Instant Analysis - What Is The Greatest Men's Rivalry Of The Past 40 Years?

What makes a rivalry?  What makes a rivalry a GREAT rivalry?  Subjective factors (personal appeal, etc.) aside, can we mathematically determine the greatest men’s tennis rivalry over the past 40 years?

A rivalry is simply a series of head to head matches played over two players’ careers.  Most would say, the greater the number of matches, the greater the rivalry.  Certainly that could be used as a factor.  I tend to look at numbers in a more focused sense.

A “great” Rivalry can be defined as a rivalry that not only has a great number of matches, but that also has what I call “historic” matches, ones that impact the record books.  I think everyone would agree that Grand Slam matches have the greatest impact on the record books.  Most would agree that “great” rivalries are defined in the Majors.   It is the Grand Slam matches that most people will watch, and that most people will remember.  It is Grand Slam matches that ultimately stand the test of time.  By this logic, I decided only to statistically break down Grand Slam results.

In choosing the 16 rivalries, I looked at past rivalries that had at least one major final, played a minimum of 14 matches, and, in the case of current players, met the described criteria and had longevity in terms of time and number of matches.

Some of you may be wondering why Connors-Vilas, and Borg-Vilas aren’t on my list.  Borg dominated Vilas 17-5 head-to-head and never lost to Vilas in a slam.  Connors-Vilas played only 9 times.  Andy Murray does not yet make this list as his “rivalry” with Djokovic has only just begun.  We will all see how that plays out over time.

I broke down each rivalry’s Grand Slam results into a series of categories:

• Average number of sets played per match (the higher score means rivalry had higher quality matches played)
• Average Weight of Grand Slam Matches played (A final received 7pts, R128 1pt)
• Number of Slam Finals
• Number of meetings as #1 and #2 in slams
• Number of total Slam matches
• “50/50” score in Slam Finals (The difference between the winning percentage of each player involved and 50%, the threshold for a perfectly even rivalry.  0 is a perfect score)
• “50/50” score for Grand Slam matches (Same criteria as above)

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 as follows:

 

Interestingly, it is the Djokovic/Nadal rivalry that earns 1^st place on this list.  Again, this does not take into account every ATP match, nor does it factor in Davis Cup.  Only matches in the Grand Slams are scrutinized with acute analysis. As with any list with current players, results remain fluid.  If Nadal runs a streak of 5 slam wins in a row against Djokovic, their rivalry number will decline.  Likewise if Federer happens to beat Nadal in slams going forward at a higher rate than he is winning now, their rivalry number should increase.  So this is just a snapshot of how things look today.

Now, go….debate.  And, yes, I have way too much time on my hands.