The Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) ranking reflects the competitive performance of tennis players, and their ranking is based on the total number of tournaments and tournament rounds they win throughout the year. Researchers at the Miguel Hernández University of Elche have wanted to go further and have developed another ranking based on mathematical techniques and on the players’ own data provided by the ATP to see which are the best tennis players regarding their game .
“The results have shown that Rafa Nadal obtains the maximum score when he is evaluated based on the most efficient game patterns,” explains José Luis Ruiz, co-author of the work, in statements to the SINC agency. This has led him to occupy the first position in the mathematical ranking, followed by Djokovic and Federer. Completing the “top ten” are Murray, Verdasco, Davydenko, Gonzalez, Soderling, Roddick and Del Potro.
For the classification, the statistics of the tennis players’ game prepared by the ATP itself have been taken into account, such as the percentage of points won with the first service, the percentage of break points saved, the percentage of games won from the rest, etc. “With this information we can know who is the best player in each of these sections of the game; however, the ATP does not provide a ranking that reflects the performance of the players in all aspects of the game simultaneously, ” says Ruiz.
In their study, the experts used two mathematical techniques: the so-called “Data Envelopment Analysis” (DEA) and “Cross-efficiency evaluation”. As the authors explain, when a player is evaluated with the DEA technique, a mathematical model through the computer assigns to each factor of the game the importance that best suits the player, taking into account the characteristics of their game.
In 2009, the year in which the study is focused, Federer occupied the first position of the ATP ranking, so from this work it can be concluded that, although the valuation of the game of Nadal and Djokovic is higher than that of Federer, the latter competed better.
