A “Great” Rivalry can be defined as a rivalry that not only has a number of matches but also historic matches -- the ones that impact the record books. I think everyone would agree that Grand Slam matches have the greatest impact on the record books. Most tennis aficionados would further agree that great rivalries are defined in the Majors. It is the Grand Slam matches that most fans watch and remember; they ultimately stand the test of time. By this logic, I decided to only statistically break down Grand Slam results.
In choosing the 13 rivalries, I looked at rivalries that had at least one major final and played a minimum of 14 matches. Current players are excluded, as their careers are still being defined.
I broke down each rivalry’s Grand Slam results into a series of categories:
I assigned ordinals to each rivalry in each of the 7 categories, a 1 for the best score, and so on down the line. I added up the score in each category for each rivalry, and divided it by the total number of categories to obtain the “Final Rivalry score.” Results are shown here.
By my “fuzzy” math, Connors-Borg and Wilander-Lendl are mathematically proven to be the greatest mens' rivalries over the past 35 years.
Some of you might wonder why Connors-Vilas and Borg-Vilas aren’t on my list. Borg dominated Vilas 17-5 H2H and never lost to Vilas in a slam. Connors and Vilas played each other only 9 times.
For those who are interested, if Federer-Nadal never played another match their score would be 6.0 -- placing them 7th on my list.
Now, go. Debate! (And, yes, I have way too much time on my hands)
--MWC
