Tennis Stats for The Big Four

After an amazing 5 hour and 53 minute contest Novak Djokovic prevailed for the third successive time over Rafael Nadal in a Grand Slam final.  Djokovic accepts victory, while Nadal ponders what could have been In 2011 Djokovic raised the bar and produced tennis that undermined Nadal's heavy topspin and general gameplan. At times in the Wimbledon and US Open finals, with Djokovic in the zone,  it resembled Neo keeping the rogue Agent Smith at bay in The Matrix. Nadal has been forced back to the drawing board to create a battleplan to get the number one ranking back. He has added weight to his racket and become more aggressive on the backhand side.  Despite the match being so close in the end on scoreline, Djokovic was the best player overall and thoroughly deserved the victory. Nadal's battling qualities were immense and who knows what would have happened if he had hit that easy backhand down the line at 4-2 in the fifth set (watch again on BBC site here ).

Very close in many ways.. As Federer and Nadal go into battle for the 29th time, their past throws up some interesting stats. Nadal leads the head to head 17-9 with 9 Grand Slams matches, out of which Federer has only won 2. His last victory came in one the five setter epic Wimbledon finals back in 2007. 2011 was supposedly a year in which Federer went into decline, but when broken down into plain numbers it doesn't seem that way at all. It is actually quite close overall, but one thing that may gain attention is how Nadal seems to work harder for his points. As shown below, Nadal took an average of 20 minutes more to finish a match. The numbers would also suggest Nadal was much more aggressive on the opponents second serve. However, Federer's serving stats are more solid and he would appear to get easier points on both first and second serves.  The coolest stat is the fact that they won the exact same percentage of points played over the four slams at 56

Andy Murray will step into the Rod Laver Arena to face Novak Djokovic for their 11th meeting of their professional careers on Friday. Interestingly, this is only their second meeting in a Grand Slam. Their only other meeting at a Slam ended in a straight sets victory in last year's Australian Open final. Having a look at first serve averages for both players from all matches played at last year's four Slams, the stats tell a very interesting story. The points won when first serve goes in is almost  identical with only 0.02% of difference. This makes intriguing reading considering this average is taken over 27 matches for Djokovic (one walkover) and 25 for Murray. The stats would tell us get if either of these guys gets a first serve in, they'll win 76.1 (give or take a tenth %) of those points. The trouble for Murray is that he got less than 60% of first serves in whilst Djokovic finished close to 70%. Djokovic  Murray 1st Serve % 68.01