPusher - as a second part to this post.
As some of you know, I've been dabbling with a stat called "Premier Event Points" (PEP) that is a handy way to compare seasons, and both simplifies Ultimate Tennis Statistics' GOAT points and emphasizes better results by emphasizing Slams more and cutting out some of the extraneous bits and "doubling up" that comes from adding rankings to results. I've calculated them for about 120 players of the Open Era, and have adapted the formula to pre-Open Era players, which has got me interested in the greats of bygone eras.
One thing I have found is that the "tiers" of players extend all the way back, at least through the beginning of the pro circuit in 1927. Before then and it gets hard to compare - at Wimbledon, for instance, the previous year's winner only had to play one match - the "challenger round." So how to account for a single match win that earns you a Slam title? Certainly it was the biggest match of the year, as Wimbledon was THE event until the other Slams gradually caught up decades later. But on the other hand, does the challenger winner deserve more credit for winning one big match vs. the guy who won seven to face him? I mean, imagine that happening today: Carlos Alcaraz would be the challenger next year. Let's say Jannik Sinner wins his seven matches, including beating Novak in the "final," then to add insult to injury, has to then face Alcaraz in the challenger round (and of course Alcaraz has to come in cold to defend his title). Sort of a fun rule, but not a very reasonable one.
Anyhow, as far as tiers go, it is clear that Tilden, Gonzales, Rosewall and Laver belong in the "GOAT tier" with Roger, Rafa, and Novak. Those seven players stand above everyone else in tennis history, with a gap in-between them and the next tier.
In the second tier you find a group of players who either have GOAT-tier peaks or great, longer careers: Sampras, Lendl, McEnroe, Borg, and Connors in the Open Era, who are joined by players like Jack Kramer, Don Budge, Ellsworth Vines, and if we want to add the greatest early player, Tony Wilding.
Vines is a good example of how challenging it is to compare across eras. When using today's standards, if you look at his record the first thing you notice are only three Slams - amateur ones, that is. Going a bit deeper and you find four pro Slams and over a dozen Masters-level titles, plus a sprinkling of minor ones. But what made him so great wasn't (as much) the Slams as it was his five World Pro Series championships (WPS) in a row. A lot of folks don't even know about these, but they were the centerpiece of the professional circult for about 35 years. Here are the champions in chronological order of their first championship, with the years they won:
1 Karel Kozeluh (1928)
3 Bill Tilden (1931-33)
5 Ellsworth Vines (1934-38)
3 Don Budge (1939, 41-42)
1 Bobby Riggs (1946)
4 Jack Kramer (1948-51, 53)
7 Pancho Gonzales (1954, 56-61)
1 Ken Rosewall (1963)
The great Pancho is another player whose surface stats don't tell the whole picture; in fact, his surface record is probably the most deceiving: just two Amateur Slams, but 12 Pro Slams and a record 7 World Pro Series championships.
There are a few years missing due to the war and an occasional skip, but in some years the American Pro Tour rose to a similar level. Anyhow, the tours would take up the bulk of a season - sometimes as much as six or seven months. They varied widely in terms of participation and matches played, but generally involved the best of the best. In some years it was just two players, like the US tour in 1950-51 that saw Jack Kramer and Pancho Segura play 92 times, Kramer winning 64-28. Oh, and there were a bunch of other tours - Asia, South America, Australia, etc, of lesser level.
So it is hard to compare these to Slams, as they were essentially "seasons within seasons" - and some of them seasons in their own right (e.g. In 1949-50, Kramer played 123 matches in the world tour, with a record of 94-29).
Another problem with comparing eras is that pro circuit players tended to have lower win percentages because most of their opponents were good to great players. I ran into this problem when I tried to adjust my raw PEP scores with a "quality" element, with W% being the easiest way to do it. There were lesser pros, but the overall "talent density" was very high, which means even the best players lost more often on the pro circuit than on the amateur or even Open Era tours.
You could see this in how almost every top amateur went through an adjustment process once they went pro. For example, as everyone knows, Rod Laver won the amateur Grand Slam in 1962, with an astonishing overall match record of 152-15 (91%), which is a record for most matches won in a single season (Laver has the second highest too, with 147 in 1961; Vilas has the Open Era record with 134 in 1977; of the Big Three, Roger's 92 in 2006 is the highest).
The discrepancy here between, say, Laver's 167 matches played in 1962 and Roger's 98 played in 2006 can be illustrated as follows:
LAVER 1962: 167 matches (152-15); 38 events including 4 GS, 5 other big titles, 15 mid-level, 13 low-level.
FEDERER 2006: 97 matches (92-5); 17 events including 4 GS, 1 Tour Final, 7 Masters, 2 ATP 500, 2 ATP 250
For Laver's events, I used Tennis Base's categorizations of "A, B, C, D, E" - with A being major, B being other big titles, C being mid-level (ATP 500 equivalent) D being low-level (ATP 250) and E being the equivalent of today's challengers.
As you can see, the main difference is that Laver played fewer big titles--5 to Roger's 8--but a ton more mid and low-level: 28 to Roger's 4. I believe, also, that while Slams were usually seven rounds, a lot of tournaments were just 2-4, with first round byes. So a lot more shorter tournaments.
Anyhow, in 1963 Laver went pro. His match record that year was 89-77 yielding a rather pedestrian 53.6 W%, but in 1964 he righted the ship and went 97-33 (74.6%) and up to 101-19 (84.2%) in 1965. Laver played in the last WPS tour in 1963, but lost to Ken Rosewall, going 4-14 against "Muscles" in the playoffs (that tournament had a qualifying part in which 6 players played a total of 123 matches over two months; the top two players, in this case Rosewall and Laver, faced off in 18 matches over four weeks).
We can't simply assign the same value to every WPS tour because they varied in length year to year. Furthermore, just as with Slams, we can't simply assign points to the winner and ignore everyone else...they were sometimes very close, and even players who didn't figure into the finals would sometimes win dozens of matches. In some cases, the player with the best overall record in a tour didn't win it, because they had a losing H2H against the eventual winner. And I'm also minimizing the fact that in some tours, a match consisted of only one set (though usually was best of three).
So in my system, these tours are taken individually and points are awarded depending upon number of matches won, with a bonus for the title. In my work-in-progres formula, some of them were more than double an Open Era Slam (I give 10 points for OE Slams, 5-7 for Amateur depending upon rounds, and Pro Slams range from 4-8, depending upon rounds...I treat those similar to modern Tour Finals). Kramer's WPS in 1950 in which he went 94-29 earned him 33 points - the most for any tournament in my system, while Bobby Riggs only got 10 points for his 1946 championship in which he went 25-22.
Going even further back to before the pro era, you have the rich person's era in which even the top players would often only play a handful of tournaments every year. It was akin to a serious hobby, not far from competitive corporate golf trips.
So tennis history really has three long eras:
1877-1926: Amateur Era
1927-67: Amateur/Pro Era
1968-present: Open Era
There were transitional periods, especially in the late 20s, and each era had its own evolution, but as a general rule those three are relatively distinct. You can kind of compare the second and third big eras, but it is very hard to compare the first and third.
Going back to the tiers, the next two are a bit muddled, with various shades of "lesser great." The tricky part here is the changing nature of Slams. As modern tennis fans, we tend to be overly "Slam-centric" and, whether consciously or not, tend to equate Slam title count with greatness. But we also know that this is problematic: Andy Murray was a far greater player than Jan Kodes, despite both winning three Slams (in a follow-up post, I'll share some charts that illustrate this).
Anyhow, in these next two tiers you have modern players like Murray, Agassi, Becker, Edberg, and Wilander as clear members; and then, perhaps, in the lower (fourth) tier you have players like Courier, Vilas, Nastase, Ashe and maybe Newcombe (though he could belong up a tier).
In the Pro/Amateur Era (1927-47) you add in guys like Roy Emerson, Lew Hoad, Tony Trabert, Frank Sedgman, Fred Perry, Bobby Riggs, Pancho Segura, Jaroslav Drobny, Henri Cochet, Rene Lacoste, Jean Borotra, and possibly one or two others.
The fifth tier would be "near-greats" - players who aren't guy all-time greats, but better than garden variety top ten players. Recently I'd include Daniil Medvedev, Stan Wawrinka, Lleyton Hewitt, Andy Roddick, Marat Safin, and then going back a bit, Gustavo Kuerten, Michael Chang, Goran Ivanisevic, Michael Stich, Vitas Gerulaitis, Stan Smith and maybe one or two others.
Fifth and sixth tier aren't simply differentiated by being a Slam winner, though I'm loathe to include Slamless players like David Ferrer, Alex Zverev, and Tom Okker in the above category, despite being a cut above regular lesser elites. It is also differentiated by how "deep" their resume goes in terms of big titles and PEP. So players like Marin Cilic, Tomas Berdych, and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga all belong in this tier. I haven't yet investigated these players before the Open Era, however.
Anyhow, the above is a long-winded post that started as a reply to poor Antipusher and become more of a preliminary discussion that will lead to more, with charts a-plenty comparing across eras.
) He had several early upsets, that is true, unrelated to injury. I don't think he ever retired or withdrew once he was in at Wimbledon, and the only withdrawal I remember at the USO was in a SF v. Del Potro a few years back, so doesn't affect your stats. Djokovic had more withdrawals when he was younger, so someone might remember others than the ones I pointed out.