On Wimbledon and tennis dominance

I'd like to first congratulate Andy Murray on becoming the first British man to reach a Wimbledon final since 1938, way back when Neville Chamberlain was espousing appeasement on the European continent. Yeah, it's been a while. And if you know anything about me, you'll know that I've got some familiarity with long sports droughts.

Of course, Murray has his sights set a little higher, hoping to become the first British champion since 1936. He'll have to beat Roger Federer to do so, and as former Sports Illustrated journalist Joe Posnanski points out, that'll be a feat that's easier said than done.

Since start of 2006, all but one of the 26 grand slams have been been won by Federer, Nadal, Djoko.
— Joe Posnanski (@JPosnanski) July 6, 2012

Wow. That is some serious dominance. In case you were wondering, the one outlier was the 2009 U.S. Open, in which Argentine Juan Martin del Potro beat both Nadal and Federer to take the title. He hasn't reached another grand slam final (or even a semifinal) since.

For comparison's sake, over in golf land, there have been a staggering 19 different major winners since '06, including guys like Louis Oosthuizen and Keegan Bradley. Only four players (Tiger Woods, Padraig Harrington, Angel Cabrera, Phil Mickelson) have won multiple majors during that time, none more than Woods' 4.

Notably, Federer and Nadal also won the final 3 grand slam titles in 2005, making it a run of 28 out of 29 for the group. They've also garnered 15 runner-up finishes since '06, meaning that three men have combined for 77% of the 52 available spots in the last 26 grand slam finals. Only 8 other players have even reached a final since '06, and 5 of those 8 made only one--such is the dominance of the Fed/Nadal/Djoko triad. (The three men who have made multiple finals? Andy Roddick and Robin Soderling with two each... and Andy Murray, now appearing in his fourth.)

Simply put, the dominance of the current tennis kings is unmatched by anything in golf or tennis history--Nicklaus/Palmer, Agassi/Sampras, Connors/Borg/McEnroe, nothing comes close. The only thing that's even in the same ballpark is the reign of Bobby Jones and Walter Hagen (toss in Gene Sarazen if you want)... but that was a different era (and sport) entirely.

So let's enjoy this current tennis era for what it is, and realize that a win by Murray on Sunday would not only be historic--it would be almost miraculous, breaking the British drought in what is perhaps the unlikeliest of decades. Go Andy.

[Twitter]

Late entrant for Clip of the Week

Okay, fine, you got me... I threw in the towel yesterday on Clip of the Week, and for that I apologize. I'll try to make amends today with the rightful champion... this guy. To the Australian Open we go:



That clip is one of those that is made to go viral--in fact, it's basically the real-life version of something like this or this (a trend that's honestly gone too far and gotten pretty lame). It also reminds me of this, one of the greatest Seinfeld episodes of all.

Either way, it's entertaining, and hey... while we're at it... you know, the Sox could use a shortstop. Just sayin'...

The Mini-Bond Revolution

I hope you all had yourselves a fun and relaxing weekend. I'm personally glad to have football back, and I'm looking forward to the Patriots-Dolphins MNF game tonight to distract me from what's going on with my baseball team lately.

But in a weekend that otherwise could have been dominated by football, the most entertaining bit of sports I watched this weekend was the 5th set of the Novak Djokovic-Roger Federer semifinal match at the U.S. Open on Saturday. It was a nice reminder for me that tennis, at its best, can be wildly entertaining to watch. No other sport pits two individuals against each other so directly, and the resulting dynamics (including those between the players and the fans) can be absolutely fascinating.

So with tennis fresh in my mind, I was drawn to this old article from the Wall Street Journal, which was referenced over at the Marginal Revolution blog. It's about Wimbledon, and a pretty creative business idea that they've come up with in response to increasingly skittish global debt markets.

In England, no ticket is hotter than the men's final at Wimbledon. Even a mediocre match is an occasion. And there is always the chance to witness history.

Think Federer vs. Nadal. Or, if you are old enough, McEnroe vs. Borg.

So how do you get in? Most seats go to members of the exclusive All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, which hosts the event, to other associated tennis clubs and organizations or to winners of an annual public ballot.

But there is a backdoor onto Centre Court. About 2,500 seats are reserved for investors in the club's so-called debentures, or bonds.

The club has issued these since the 1920s to finance development. But instead of paying cash coupons, like regular bonds, Wimbledon debentures pay interest in something much more valuable: tickets.

Holders get one ticket for each day of the Wimbledon tournaments during the five-year life of the bond. And here is the kicker: If you don't feel like going on any given day, you can sell it—legally.

"They're the only tickets that are freely tradable on the open market," says All England Finance Director Richard Atkinson. "You are free to sell them to anyone you like."

Okay, so the bonds weren't exactly a response to the European debt crisis--Wimbledon's been doing them since the 1920s. But as Marginal Revolution points out, similar mini-bond programs have become something of a trend over in the U.K. in recent years, somewhat mirroring the explosion of microfinance loans in the previous decade.

Regardless of what government talking heads might like to tell you, we don't need the banks to lend to us in order for commerce to operate freely. They certainly make things easier, but when banks aren't lending (and they aren't, particularly not to small businesses, despite trillions in government bailouts and backing), people will find other ways to finance their operations. These sorts of mini-bonds are a perfect example, and they underscore the ceaselessly amazing adaptability and ingenuity of people in difficult (or changing) circumstances.

Banks, beware. You're not the only lender in town, as much as you might like us to believe that you are.

[Wall Street Journal]  
(h/t Marginal Revolution)

This is so stupid

Alright, this is getting out of control. You all know I'm a huge sports nerd--I think it's great fun, though some people apparently disagree. But lately, a number of people have just been trying way too hard to play the sports nerd game, and failing miserably. People like Josh Hamilton. And now, the New York Times' Karen Crouse, who spends 1,000 words arguing that at Wimbledon, "Left-Handers Have Edge in Slice and Singularity", whatever that means. I think it means that lefties have an advantage at Wimbledon. Let's find out.

An estimated 10 percent of the world’s population is left-handed, but in the men’s and women’s singles at Wimbledon, five of the 32 remaining players, or 16 percent, are.

Oh. Okay. So out of 32 not-quite-Wimbledon-quarterfinalists, we probably should have expected there to be 3 (9.4%) or 4 (12.5%) lefties. Neither of those outcomes would have raised an eyebrow. But instead, we've got a whole 5, which means that one lefty who was supposed to lose in the third round... didn't (we'll call him Feliciano Lopez). Meh. What else ya got?

According to the tournament’s Web site, in 125 years 10 left-handers — eight men and two women — have won a total of 26 singles titles.

Hey, you went to the tournament's Web site, that's great--puts you one up on Josh Hamilton's friends at ESPN. Unfortunately, your analysis sorta stopped there.

Because you see, 26 out of 240 total singles titles (we skipped a few years at Wimbledon while there were some wars going on) is a whopping... 10.8%. We'd expect to see 24, and we got 26. So, if one of our star lefties happened to lose instead of win a couple times, we really wouldn't even be having this argument, would we?

The point is, contrived statistical "studies" like these with naturally limited sample sizes are highly vulnerable to the occasional outlier. In this case, the outlier is of course Martina Navratilova, quite possibly the most dominant player on any surface, male or female, in tennis history. Miss Navratilova won Wimbledon NINE TIMES, including six straight from 1982 to 1987. Cut her down with an early-career injury (or, alternatively, give Chris Evert 1 or 2 victories out of the 5 Wimbledon finals she lost to Navratilova), and instead of being over-represented among Wimbledon champions, lefties would be fairly represented if not under-represented.

Really, this article should have read, "There have been a lot of great tennis players in history. Some of them have been left-handed. Sometimes, the really great left-handed players won Wimbledon. Other times, they didn't." Hey, this article kinda sucks, doesn't it? Yeah. I thought so. Instead, Ms. Crouse glossed over the statistical inadequacies of her argument, waved her hands a little bit and then started interviewing some people to make a qualitative argument instead of a quantitative one, because that's all she had.

The problem is, if you're a lazy journalist looking for a story, it's exceedingly easy to do this sort of thing. Take golf, for example. From 1934 to 2002, exactly zero of the 66 Masters champions were left-handed. Then, suddenly, 4 of the next 8 champions were. Holy crap, what happened? Clearly, something changed at Augusta that began favoring lefties... right? No, of course not. Phil Mickelson showed up, and won a few tournaments (yes, I know, Mike Weir won one of them). Mickelson is your new Navratilova. Does he change the underlying probabilities of golf and the advantages of being left-handed?

Honestly, don't answer that. I've already wasted enough words on this one, and I really don't want to get into a semantic argument over golf equipment manufacturers and whether they're making more left-handed clubs than they used to (they are). It's really not the point here.

Look, journalists, if you're going to dabble in the world of statistics and sports-nerdness, at least know your statistics, and recognize what's meaningful and what isn't. (Hint: be very wary of small sample sizes). Alright, good talk.

[New York Times]

Clip of the Week

For the first time in Clip of the Week history, we've got co-champions. Both of them come from the world of sports, and both of them are so mesmerizing that I literally can't stop watching them.

First, from Maria Sharapova's Australian Open match earlier in the week, where there was a "dead spot" on the court. Apparently "dead spot" means "gigantic patch of velcro" or "place where laws of physics cease to exist".



Up next, and equally mesmerizing, is this shot from last night's NBA game between the Hawks and the Bucks. Earl Boykins sees your tennis dead spot, and raises you a perpetually spinning basketball.

Interesting sports-related posts

I'm a sucker for scientific studies that focus on sports and performance, and for some reason this weekend was a big weekend for these kinds of studies. The first one I came across was in this morning's New York Times.

Two economists at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, while investigating how round numbers influence goals, examined the behavior of major league hitters from 1975 to 2008 who entered what became their final plate appearance of the season with a batting average of .299 or .300 (in at least 200 at-bats).

They found that the 127 hitters at .299 or .300 batted a whopping .463 in that final at-bat, demonstrating a motivation to succeed well beyond normal (and in what was usually an otherwise meaningless game).

Most deliciously, not one of the 61 hitters who entered at .299 drew a walk — which would have fired those ugly 9s into permanence because batting average considers bases on balls neither hit nor at-bat.

I think this sort of finding has some interesting implications for how we design compensation and other structured incentives. The Times didn't mention how many of the 127 batters had incentives in their contracts for hitting .300 or above, but it's clear that the threshold altered the way the players approached their work. That none of the .299 batters drew a walk certainly shows that their behavior was different--whether for better or for worse. Simply, people respond strongly to incentives, and we need to recognize what this will mean when we design incentive-laden systems.

The second report was featured on Time's NewsFeed, and focused on tennis rather than baseball.

A study, which appeared in the Public Library of Science ONE journal, has shown that the loud grunts of some tennis players can give them a real advantage over opponents. The researchers from Canada and America showed that making “extraneous sound” could interfere with your opponent's performance, making their responses both slower and less accurate. 

The report suggested that the grunt could also hamper a receiver who was trying to judge the spin and speed of a ball from the sound made off the racket.

I sincerely hope this one isn't true, lest we witness more tennis matches like this one:

[New York Times]
[Time NewsFeed]