Tennis Pairs Introduction

INTRODUCTION

Comparing great tennis players of different eras to make an all-time ranking is a game that interest most of tennis fans, especially the older ones who had the chance to watch the best players at work live. Statistics like gran slam wins, total tournaments wins, winning percentage, and so on... are all valuable informations to make an all time-ranking. A website like Wikipedia offers the statistics needed to compare the best players. I especially like “the performance timelines” graphic, which gave a reader-friendly overview of a player's career in number. Here, I decided to do something slightly different. Put in pair the two most dominant players of an era and compare them with another pair of two greats of a different era. The interesting side of doing it, is that these two great players competed against each other for spot number one. And now, they have to team up against other greats. As most studies, I only considered the Open Era for being consistent (no amateur and professional competing in two different circuits). To qualify for my studies, the players had to be dominant for a long period of time. Actually, it was quite easy to make the pairs. And each pair dominated a decade. The study is made on a time frame of 10 years corresponding to the most prolific years of the pair (in a block), the lenght of a decade. Here are the pairs:

70s: Connors/Borg

80s: McEnroe/Lendl

90s: Agassi/Sampras

00s: Federer/Nadal

Alternative:

10s: Nadal/Djokovic

They are the 9 best players of the Open Era, multi-slam winners and undisputed world number 1 for a number of years (except maybe for Agassi).