The Elite - Part 3

In twoearlier posts on the elite men players of the Open Era, I mostly looked backwards.  Now it's time to bring the story to the present day.  As I write this, the last Masters tournament of 2007 has gone into the record books - and once again, David Nalbandian has felled Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal on his way to taking the title.  Nalbandian secures the no 9 slot in the Race - one spot from the top 8 invited to compete.  No question who has a bullet right now - but how do we place his performance in context?  And how can we place the elite of this decade, now with just over two years to run, among those who came before?

I'll cover the top eight in the ATP race, plus four: Nalbandian, and three players who early in the decade were Tier I players or candidates: Juan Carlos Ferrero, Lleyton Hewitt and Marat Safin.

As in the last post, I've embedded charts as thumbnails: click on a chart to see it in a larger pop-up window.

I've discussed Federer in my earlier posts.  From the vantage point of late 2007, his domination of the middle part of the decade may look like a given.  But compare his career arc with that of Andy Roddick:

I'm fascinated by the thought that the two mens' careers diverged at a precise moment: 1 set all, 4-2 with Roddick leading, when it began to rain during the Wimbledon final of 2004. Famously, Federer regrouped and went on to win his third Grand Slam; but for an English shower, might the Texan have claimed his second major, and used that as a springboard to several years at the 4000-5000 level or higher?  Possibly he did this in a parallel universe...

BTW, all the data in this post is actual ATP data, rather than estimates based on tournament records.  The scales are the same to give you a feel for the relative levels of the players (and can be compared with the charts in the Elite - Part 2 post).

Now to two of the current young guns, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic.  In my earlier posts, I pointed out two features of the elite - the 5000 point level as marking the entry point for multi slam winners, and the "take off" pattern when an elite player makes himself known.  See this chart:

Here I'm showing the two players' points against their ages: you can see that Djokovic's rise came in two stages, a nine month climb up to the high teens in the rankings, then the explosion from Indian Wells through to the US Open final.  Nadal just seems to have burst out of nowhere: I think the moment he announced himself on the world stage was his defeat of Roddick in the December 2004 Davis Cup final.   In April 2005 when he was within two points of beating Federer in straight sets in Miami, Nadal was ranked 31 in the world; by June, after his victory at Roland Garros, he was No. 3, and his Montreal win over Andre Agassi took him to the number 2 spot, which he has not relinquished in nearly two and a half years.

Given how used we are to seeing Nadal as the world No. 2, it's quite something to realize that Djokovic has now reached the same level in ATP Ranking points that the Mallorcan had from 2005 through to the end of 2006.  And Djokovic has points to gain in Shanghai, and likely at the Australian Open where he took a straight sets loss to Federer in R16 in January.  In March of this year, Pete dubbed Djokovic "the perfect player."  I'm not sure that even Pete saw how quick his rise would be.

In his last three Grand Slam finals, Federer has played Nadal twice, and Djokovic once.  Well before these two came on the scene, it looked as though the decade might belong to two other men: the mercurial Marat Safin, and the pugnacious Lleyton Hewitt.

Safin's take off came in 2000, and he was hailed as the future after famously taking out Sampras in straight sets in the US Open Final.  But the mid 4000s was as high as he would go: Hewitt would peak at a slightly higher level, just breaching the 5000 threshold.  Both men, I think, can be rightly called Tier I players, but neither seems likely, on current form, to challenge at the majors.  Safin's last data point, by the way, isn't actually zero, but in the latest rankings he drops to No. 58, which takes him out of my database.  Can either stage a miraculous revival?

That's a pretty obvious segue to our current miraculous revival case, David Nalbandian.  Obviously, he has to be a Tier I player now, having shown Nadal and Federer (and Djokovic in Madrid) the exit sign?  Well, not so fast.  Let's compare Nalbandian, No. 3 in the world for much of 2006, with the current No. 3, Nikolay Davydenko:

Neither man has got above the 3500 level in his career.  Nalbandian has the one Grand Slam final (and four semifinals) to his name, Davydenko 4 semifinals.  Davydenko's best chance at a final might have been his 5 set loss to Mariano Puerta at Roland Garros 2005, but had he won he'd have come up against Nadal - and not even Davydenko partisans would have made him favorite for that encounter.

For his part, Nalbandian has been on the cusp of breaking through several times in his career.  Hewitt in 2002 may have been too steep a hill, but Nalbandian nearly took out Roddick in the 2003 US Open semifnal, had a 2 sets to love lead over Marcos Baghdatis in the Australian Open 2006 semifinal, and led Federer by a set and a break in the Roland Garros 2006 semifinal.  Since retiring in that match with a pulled stomach muscle, Nalbandian hasn't threatened the top players - until his performance of the last three weeks.  The pedigree is undoubtedly there, but the results simply have not been.  But for 2008, who knows?

When you talk about pedigree, Richard Gasquet's name has to be considered.  He and Fernando Gonzalez make up the 8 and 7 spots on the Shanghai roster.  But neither player has yet hinted that they have what it takes to graduate to the elite:

Gonzalez qualifies for Shanghai on 1905 points, Gasquet with 1830.  Last year these points totals would have earned them 11th and 13th spots in the Rankings.  (A trivia note: Davydenko qualifies this year with the same amount of ATP Ranking Points as he did last year, 2725. In 2006 he was third in the Rankings, but this year he's fourth, over 1700 points behind Djokovic).

Gasquet will be 21 years and 7 months at the start of the 2008 Australian Open, a little younger than Federer when he took his first Grand Slam title at Wimbledon.  It's possible that he'll be a late(ish) bloomer, as the Swiss has been.  Gonzalez appears to have been running on fumes since his Australian Open final, with the exception of a Rome final and a win in Beijing.  It's hard to see him as a multiple Slam winner.  But of course, you never know.

Have I left anyone out?  [OFF CAMERA: Snoo Foo: Ferru, Ferru, Ferru is on fire!}

Ah, yes.  David Ferrer.  Let's compare Ferrer with his compatriot Ferrero, who (like Roddick) seemed poised to challenge for the No 1 spot in 2004:

Ferrero, like Roddick, appears to be a Tier 1.5 player: 1 Grand Slam title, 2 finals, peaking at 4570 ATP Ranking Points.  He was defeated by Federer in the 2004 Australian Open semifinal, after which Federer went on to take the No. 1 ranking.  It would be the last Grand Slam semifinal reached to date by the Mosquito.  Ferrer reached his first Grand Slam semifinal this year at Flushing Meadows - he's an extremely tough opponent on his day, but to my eyes nothing suggests that he'll end up among the game's true elite.

So there you have it - this year's top 9, and three players who aspired to the summit in the first half of the decade, but came up short.  All these charts, like the ones before, have been backward looking - they tell us where this decade's elite have been.  There may be clues to where they're going - or a player may promise, as Safin, Roddick, Hewitt and Ferrero did, but not make it through the gateway to Tennis' Valhalla.

When Sam and I originally ran with Pete's distinction between Tier I and Tier II players, it was by no means obvious who'd be the next player to join Nadal and Federer in the top tier.  Although he didn't win a major, Djokovic was the one man to clearly separate himself from the pack in 2007.  I can see Murray, who missed about one third of the season but came within a match of making the Tennis Masters Cup being the next.

2007 began with a question in the men's game - who could catch the top two?  The old Roman Empire was divided in two, and it stood for decades, but eventually the barbarians poured in, and the Emperors fell.  Perhaps some day a traveller will happen across a memorial to Roger Federer - "look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair" - and see that ,like Bjorn Borg, John McEnroe and Pete Sampras before him, the time a player spent among the Elite seemed glorious, but proved fleeting.  New empires rise on the ruins of the old.

-- Andrew

(As before, thanks to Rosangel for picture selection and friendly counsel)

UPDATE: as an experiment, I'll add some charts suggested by comment posters.  This one, Roddick/Djokovic vs age, was suggested by Sher:

And one of Murray - Baghdatis:

My sense of Murray is that he is very close to the take off point: he essentially missed 3 GS tournaments this year (I don't think he was fully recovered by late August).  2008 may be his breakout year.  Baghdatis is locked in the 1500-2000 point range, and will have to step up a gear to break out.