Talking Head-to-Heads

By Rosangel Valenti, TW Contributing Editor

Some months back, I wrote a piece about the head-to-head records between the (then) top 20 ATP players and the rest of the top 20, as well as their head-to-heads against the Top 50 players. "Oh no," I hear some of you groan. "Not another piece about Federer, Nadal and Djokovic, and the unfulfilled potential of David Nalbandian." Well, no. The WTA has, statistically speaking, received zero love around here recently, so it seems like a good time to take a look at the comparable set of statistics for the women. Thus, I've run exactly the same head-to-head exercise for the WTA as was done earlier for the ATP, on data that was current up until the end of last week.

The purpose of looking at head-to-head records is to see whether a given player has an ability to beat the top players - as this is mandatory for achieving success in Slams and other big events. In some ways, the exercise is designed to illuminate the giant-killing potential of some up-and-coming players. Though of course, tennis is all about matchups, and, as the statistics unarguably show, whatever record any player may possess against the rest of the field, Justine Henin is one giant who currently has a stunningly good record against all challengers. In fact, there is only one player in the current top Top 50 with a significant winning record against her - step forward, Venus Williams, with a 7-2 head-to-head in her favour. The only other Top 50 player with a winning record against Henin is Lucie Safarova, at 1-0. What's the betting that after the next time they play, it will be 1-1?

Simply put, I have looked at each player's head-to-head record, in aggregate, against the current Top 5, Top 10, and Top 20 (to be clear: that means that the Top 5 are being assessed against only four other players, as opposed to five for the rest of the Top 20, whie the Top 10 are being assessed against nine other players, rather than ten). For comparison I've looked at the records of comeback queen Lindsay Davenport,  as well as the recently retired Martina Hingis and Kim Clijsters.

From this table, I made the following key observations:

• Among the Top 20 players, there are five with a 50% or better winning record against the current Top 5 - Henin, Ivanovic, Venus and Serena Williams, and Amelie Mauresmo, with Henin's record at a soaring 89%. When I calculated the same numbers for the men last April, Roger Federer's winning percentage against the Top 5 was "only" 83%, which I thought was amazing in its own right. Kim Clijsters also possesses a winning record against the current Top 5.

• The percentage of wins against the Top 5, for those exceeeding 50%, is generally higher than for the men. Thus, while Rafael Nadal had a 56% winning record against the Top 5, second to Federer, in the women's case, Ana Ivanovic, Amelie Mauresmo, Serena Williams and Venus Williams all topped Nadal's showing (as, historically, did Kim Clijsters). Three other Top 20 men other than Nadal (Hewitt, Murray and Nalbandian) had a greater than 50% winning record against the Top 5 - by just a few percent. Gaudio, Henman and Canas could also claim to be part of that elite. In general, we appear to have a situation where, in spite of having a dominant player in Justine Henin, the elite players below her - especially Venus Williams, on 64%, also have very strong records against the Top 5 (well, in Venus' case, there's that head-to-head against Justine).

• Among the Top 20, there are six players with a winning record against the Top 10 - the same five mentioned above, plus Sharapova. Clijsters and Davenport are also part of this elite club.

• The only change when we look at the records of the Top 20 against the Top 20 is that Nicole Vaidisova has a 50.9% winning percentage, while current number two Svetlana Kuznetsova is exactly 50/50, and Agnes Szavay, on the basis of only six matches, also stands at 50%.

• For me, perhaps the most interesting statistics are those applying to Kuznetsova and Jankovic. Apart from the 14% recorded by Sybille Bammer, world No. 3, Jelena Jankovic, at 18% wins, has the worst record against the Top 5 of any Top 20 player. Kuznetsova, world No. 2, is the next worst, on 24%. Jankovic in particular has a disappointing record against the Top 10 as well. Is she turning into the female equivalent of Nokolay Davydenko, who also has a notably less-than-stellar record against the elite players? Of course, part of the story is her 0-9 record against Henin, but the highest-ranked player over whom she has a winning record, 3-2, is Elena Dementieva at No. 11. Probably her best head-to-head records are 2-2 against Serena Williams, and 3-3 against Venus Williams. But she's 3-3 with Marion Bartoli, and has a losing record against the likes of Nicole Vaidisova and Anna Chakvetadze.

• Kuznetsova, like Jankovic, has played Henin a lot - her losing record is 2-15, which accounts for part of her losing record against the top 5, but not all. She and Jankovic are 2-2 against each other, but otherwise have losing records against the rest of the Top 5. Ivanovic, meanwhile, has a 0-3 losing record against Henin (0-4 after the current week), but more than compensates with a 4-1 record over both Jankovic and Kuznetsova. She has yet to record a win over either Williams. Perhaps, then, part of her apparent better performance, versus that of her fellow Serb, is due to her fairly impressive winning record against most of the rest of the Top 20.

In the second table, I've also looked at the records of the current top eight players against the Top 50. And, as for the men, I calculated how many players they have played, but never lost to. Roger Federer was the only ATP player who had established "complete dominance" over more than 50% of the field (58%), with Nadal at 48% and (even back in April last year, before some of his later heroics) Djokovic at 45%.

Interesting, then, that while Justine Henin has a similar "complete dominance" percentage (i.e. has never been beaten by that player) to Federer's, at 56%, Lindsay Davenport is well ahead of her, at 66%. She hasn't played against as many of the current Top 50 as has Henin, but has a strong record against all that she has played, including a 14-13 head-to-head against Venus Williams. With the exceptions of Serena Williams (who's at 10-4), Maria Sharapova (4-1) and Justine Henin (7-5), Davenport has a winning record against all other current top 50 players that she's played.

Regarding "complete dominance" over other top 50 players - only Maria Sharapova and the Williams sisters can rival Henin and Davenport. Looking more closely at these dominant women in turn:

• Maria Shrarapova has a losing head-to-head against Henin (2-6), Serena Williams (2-4), and Amelie Mauresmo (1-3) while being 3-2 against Venus Williams. In fact, only one other Top 50 player, Victoria Azarenka, has a winning record (1-0) against her. As mentioned above, she's 4-1 against Lindsay Davenport.

• Only two top 50 players have a winning record (1-0 apiece) against Serena Williams - Anna Chakvetadze and Sybille Bammer. She's tied with Henin (6-6), Venus Williams (7-7) and Jankovic (2-2).

• With the exception of Agnieszka Radwanska, who's 1-0 against her, Tatiana Golovin, who's at 2-0, and Lindsay Davenport, against whom she's 13-14, no top 50 players have a winning record against Venus Williams. Incidentally, I watched the match against Radwanska last year, and Venus completed it despite a very obvious wrist injury.

For what it's worth, Amelie Mauresmo, while not as dominant as the women mentioned above, has losing records against only seven Top 50 players - Henin (6-8), Serena Williams (2-9), Venus Williams (3-5), Vaidisova (2-3), Alona Bondarenko (0-1), Lucie Safarova (0-2) and Peng Shuai (0-1). I'm seeing the current cutoff between "Tier 1" and "Tier 2" for the women as coming around here, with Mauresmo in Tier 2. This is debatable - but then, there are those head-to-heads against the more dominant women.

Among others, Anna Chakvetadze has yet to make much impact regarding those significant head-to-heads - she's 1-0 against Serena Williams, and 1-2 against Venus Williams - but otherwise has been dominated by the dominant women. Ana Ivanovic has a 2-2 head-to-head with Maria Sharapova, has never played Davenport, and has no wins against the other three dominants. Jelena Jankovic, as it turns out, can at least say that she has even head-to-heads with both Venus Williams (3-3) and Serena Williams (2-2). But she's 0-9 against Henin, 1-3 against Sharapova, and 1-4 against Davenport. Current world number 2, Svetlana Kuznetsova, is 3-3 with Venus Williams, but has a losing head-to-head against the four other dominant players. None of these players belongs in Tier 1 - the question is really, which ones, if any belong in Tier 2? What does the Tribe think? A working definition of Tier 1 for me would be something like "current Grand Slam contenders, with Slam titles already in the bag". Tier 2 would be something like "possible future Slam contenders, or players with Slam titles who don't look like repeating it."

Finally, I also felt that it would be useful to review career match-winning percentages. Henin has dominated more recently, agaist the current field, but this doesn't necessarily reflect the situation in earlier years, against a somewhat different field. In fact, Henin, Sharapova and the Williams sisters all have 81-82% career-winning percentages, as of now.

By way of a benchmark, I thought that it would be useful to throw in the career-winning percentages of some great female champions of earlier years. Steffi Graf won 89% of her 1,017 career matches; Monica Seles 83% of 717 matches; Chris Evert 90% of 1455 matches; Martina Navratilova 87% of 1653 matches; Billie Jean King 82% of 850 matches; and Evonne Goolagong Cawley 81% of 869 matches. Martina Hingis, incidentally, won 80% of her 681 matches.

Looking at the current percentages versus the higher ones of the past, I was tempted to think that the fact that there is more than one sizeable rivalry in the women's game today may have something to do with the difference. However, not all the top female players play each other particularly often. For example, the Williams sisters have a 7-7 head-to-head, but the last time they met in a tournament was at the US Open in 2005. And, until the 2007 US Open, it was more than four years since Justine Henin had played Venus Williams - so, as Justine won, how much does that 7-2 head-to-head in Venus' favour really mean today? Until 2007 (Key Biscayne) it was also nearly four years since Henin had played Serena Williams, and with three wins to one loss in her favour since then, she has now evened out their head-to-head at 6-6. Meanwhile, Lindsay Davenport's 14-13 head-to-head with Venus Williams is the most prolific one I came across during this exercise, but they haven't met since the 2005 Wimbledon final. Clearly, motherhood, injuries and other matters have kept some women off the tour at different times, but it would be good to see some of these rivalries being more active. Other prolific rivalries of the recent past, by the way, included Henin's with Kim Clijsters, at 12-10, and the 11-10 rivalry between Martina Hingis and Venus Williams. Most others currently contain far less matches.

Finally, I've checked out the current career-winning percentages for the top men - Federer stands at 81% of 685 matches, Nadal at 79% of 324 matches, Djokovic at 70% of 172 matches, Roddick at 76% of 540 matches, Davydenko at 58% of 465 matches, and Ferrer at 59% of 346 matches. All that this tells us is that the dominant women generally seem to have higher career match-winning percentages than the men, and find it easier to dominate lesser rivals.

In fact, comparing the men with the women, the statistics pretty much bear out what is also intuitive - that there is a group of elite women, who are very difficult for the rest of the field to beat, who do, however, have the ability to beat each other, even though one is currently dominant. Whilst, among the men, complete domination of one or more other players is harder to do, with relatively little parity existing at the top of the game.

Note - it's tough to display tables this complex in the format we use here - so I have included two popup windows. [This link should give you a larger version of the first table, and thisis a larger version of the second.]