Bob in Spain wrote:

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Didn't realise that Leon Smith was working with Aljaz at the moment. Guessing it is just an RG thing and not more permanent ?

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From yesterday's Times:

Bedene has been in the emotional doldrums since suffering another disappointment at the hands of the International Tennis Federation in his bid to be allowed to represent Britain in the Davis Cup.

However, the Slovenia-born player has never previously reached the second round at Roland Garros and showed distinct fighting spirit to recover from a mediocre start to beat the qualifier.

Melzer, bigger and stronger than Bedene, with a far greater weight of shot, was undone by the adopted Briton's touch and superior movement around the court.

Bedene is playing under the tutelage of Leon Smith, Britain's Davis Cup captain, and much of the work that has been done of late has been to regain confidence after the 26-year-old was left so demoralised by the ITF's judgment that he also retired from two tournaments.

"It's really important to come out as a winner today. but it wasn't easy," said Bedene, who had twice previously fallen at the first-round stage in Paris.  "I have been working a lot on [a] few things with Leon and he helped me.  When someone has got that much experience as he does, it just brings something extra." 

Bob in Spain wrote:

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I have seen the stat about nobody having won a slam playing more than 3 five setters, but how much of that is circumstance. Let's be honest, if you are good enough and playing well enough to win a slam, it is highly unlikely that you will play 4 or 5 players good enough to take you to five sets during the course of one tournament.

Personally, I don't think Andy's two 5 setters will make much difference. He is in R3 and that is all that really matters.

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Absolutely. These first two round five settlers have for clay five settlers not been particularly arduous ( and the Stepanek one was split up ) and indeed they won't be generally long points vs Ivo whatever. 

I'd be much more concerned about Andy's form so far this week and his propensity, as he described, for err missing the court. Stats on the number of matches players can play crap in and still win a Slam title would be more interesting, although of course rather subjective.

Hopefully he can get it together again soon, although Ivo will hardly help in getting into rythym. The good thing is that he has generally been in such good form coming into RG so it is probably a lot about pushing the right buttons to find it again.

So for me, the five setters in these early stages as such not a great concern, the form in them yes a concern, but that can turn.

In a world where there are copious quantities of data there probably is objective data around the slam winner who has played most badly and still managed to win. However which stat or combination of stats is most significant or accurate surrogate for playing like a dogs dinner would need debate.

Total number of sets lost, proportion of sets lost per match or perhaps total number of games played , total number of times broken. Unforced errors, first serve percentage, proportion of points one on first serve, the objective data is there but interpretation challenging, perhaps a better expression would be interesting. 

Listening to Jim Courier commentating during the Bedene game (and I really enjoyed his performance of both) and the detail of analysis available I am sure he (or the USTA) already knows or has access to an or a few algorithms that makes that interpretation, very much in the way Billy Beane understood the value of on base percentage and its utility when using small ball tactics in baseball.