THE YEAR IN STATS - MEN

Dec 5, 2013, 7:20:23 AM

THE YEAR IN STATS - MEN

It is pretty amazing that the tennis year has closed and that the Australian season is just around the corner, so we thought we would have a look back at some of the statistical highlights of 2013 on the men’s tour.

It is pretty difficult to go past Rafa Nadal as the Player of the Year. The most titles (10), the most Grand Slams (2), the best record against his closest rivals.

65 players won at least one title with Rafael Nadal leading the way with ten, Novak Djokovic was second with seven and joint third was Juan Martin del Potro and Andy Murray with four each. Roger Federer was among those with just one title and it is the first time since 2001 (the first year he won a title) that Federer has failed to win multiple titles.

No.1 seeds had an 18/12 record in finals compared to 24/9 in 2012, No.2 was at 13/9 compared to 14/11 in 2012 and No.3 seed had a 6/9 record compared to 14/9 in 2012.

In 2013 the prime age to win a title was 26 with 17 titles and 27 with ten titles while the youngest final saw a combined age of 46, it happened twice, in Brisbane with Murray and Grigor Dimitrov and in Sydney with Bernard Tomic and Kevin Anderson – the first two weeks of the year. The oldest final was a combined age of 64, in Munich with Tommy Haas and Philipp Kohlschreiber.

The age factor was evident in over 30 finals, there were three of those in 2013 and there were 16 over 30 winners during the year, the most since 1975 when there were 19. There were five over 30 player players who won multiple titles – Ferrer, Mahut, Robredo, Youzhny and Haas. On the opposite side of the spectrum, Tomic was the year’s youngest winner and the only player under 21 to win a title.

The year saw 16 top 10 finals including at all four Grand Slams, at six of the ATP Masters 1000’s and also at the ATP World Tour Final.

There were eight first time winners and Djokovic ended the year with the longest singles match-win streak with 24, although Nadal had two stints with 22 consecutive match wins.

From the top three Nadal played 17 events after his late start to the season and ended with a win/loss record of 75/7, Djokovic played 16 for 74/9 and Ferrer played 24 for 60/24. Ferrer and Richard Gasquet played the highest number of events in the top 10 with 24 and Ferrer played the most matches with 84.

The longest five set final was the Australian Open with 43 games when Djokovic defeated Murray and the longest three set final was in Atlanta with 39 games as John Isner defeated Anderson.

The shortest final was 14 games when Nadal beat Ferrer in Acapulco.

Finally, to the biggest upsets and the 2013 year saw plenty of those. It seems the consensus is for the Steve Darcis upset of Nadal at Wimbledon – that was the one that stood out the most but Federer’s loss to Sergiy Stakhovsky also at Wimbledon is close behind. Federer featured in two other massive upsets, to Federico Delbonis at Hamburg and Daniel Brands at Gstaad. Two others to get mentions were Horacio Zeballos over Nadal in Vina del Mar and Lleyton Hewitt’s defeat of del Potro at the US Open.