British Tennis Forum - Celebrating 20 Years!

foobarbaz · Club Coach

Weeks 3 & 4 - Grand Slam, Australian Open - Melbourne (outdoor hard)

indiana · Tennis legend

foobarbaz wrote:
Well, this is all very interesting. Who would have thought that grouping nation's simply by the obviously correct data in Pierrot's table, and giving the clear groupings each a generalised name which seems appropriate for the times we live in, would have evoked such condemnation. The data in the table certainly backs up the simple groupings made. I also note the tennis-related questions that I asked in this thread, remain unanswered by those that have decided to talk about politics and suchlike instead.

Perhaps, if you really feel that you have an interesting tennis related discussion, then as suggested you could take such discussion to a separate new thread tn the 'General tennis discussion' section. I would ask that this is done by anyone rather than any further related discussion in this specific Australian Open thread ( you can copy specific posts over and / or link to the discussion in this thread ).

If you then do so, it would be more enlightening to have a bigger sample size than rounds reached by just the women in just this one Slam. A bigger picture and a clear interpretation may be the way you could go. Otherwise it could just be some outlier.

foobarbaz · Club Coach

indiana wrote:
foobarbaz wrote:
Well, this is all very interesting. Who would have thought that grouping nation's simply by the obviously correct data in Pierrot's table, and giving the clear groupings each a generalised name which seems appropriate for the times we live in, would have evoked such condemnation. The data in the table certainly backs up the simple groupings made. I also note the tennis-related questions that I asked in this thread, remain unanswered by those that have decided to talk about politics and suchlike instead.
Perhaps, if you really feel that you have an interesting tennis related discussion, then as suggested you could take such discussion to a separate new thread tn the 'General tennis discussion' section. I would ask that this is done by anyone rather than any further related discussion in this specific Australian Open thread ( you can copy specific posts over and / or link to the discussion in this thread ).
If you then do so, it would be more enlightening to have a bigger sample size than rounds reached by just the women in just this one Slam. A bigger picture and a clear interpretation may be the way you could go. Otherwise it could just be some outlier.

Seeing as the data is entirely from this year's Australian Open, then this seems to me to be the appropriate place to comment on the tennis questions it raises, so no, I'm quite happy for it to remain here, thank you. As for it being an outlier, that not my interpretation of it. It reflects the top 100 players in the world, which is surely a good marker of the present state of professional tennis in 2026. Perhaps you might point to other data to back up your claim.

indiana · Tennis legend

I think if presenting some case, bearing in mind how many things can vary from one Slam to the next, it is for yourself to base thoughts on a wider sample than purely the women from this Australian Open Slam ( the top 100 women, most certainly including often including the seeds, have proved inconsistent from Slam to Slam ). To my mind it is not a claim but simply a very clear statistical possibility that the balance of nations could be quite different with the men and from other Slams, so very possibly an outlier. It is not for anyone else to take time to gather further data ( not for me anyway ) but to my mind for you to provide a more convincing starting point for any discussion and it is you who so far most wants a discussion.

You have how these stages of the draw have played out in one draw in one Slam.

So again, further data and a general tennis discussion thread could be your way forward. I currently see no other worthwhile way forward.

christ · Challenger qualifying

foobarbaz wrote:
Well, this is all very interesting. Who would have thought that grouping nation's simply by the obviously correct data in Pierrot's table, and giving the clear groupings each a generalised name which seems appropriate for the times we live in, would have evoked such condemnation. The data in the table certainly backs up the simple groupings made. I also note the tennis-related questions that I asked in this thread, remain unanswered by those that have decided to talk about politics and suchlike instead.

1) they aren't clear groupings

2) the generalised names are not illustrative of anything, really, and they certainly don't illuminate the "clear" groupings: they may as well be (less emotively) Group A, Group B, and Group C.

The differences between the groupings - and the particular data associated with the groupings - can only be relevant if the groupings are, in fact, clear. The data in the table only "backs up" the groupings if the groupings make sense. At the moment it appears that only you think that the groupings are "clear", to the rest of us it looks like the groupings were arbitrarily selected to make some sort of point.

If you had used "Group A, Group B, and Group C", then politics wouldn't have entered this thread: I contend that "Anti-National Influence" (at least) was deliberately chosen to be politically contentious, especially as your justification includes "seems appropriate for the times we live in".

sliced backhand · Lower Club Player

Apparently the first time in Open Tennis history that the top six seeds in both Mens and Womens Singles have reached the quarter finals of a Grand Slam!

foobarbaz · Club Coach

indiana wrote:
I think if presenting some case, bearing in mind how many things can vary from one Slam to the next, it is for yourself to base thoughts on a wider sample than purely the women from this Australian Open Slam ( the top 100 women, most certainly including often including the seeds, have proved inconsistent from Slam to Slam ). To my mind it is not a claim but simply a very clear statistical possibility that the balance of nations could be quite different with the men and from other Slams, so very possibly an outlier. It is not for anyone else to take time to gather further data ( not for me anyway ) but to my mind for you to provide a more convincing starting point for any discussion and it is you who so far most wants a discussion.

You have how these stages of the draw have played out in one draw in one Slam.

So again, further data and a general tennis discussion thread could be your way forward. I currently see no other worthwhile way forward.

I haven't presented any particular case, and I've asked tennis related questions only. Instead of encountering answers, or comments relating to those questions, what has appeared is politically-motivated obfuscation about a non-tennis-related Mayoral official, to which I have not participated whatsoever. In relation to Christ's comment about the naming of the 3 groups, yes I could have gone with A, B, and C, but we're all grown ups, and the concept that some nations are more similar than others isn't too far out, is it? To me, the data clearly divides into 3 groups, if someone else wants to show a different grouping, then please go ahead. To be honest, I'd have thought that the poor showing of Western European nations in the women's draw (less than 12% at the R2 stage, if I remember correctly) would have been quite a topic of discussion on this board, as I quess did Pierrot in showing his data in the first place. What I am solely interested in is why the British women haven't done so well at this years tournament, and if there any parallels with other broadly similar nations, especially within the same region. It does appear to me that some on this board resent my innocuous attempt to group nations together based on the data at hand, and I wonder why that might be.

christ · Challenger qualifying

In my view the table shows nothing clearly. Firstly it is measuring a statistically insignificant number (% of their top 100 players in last 16 for each country). Secondly 37 of the top 100 (37%) are missing from the table, which is enough to make any statistical analysis irrelevant

But to examine what the lines show for each country:

Three countries have outperformed their positions in the top 100 by getting players into the last 16 when they had no top 100 players in the draw: KAZ, BEL and POL. None of these three appear to share a political alignment.
Two countries got half of their players into the last 16: Canada and China - no obvious political alignment
USA - who have the most top 100 players, got more than anyone else into the last 16, but this is only a third of those that were in the draw.
Three countries got a quarter of their top 100 players through to the last 16: AUS, *** and UKR. Again, no obvious alignment.
CZE underperformed badly by only getting one of their eight through. Or, they overperformed by getting someone through when compared to
Seven countries failed to get any of their top 100 players into the last 16: Six Western Europeans and Japan.

None of this leads to a statistically significant grouping, in my eyes, particularly regarding politics - unless one notes that Western Europe (Belgium apart) failed horribly.

To look at it another way:

USA have 15 of the 63 Top 100 players that are in the table (23.8%), and 5 of the last 16 (31.25%). This shows up on the table as 33% but I would contend should be 131%
UKR have 04 of the 63 Top 100 players that are in the table (6.3%), and 1 of the last 16 (6.25%). This shows up a the table as 25% but is nearer 100%

To reduce it to absurdity: if one country had all top 100 players, and they were all in the draw, only 16% of them could have got through to the last 16. What would this say about which group they should be in?

Peter too · Tennis legend

foobarbaz wrote:
christ wrote:
In this context, what are "Democratic", "Anti-National influence", and "Authoritarian" supposed to mean?
The context is the environment that either allows players to blossom, or to wither without reaching full potential, or worse to give up at an early age. These are the elite players of the world, and the figures aren't even close.

A graph showing level of democracy against political persuasion from far left to far right would I suspect end up as a bell shaped curve with the greatest level of democracy low at both far left and far right and highest somewhere near the middle. The "middle" drifts and is in a very different place now to where it was during my early years in 1945-1975. One issue that can be damaging to young sports men and women is the internet that has become very toxic by design, as toxicity provokes clicks that earn money. It is political because of the debate about free speech, versus moderation to limit the toxicity. In the early days all the players had web sites but once the toxicity started to build they closed them to avoid the negative affect on their play. For example young players often suffer injuries in their early years as they adjust to more intense levels of play. Faced with negative comments about always giving up, they might be tempted to play through injuries and cause themselves lasting damage.

On a more political note I consider the UK only weakly democratic due to its voting system which invariably produces a government on a minority of votes. The D'Hont system used for EU elections was much better. I can produce a strong case for that but this is not the forum for that discussion.

foobarbaz · Club Coach

Christ, thank you for your analysis of the data, if you don't mind lets examine your points one by one, perhaps we'll both benefit :

1. The data is for the elite players, just like statistical analysis of other complex datasets, the top group is very important, eg. cetaceans (orca, etc) for food chain research.
2. I didn't provide the data, but as I see it the nations in the dataset are complete, are they not? A good proportion of the remainder are from Australia too.
3. KAZ, BEL, POL - those nations players not in the top 100? Shurely some mishtake? Swiatek, Rybakina, Mertens, etc ....
4. China and Canada are represented by just 4 players, and you are lecturing us on what is statistically invalid ....
5. USA, at least we have a few more players to work with now, well done USA, they're still able to do well to date it seems...
6. *** (Russia, yes we know) and UKR - surely you aren't suggesting these two nations be grouped together ??
7. CZE, yes the grouping was a bit more subjective there, I googled to see whether CZE and POL were alike, and they indeed were reported so. The CZE has long been a success story, especially on the women's side of tennis.
8. Western European countries can be grouped - yes we agree
9. There you go mentioning politics again, and statistical invalidity, having used individual nation figures quite liberally for the last 5 points. Belgium has one player by the way, a very good one at that high in the top 100, did I mention that.
10. I think we can say that UKR is a good fit to be in a group with the US, don't you?
11. Last point, there's a reason why the top 10, top 20, whatever, doesn't change much. That's because there is a gulf between them and the rest. I'm really not sure where you are going on this one.

-- Edited by foobarbaz on Monday 26th of January 2026 11:40:58 PM

foobarbaz · Club Coach

Peter too wrote:
foobarbaz wrote:
christ wrote:
In this context, what are "Democratic", "Anti-National influence", and "Authoritarian" supposed to mean?
The context is the environment that either allows players to blossom, or to wither without reaching full potential, or worse to give up at an early age. These are the elite players of the world, and the figures aren't even close.
A graph showing level of democracy against political persuasion from far left to far right would I suspect end up as a bell shaped curve with the greatest level of democracy low at both far left and far right and highest somewhere near the middle. The "middle" drifts and is in a very different place now to where it was during my early years in 1945-1975. One issue that can be damaging to young sports men and women is the internet that has become very toxic by design, as toxicity provokes clicks that earn money. It is political because of the debate about free speech, versus moderation to limit the toxicity. In the early days all the players had web sites but once the toxicity started to build they closed them to avoid the negative affect on their play. For example young players often suffer injuries in their early years as they adjust to more intense levels of play. Faced with negative comments about always giving up, they might be tempted to play through injuries and cause themselves lasting damage.
On a more political note I consider the UK only weakly democratic due to its voting system which invariably produces a government on a minority of votes. The D'Hont system used for EU elections was much better. I can produce a strong case for that but this is not the forum for that discussion.

Thank you Peter for your thoughts on this muse of mine, I appreciate your contribution.

Without entering too much into the political sphere, I'd like to point out that tennis development in the UK is largely influenced by who is in control at lower administrative levels. That being the case, it (tennis) would be be very susceptible to damage by a groundswell movement. So those pointing out nations to be strongly democratic are somewhat missing the point. That is why I used the term "...influence" in the middle group name. Secondly, The US being the largest Nation in the so-called "Democratic" group doesn't represent the "end point" of that end of the spectrum, and that's because it is obvious that the US has changed in much the same way that GB has, it's just that it started from a different base level, right?

Whether people like it or not, elite tennis is patently a political football, and so is a political target at the national and regional levels also.

This all is why, based on the data in Pierrot's table for this tournament, I asked the question, what is the near-term future for this game that we on this board love to watch and chat about.