The Greatest Tennis Players On Clay In The Open Era: An Analysis

THE ANALYSIS

To put it bluntly, the least interesting portion of this study was to establish who sat at the top: Rafael Nadal is the equivalent of the military-industrial complex denounced by Eisenhower, an economic structure of such magnitude as to make the American war budget greater than the sum of those of the countries ranging from second to seventh place – Nadal is exactly that. What the Majorcan has done in the last three decades on a single surface (with a small break in 2015-2016) is unparalleled in the history of tennis and perhaps in all sports, so much so that ESPN has just crowned him as the most dominant athlete of the twenty-first century for his 12 Parisian titles.

As is known, the only player capable of partially annihilating the competition on the dirt in the same way was Bjorn Borg, who still holds the record for the lowest number of games lost in a men’s Grand Slam (32, in 1978), but who, as will be seen, is comparable to the Bull of Manacor only in intensive terms (he dominated in the same way) but not in extensive ones (he did it for a much shorter time-span). Indeed, a first glance at the big titles on clay paints a very precise image:

1. Nadal, 38 tournaments won (13 Slams+25 Masters Series/Masters 1000);
2. Borg, 14 (6+8);
3. Lendl, 11 (3+8);
4. Djokovic, also 11 but with only one Grand Slam win (1+10);
5. Vilas, 9 (2+7);
6. Kuerten, 7 (3+4); 
7. Federer, Muster, Nastase e Orantes, also at 7 but with only one Grand Slam win (1+6);
8. Wilander, 6 (3+3);
9. Bruguera e Courier, 4 (2+2); 
10. Connors e Ferrero, as in the previous cases, 4 but with only one Major (1+3).

Therefore, Nadal has more big titles on clay than the three other highest-placed athletes combined, and has more titles at the Bois de Boulogne than the others, apart from the Swedish Bear, have in total between Slams and Masters 1000. This result is so disproportionate that is full-on mirrored in the first variable, the one related to the total points:

1. Nadal, 55.75 points (26.25 Slam points, 29.5 Master 1000 points);
2. Djokovic 24.75 (9.5+15.25);
3. Borg 22.75 (13.75+9);
4. Vilas, 21.75 (9+12.75);
5. Federer, 20.25 (8.5+11.75);
6. Lendl, 18 (8.5+9.5);
7. Wilander, 14.5 (8.75+5.75);
8. Orantes, 13.75 (4.5+9.25);
9. Nastase, 12.75 (4.5+8.25);
10. Connors 11.75 (7+4.75);
11. Kuerten 11.75 (6.5+5.25) the same as Connors but with fewer Slam points; 
12. Muster, 9.5 (2.75+6.75);
13. Bruguera, 9.25 (5.5+3.75);
14. Ferrero, 8.25 (4+4.25);
15. Agassi (6+1.75), 7.75 (Courier has the same score but fewer Slam points,5,75+2).

As is noticeable, some values ​​are the same, while others differ slightly (Djokovic broke a tie with Borg by winning his fifth Rome title, Lendl is superseded by Vilas and Federer, and so on). Therefore, this aspect brings us to the variable concerning the average points scored per tournament:

1. Borg, 1.197;
2. Nadal, 1.115
3. Courier, 1.107;
4. Kuerten, 0.979;
5. Lendl, 0.947;
6. Bruguera, 0.9;
7. Muster, 0.864;
8. A. Medvedev, 0.821;
9. Wilander, 0.763;
10. Ferrero, 0.75;
11. A. Gomez, 0.656;
12. Panatta, 0.656 but less big titles;
13. Gerulaitis, 0.656, same big titles as Panatta but without Slam on clay;
14. Federer, 0.653;
15. Connors, 0.653 but less big titles.

The data are much more compressed in this case, with Nadal in second place, surpassed not only by Borg, and, until his latest French Open steamrolling, by someone who has won much less than he like Courier, while people who have never won Slam on red sneak in (Andrei Medvedev and Vitas Gerulaitis) with higher scores than Federer or Djokovic – the Serbian isn’t even in the top 15.

To summarise the two very different rankings, you can look at the following graph. As anticipated, the total score is considered more relevant for this analysis, and in fact here is displayed the relationship between the two values ​​for players with a score of at least 5.75 points, 26 men overall (they might look like random numbers, but it was the maximum of number of players that could be computed without making the chart completely unreadable):

It should be observed that the average score for players with a point total greater than or equal to 3 is 8.62 points (7.675 if we exclude Nadal) and 0.663 when considering their average per event.

Aside from the urgence provided by the concurrent French Open, clay lends itself particularly to this type of analysis as it is an extremely circumscribed surface from a chronotopic and technical point of view, but at the same time very varied in terms of wins: as a matter of fact, the season of the four big tournaments on clay is essentially consumed in three countries (France, since the Monegasque Country Club is technically a French enclave, Italy and Spain, which replaced Germany) in less than two months (the abovementiond North American lysergic escapade aside), proposing climate conditions often very similar except for the altitude of Madrid which encourages a more aggressive game.

In addition, the three Masters 1000 on clay all use Dunlop balls, therefore with the same characteristics – the Roland Garros used Dunlop until 2010, then switched to Babolat and, from this year, to Wilson. Not only is the peak of the clay season condensed, but the surface itself offers (albeit perhaps not as much today, due to the 2002 Type 1 ball transition that speeded up the game, bringing it closer to that of the other turfs and favouring attackers who need more time to swing big, Kuerten’s epigones like Wawrinka or Thiem) a peculiar way of understanding tennis, based on specific tactical tricks and on advanced physical preparation.

The grass season also takes place in a temporal and geographical bubble (a fashionable word in 2020) but it has only one big event, Wimbledon – as is well known, many top-level players, including Nadal and Djokovic, tend not to carry out a specific grass training, although the Serbian has slightly changed the trend in recent years when he needed points and matches, playing at Eastbourne in 2017 and at Queen’s in 2018.

Conversely, hard-court tennis is played everywhere, all year round, on very different surfaces, and with balls ranging from Dunlop (Australia, Asia, Bercy, ATP Finals) to Wilson (US Open) to Head Penn (Sunshine Double and US Open Series). It is therefore difficult to, a) create a single ranking, and, b) create an interesting ranking, since the frequency of tournaments on hardcourts means that almost all the best players are amassing the bulk of their points on that surface – the ranking of the best players on hard courts already exists, and it is the ATP Ranking.