The men at the top, especially Federer, Hewitt and Nalby's stats are slightly skewed by the fact they don't play many, if any, optionals, but still shows that Andy needs to do more in the bigger events

I think his position will rise when he starts winning matches again, as I'd think he'd win a round at the very least in Hamburg, RG, Wimbledon, Toronto, Cincinatti and US OPen and will probably go deep in some of them, but he does struggle against the top players it seems by his horrible records against Nadal, Djoko, Gasquet etc

ForeverDelayed wrote:

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The men at the top, especially Federer, Hewitt and Nalby's stats are slightly skewed by the fact they don't play many, if any, optionals, but still shows that Andy needs to do more in the bigger events

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Of course, no measure like this is ever goign to be perfect, it's justa startng point for discussion. However, it's also fair to say that the reason why some of those at the top don't play many optionals is because they do well enough in the mandatory events not to need to.

A very interesting article, it seems to me to hit the nail on the head on all the aspects that are currently frustrating me (if not anyone else) with Murray's game.

Thanks for the link Steven.

I thought that I would add a relevant part of another post I wrote ( in the thread about Andy's punishment for missing Indianapolis ) to this thread, because it shows the improvement, obviosly particularly marked recently, in Andy's mandatory performances.
 
I was having a look at stevegtennis.com and looking at the race points, Andy is 4th for race points won this year in mandatory events ( so effectively ranking points won so far this year ), OK miles behind the top 3, but 4th nevertheless !!  And that is 4th with a steady positive build up in success through the year.  Incidentally for optionals, he is 6th among the top 10, and 8th overall, and that is currently unaffected by the Indy zero.   He needs to work on those optionals 

It is clear that in recent months, he has really turned round the previous issue, and it was an issue, of having a comparatively poor mandatory points count as against the other other top players. He now needs to work towards getting closer to the top 3, and that is undoubtably a really major task.

I list the race points split below, sorry it goes a bit out of line when I copy / paste.  The original is on  http://stevegtennis.com/rankings/2008/r080408.txt  so that might make it clearer.


                      ATP Race Standings For 8/4/08   

                                         Points Points Points                             
                                    Rank  This   Last  Gained  GS   MS  Other             
Rank Player                     Nat Diff  Week   Week  This Wk PTS  PTS  PTS  Trn         
---- ------                     --- ----  ----   ----  ----    ---  ---  ---  ---         
   1 Nadal, Rafael              ESP    0  1100  1055    45     490  461  149   15
   2 Djokovic, Novak            SRB    1   744   674    70     297  386   61   13
   3 Federer, Roger             SUI   -1   701   686    15     370  251   80   13
   4 Davydenko, Nikolay         RUS    0   387   386     1      46  198  143   16
   5 Murray, Andy               GBR    1   380   280   100      66  198  116   17
   6 Ferrer, David              ESP   -1   322   321     1     115   65  142   17
   7 Blake, James               USA    0   271   256    15      64  116   91   17
   8 Roddick, Andy              USA    0   255   255     0      22  106  127   14
   9 Wawrinka, Stanislas        SUI    0   251   251     0      52  119   80   16
  10 Almagro, Nicolas           ESP    0   238   241    -3      58   48  132   17


Afer the Canada and Cincinnati points come off from last year, and are replaced by optionals, 66% of Andy's coverall ranking points total will come from mandatories ( it would be 64% if he could count a 5th optional ).  This is the fair comparison ( his current 77% is unrealistically high since it counts 15 mandatories  ). 

64% would still only put Andy 17th in Steven's original scale ( I haven't recalculated all the others ! ),  I actually thought he might be higher, but I guess about half way up the scale shows he at least has a much better balance.  It also clearly indicates that hiis mandatories proportion are much more in touch with the other top players.  And as the above points total for this calendar year only indicates, it is looking as if it will rise higher.



-- Edited by indiana at 11:38, 2008-08-06

-- Edited by indiana at 11:44, 2008-08-06

Indiana do you have a reference for the steveg data updated?I tried chopping the address at rankings/ and got a list of 2009 documents but nothing like this.I know the race has been discontinued but thought it was worth asking.

The reason I was looking was someone on MTF said in relation to Andy's Wimbledon chances that Murray is a 99% lesser player in GS events.Obviously exaggerated but by how much?That made me remember this helpful thread.

To find out the current status and for 15 minutes mental exercise I worked out ranks of the top 20 players bar Gasquet in-

GS points
Masters points
Mandatory points
optional points
non GS points

Some of these are double counting but still measure different things.

Andy's rankings I made 3,2,3,5*,2 respectively which shows how consistent he now is across all levels.In Stephen's original measure Andy is now 3rd of those 20 I checked.

* adding 250 would take him up to 3rd assuming nobody else would pass him with 0 pointers replaced.