ATP Tennis Jan 30, 2022

Running hot when it comes to lining matches and attaining CLV… running like a coin flipper when it comes to actually getting results.

Have beat the market by over 5% in the second week of the Aussie Open and that’s in a market where the lines are only up for 40 hours, max. Hopefully, the results will start to follow.

Onto the final; a final that pretty much everyone expected the minute Zverev went down in flames against Shapo in round four. It is certainly an interesting match from a 1000 foot perspective - maybe the best hard court player in the world right now against maybe one of the greatest players of all time, who is maybe not playing on his favorite surface.

Lot of maybe’s in there. Anyway, it’s got similarities to Meds 2021 US Open final, the 2019 US Open final, the 2019 Aussie Open final; it’s got ramifications for the all-time history of the sport, ramifications for the ‘nextGen’ group of players, and ramifications for the course of 2022.

Like I said, a lot going on once you step back from the forehands and drop shots.

Sunday

It immediately jumps out that I show extreme value on Nadal. The eye test backs that up - Rafa has looked pretty dominant in 2022. He is 9-0 so far, has only dropped four sets, and, as I have mentioned a few times, only dropped serve 13 times (best on tour). That means, of course, that he has incredible hold/break stats, which are the bedrock of my model. Additionally, he didn’t play much hard court tennis in 2021, pulling the chute after losing to Lloyd Harris in Washington - so, his 2021 stats look great based on only five wins and two tight losses. So, is he ‘playing over his skis’? I have tried to factor in margin of victory and level of opponent with this most recent version of the model and looking at his list of opponents in 2022, I’m worried I’m still aiming too low with those metrics. Nadal has not played a murderer’s row of great competition when you sit back and look at his resume. Most importantly, he hasn’t played any great (or even good) returners. And that is what happened to him at the Aussie in 2019 too - he had a fairly easy path to the final and then Djokovic dismantled him. What is Medvedev if not Djokovic-lite, right?

Here are Nadals nine opponents, their rank and their return percentages in 2022, 2021, and 2020:
104 - Berankis - 40/23/23
65 - Greikspoor - 0/11/10 (w.d)
95 - Ruusuvuori - 30/25/25
112 - Cressy - 23/13/15
66 - Giron - 15/28/28
126 - Hanfmann - 25/19/23
29 - Khachanov - 24/21/21
70 - Mannarino - 26/19/25
14 - Shapovalov - 18/19/18
7 - Berrettini - 14/19/15

You can discount Berankis and Ruus’ return percentages in 2022 as they were built on one match and two matches respectively, so ultimate small sample size. He has only played two players in the top 20 and honestly, if you say Khachanov is regularly a top 20 guy, that’s three but, he’s also only played three guys in top 50. And if we’re talking about return prowess you could scarcly have handpicked two worse returners in the top 20 than Shapo and Berrettini. So, I am concerned Nadal’s record/resume/numbers are inflated.

What about Medvedev? The new hard court king? His win-loss record in 2022 is also stirling at 9-1 but, there are more blemishes. He obviously has the loss to Ugo Humbert but he also dropped sets to Berrettini,, Kyrgios, Maxime Cressy, two to FAA, and another to Stef last night. The obvious thing that jumps out right though is… his opposition has been light years better. The only player Medvedev has faced outside the top 100 is Nick Kyrgios and whether you like him or dislike him, we can all agree #114 is not representative of his career. Rafa has only played three top 50 players? Well, Medvedev has only played three players NOT in the top 50. And his stats remain super similar to Rafas. In 2021 and 2020 their hold/break are separated by less than 1%. That is incredible.

I think Medvedev wins the match (and I hope he does too - if there was a guy I’d want least to make 21, it’s Rafa). BUT, I’ll be taking the +3.5 games on Rafa. I think despite all the semantics, I have to trust what quantitative work I’ve done and go with the plus games. Medvedev has historically struggled with Rafa, for whatever reason. And it’s not like they are dated head-to-heads; two of the defeats came during Medvedev’s crazy 2019 run and all four matches have been at marquee events. I can’t get the missed opportunities early in the fifth set at the 2019 US Open out of my head - Nadal, like Djoker and Fed, just seems to have that unquantifiable ‘thing’ when it comes to playing people not named Djokovic or Federer. Despite his recent success Meds has dropped a bunch of sets, as I mentioned above. Bascially everytime he plays a top 20 guy, he wins, but it is not always straightforward. Since January 1st, 2021 Meds is 21-8 vs top 20 guys. In those 21 wins he managed to avoid dropping a set 12 times. But, three of those were against Carreno Busta (who he surprisingly owns) and two were against Casper Ruud not on clay. So, there is about a 50-50 shot that Meds drops a set to Nadal (Nadal has won at least a set in all four of their head-to-heads).

Picks
Nadal +3.5, -110, BM
Medvedev 3-1, +300, Bet365 x0.5
1st set o10.5, +162, Bet365 x0.5