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I'm dabbling with a series of blogs about tennis generations and thought I'd share a nifty chart with everyone. I'm not sure how this will show up, but you'll probably need to click on it to the see the whole thing. I have another similar chart that splits this into three 14-year sections which is more legible, but it is inter esting to see the ATP era as a whole to get a sense of dominance of different generations.
By "generation" I am using five-year spans. While perhaps even numbers from 70-74 and 75-79 would be more "numerically clean," for a variety of reasons I found the five-year spans starting on the 9 (1959-63, 1969-73, etc) and the 4 (1964-68, 1974-78, etc) to be far better. I won't go into the details here but will explain further if and when I write the blog articles.
While I will offer a much more in-depth analysis in the blogs, some points for conversation:
1. 2014 is the first year since 2005 that a player other than the 79-83 and 84-88 generations was in the top 10. That's a span of eight years of total dominance by two generations. To put that in context, only three other years in the 42-year ATP era had less than three generations in the top 10.
2. You can see the comparable weakness of the Kuerten-Kafelnikov generation (74-78), but the Borg generation (54-58) is considerably weaker, especially due to Borg's early retirement but also because Borg was the sole truly great player of his generation, the only one to finish a year in the top 3.
3. How about Jimmy Connors? He's that dark blue square that not only remained in the top 10 five years after anyone else in his own generation, but perhaps even more impressively, two years after anyone in the next generation (Borg's). Arthur Ashe also outlasted the next generation.
4. Other players lasting longer than their contemporaries: Ivan Lendl by two years and Agassi by four years. Actually, Agassi's last year in the top 10 was also the last year in the top ten by a player from the next generation (74-78).
5. A random interesting tidbit: the first player of the 74-78 generation to appear in the top 10 was Andriy Medvedev, two years ahead of anyone else. Remember him?
6. I created a rating system to compare "generational dominance." Federer's generation (79-83) just surpassed Sampras' generation (69-73) as the most dominant (largely due to Federer), but it is clear that the Nadal-Djokovic will surpass all of them within a few years, and will go down as the most dominant generation in ATP history. The Wilander-Becker-Edberg, Lendl-McEnroe, and Connors-Vilas generations are all similar (and perhaps reduced eachothers' dominance by being one after the other), with the Kuerten-Kafelnikov and Borg generations being significantly weaker. There's not enough data for the earlier generations as much of their primes was before the ATP rankings began in 1973, but I would guess that the Newcombe-Nastase generation would be in the middle, the Ashe generation would be perhaps the weakest of all, and the Laver-Rosewall generation would arguably be the greatest. Or to put that another way:
Strong generations: Nadal-Djokovic, Federer, Sampras-Agassi, Becker-Edberg-Wilander, McEnroe-Lendl, Connors-Vilas, Newcombe-Nastase, Laver-Rosewall
Weak generations: Nishikori-Raonic-Dimitrov, Kuerten-Kafelnikov, Borg, Ashe
Is there a pattern? Going in reverse chronology, here is how they look:
Weak
Strong
Strong
Weak
Strong
Strong
Strong
Weak
Strong
Strong
Weak
Strong
So the good news is that there have never been two weak generations in a row, although that could be that this is a statistical impossibility as someone has to dominate, but at least it probably means that the next generation, what we could call "Gen 13" - which includes players like Nick Kyrgios, Borna Coric, and Alexander Zverev, will almost certainly be much stronger than "Gen 12."
Anyhow, I've gotten ahead of myself and written half a blog article!
By "generation" I am using five-year spans. While perhaps even numbers from 70-74 and 75-79 would be more "numerically clean," for a variety of reasons I found the five-year spans starting on the 9 (1959-63, 1969-73, etc) and the 4 (1964-68, 1974-78, etc) to be far better. I won't go into the details here but will explain further if and when I write the blog articles.
While I will offer a much more in-depth analysis in the blogs, some points for conversation:
1. 2014 is the first year since 2005 that a player other than the 79-83 and 84-88 generations was in the top 10. That's a span of eight years of total dominance by two generations. To put that in context, only three other years in the 42-year ATP era had less than three generations in the top 10.
2. You can see the comparable weakness of the Kuerten-Kafelnikov generation (74-78), but the Borg generation (54-58) is considerably weaker, especially due to Borg's early retirement but also because Borg was the sole truly great player of his generation, the only one to finish a year in the top 3.
3. How about Jimmy Connors? He's that dark blue square that not only remained in the top 10 five years after anyone else in his own generation, but perhaps even more impressively, two years after anyone in the next generation (Borg's). Arthur Ashe also outlasted the next generation.
4. Other players lasting longer than their contemporaries: Ivan Lendl by two years and Agassi by four years. Actually, Agassi's last year in the top 10 was also the last year in the top ten by a player from the next generation (74-78).
5. A random interesting tidbit: the first player of the 74-78 generation to appear in the top 10 was Andriy Medvedev, two years ahead of anyone else. Remember him?
6. I created a rating system to compare "generational dominance." Federer's generation (79-83) just surpassed Sampras' generation (69-73) as the most dominant (largely due to Federer), but it is clear that the Nadal-Djokovic will surpass all of them within a few years, and will go down as the most dominant generation in ATP history. The Wilander-Becker-Edberg, Lendl-McEnroe, and Connors-Vilas generations are all similar (and perhaps reduced eachothers' dominance by being one after the other), with the Kuerten-Kafelnikov and Borg generations being significantly weaker. There's not enough data for the earlier generations as much of their primes was before the ATP rankings began in 1973, but I would guess that the Newcombe-Nastase generation would be in the middle, the Ashe generation would be perhaps the weakest of all, and the Laver-Rosewall generation would arguably be the greatest. Or to put that another way:
Strong generations: Nadal-Djokovic, Federer, Sampras-Agassi, Becker-Edberg-Wilander, McEnroe-Lendl, Connors-Vilas, Newcombe-Nastase, Laver-Rosewall
Weak generations: Nishikori-Raonic-Dimitrov, Kuerten-Kafelnikov, Borg, Ashe
Is there a pattern? Going in reverse chronology, here is how they look:
Weak
Strong
Strong
Weak
Strong
Strong
Strong
Weak
Strong
Strong
Weak
Strong
So the good news is that there have never been two weak generations in a row, although that could be that this is a statistical impossibility as someone has to dominate, but at least it probably means that the next generation, what we could call "Gen 13" - which includes players like Nick Kyrgios, Borna Coric, and Alexander Zverev, will almost certainly be much stronger than "Gen 12."
Anyhow, I've gotten ahead of myself and written half a blog article!
