* !Picby Pete Bodo*
I know we'll soon be launching into those debates about which is the best (substitute: most representative and/or fair to all styles) court surface, ranging from slow clay to fast indoor hard. But let's not go there—yet.
Instead, let's see if we can determine which is the best non-Grand Slam tournament—"best" meaning the one most consistently won by the most successful players. Which is the title that every, or almost every, titan of the game has captured?
To come up with something like a definitive answer would be a time-consuming if not particularly difficult task, so let's do the short version. I've been thinking for some time now that Indian Wells is about as close as a tournament comes to producing champions that accurately reflect the state of the game at any given time.
So let's compare this ongoing event with a prestigious clay-court event and throw in Queen's Club (not that we have many options when it comes to grass tournaments apart from Wimbledon).
In fact, let's start with Queen's.
All told, eight players who never won a major or held the No. 1 ranking won Queen's since 1976, the first year all three tournaments existed. Raul Ramirez (1977), Tim Mayotte ('86), Wayne Ferreira ('92), Todd Martin ('94), Philippoussis ('97), Draper ('98), Andy Murray (2009 and '11), and Sam Querrey (2010).
A Grand Slam champion hasn't won at Queen's since Rafael Nadal in 2008, but every champion between 1999 and 2007 was both a Grand Slam titlist and former No. 1. The least likely champ was Draper (career high of No. 42), but if you ever saw the touch Draper had at the net, you wouldn't be shocked by that result. Back then, the grass was still fast and low-bouncing, and attacking the net was coin of the realm.
Notable players who failed to win Queen's (Grand Slam champions and/or former No. 1s) include: Bjorn Borg, Andre Agassi, Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic, Mats Wilander, Jim Courier.
Let's go one step further, and give Queen's a "point" for each winner of it who was also a Grand Slam champ, and two points to the ones who won majors and were also ranked No. 1 at some point in their careers. We'll count repeats (meaning multiple wins will earn multiple points). I come up with a total of 51 points (I counted 1973 winner Ilie Nastase because the computer rankings were in effect by then, yet Queen's went out of business for three years and returned in 1977).
Now let's look at Monte Carlo, the clay-court event that has consistently drawn the best fields and been run the most efficiently and successfully of all the French Open warm-ups. Nine players who never won a major took the title on the red clay in Monaco: Raul Ramirez (’78), Henrik Sundstrom (’84), Jaokim Nystrom (’86), Alberto Mancini (’89), Andrei Chesnolov (’90), Andrei Medvedev (’94), Marcelo Rios (’97), Cedric Pioline (2000), and Guillermo Coria (’04).
Rafael Nadal has Monte Carlo for the past seven years, which is the longest—by far—winning streak by any player at the tournaments we’re looking at.
Notable players who never won at Monte Carlo include: Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic, Pete Sampras, Andre Agassi, Jim Courier, Lleyton Hewitt, Stefan Edberg, Mats Wilander, Boris Becker, John McEnroe, and Jimmy Connors.
When I tally up the points using the same simple formula as above, I come up with 56 points, suggesting that the top players won slightly more routinely at Monte Carlo than at Queens.
And now on to Indian Wells, which was first played in 1976. The nine players who won in the desert but never bagged a major were: Brian Gottfried (1977), Jose Higueras (’83), Larry Stefanki (’85), Jaokim Nystrom (’86), Miloslav Mecir (’89), Marcelo Rios (1998), Mark Philippoussis (1999), Alex Corretja (2000), and Ivan Ljubicic (’10).
Notable players who never won at Indian Wells include: Ivan Lendl, John McEnroe, and Bjorn Borg.
The point total I come up with for Indian Wells is 49, and that excludes the infamous hurricane year (oh, brother, I was there; what a mess!) when the tournament was canceled after the quarterfinals.
What strikes me most is how similar the stats and numbers are; it suggests not just a measure of parity, but the reality that the best players win the biggest tournaments—and that those surprise champions are almost evenly distributed among them, even over decades.
The most interesting statistic to me is the number of notable players who have failed to win at Monte Carlo, and the relative low number of quality champions who haven’t won at least one title at Indian Wells. The numbers suggest that the wealth is most evenly spread under the desert sun, and that’s probably because of the table on which it’s laid out, hard courts.