The Goat Debate

[ashkor87]

Wouldn't ELO just be one more point when talking about this? I would find it hard to say that one single metric can be used for this conversation.
But we agree on that (I guess).

Yes, agree all the way!

[mick1303]

Maybe when I'm retired and have a heap of free time on my hands, I will do Elo-like calculation as well and somehow incorporate it in the weighted ranking. There are many questions though. Like which matches are qualified to be taken into account. What about challengers? Qualification matches, qualification matches of the challengers? There is a reason tennis does not use Elo )

[ashkor87]

Maybe when I'm retired and have a heap of free time on my hands, I will do Elo-like calculation as well and somehow incorporate it in the weighted ranking. There are many questions though. Like which matches are qualified to be taken into account. What about challengers? Qualification matches, qualification matches of the challengers? There is a reason tennis does not use Elo )

Tennis seems allergic to statistics anyway! In contrast with baseball for instance..

[ponchi101]

If you decide to do that, I would not include anything below ATP and WTA level. The question is who is the GOAT, not who is the Challengers GOAT, for example. It is obvious that the really great ones never played challengers because they were so good they went into the main tour immediately and never looked back.
If you do.

[mick1303]

Maybe when I'm retired and have a heap of free time on my hands, I will do Elo-like calculation as well and somehow incorporate it in the weighted ranking. There are many questions though. Like which matches are qualified to be taken into account. What about challengers? Qualification matches, qualification matches of the challengers? There is a reason tennis does not use Elo )

Tennis seems allergic to statistics anyway! In contrast with baseball for instance..

I would not say "allergic" - it is too strong. But there is often a context, that can't be explained based purely on numbers.

[mick1303]

If you decide to do that, I would not include anything below ATP and WTA level. The question is who is the GOAT, not who is the Challengers GOAT, for example. It is obvious that the really great ones never played challengers because they were so good they went into the main tour immediately and never looked back.
If you do.

Never is a bit of overstatement ) Federer played 23 matches (16-7) record, Nadal - 44 (34-10) and Djokovic 36(28-8). Based on this metric - Federer is the greatest, since he played less of them all ))

[ponchi101]

And they were... 15?

[mick1303]

I've already collected all the doubles results of main draws of the tour events and Davis Cup ties for the year 2021. Tweaked a parser code in process of doing so. Also I have an adaptation of a weighted ranking calculation for doubles players. But it is a bit raw and needs testing and possible adjustments. Continue to populate results going backwards in time

2020 is also in the books for doubles (men's side only so far). Regular tournaments are easier to collect than Davis Cup results. DC site does not have them in a neat format which I can work on.

[ashkor87]

if we really want to use Elo (not sure why!) it should be possible to use results only from, say, 4th round onwards.. then the 'weighty' matches would be included and not the first rounders.. but I really dont see the value of tweaking.. every time we do that, it looks more and more arbitrary.. sometimes it is best to let the data speak..

[ashkor87]

meditating on the Williams Family.. i did not realize until now, Venus has been responsible for stopping Serena winning a Major 3 times, Serena has stopped Venus 7 times (if we count only finals).. which means, hypothetically, but for Serena, Venus would have won 10 at least and, but for Venus, Serena could have won at least 24, even granting a 50% success rate against whoever else would have come to the finals.. so it isnt Margaret Court, it is Venus, who is in the way of Serena's record! But, of course, Serena always says Venus is her greatest rival..

[mick1303]

Now I've collected 6 years worth of ATP doubles results (2016-2021). This is around 7.5K matches.
The best player for this stretch was clearly Croatian Mate Pavich.

Out of the trio Fed-Nadal-Djokovic Nadal has better winning ratio by a mile (but he played less than Novak). Federer only played in Laver Cup. I'm not sure if the doubles results could be a decider between Nadal and the other two - he always had a "long bench" of other brilliant Spanish players, which Djokovic and Federer did not.

[ponchi101]

The issue for me would be that they have never won a Slam in doubles. The best they have done have been Rafa and Roger winning Olympic gold, which to me really means very little.
But it would be good to see the numbers you have crunched. I am initially surprised that Pavich is the best doubles player during that stretch, but doubles is an entire different world.

[mick1303]

Now I’we collected 10 years of doubles results. For 2012 – 2021 (plus small piece of 2022 results) I have the following results. They are based on 12725 matches from 639 tournaments and 276 Davis Cup ties.


Bryan,_Mike______________USA____17.61119
Bryan,_Bob_______________USA____16.60665
Mahut,_Nicolas___________FRA____12.68834
Soares,_Bruno____________BRA____12.56732
Melo,_Marcelo____________BRA____11.94284
Herbert,_Pierre-Hugues___FRA____11.18914
Tecau,_Horia_____________ROU____10.97162
Pavic,_Mate______________CRO____10.51215
Murray,_Jamie____________GBR____10.32318
Peers,_John______________AUS____10.26248

[ponchi101]

Wow. Thanks for that, Mick, I gather having the Bryans as #1 and #2 is not surprising, but the gap is.
As there are few people in this topic: did the win by Rafa change your perspective about the GOAT in singles? Not even totally (as in "It is Rafa, no doubt") but moving him closer, or ahead of one of the other candidates? They are so close in terms of statistics that I did move my vote, but I wonder if it was an over-reaction.

[mick1303]

As you surely paid attention, I'm not relying solely on GS titles. Therefore it does not change things a lot. Their bodies of work are so huge, that one slam does not have tectonic implications. Roger is still on top and Novak is closer to Roger than Rafa to Novak. I will do next round of calculations at the end of 2022.