In my last article, I looked at how different types of tennis players age over time. With a rough sense of which aging patterns apply to what types of players, we can use those patterns to estimate how the current players at the top of the ATP rankings will age over the next five years relative to one another. Eventually, these long term projections will be replaced by a full-fledged PECOTA-style forecast to produce more accurate assessments, but using even the crudest analytics approach still offers some valuable insight into the future.
Advanced Baseline: Using the aging curve to project the 2018 ATP rankings
The Big Four won’t last forever. Who will replace them, and when? Advanced Baseline ranks offer an analytics-based answer to that question.
Julian Finney
I took the “overall” rankings (defined as 45 percent hard-court rank, 30 percent clay rank, 15 percent indoor hard rank, and 10 percent grass rank) for current leaders and a few younger players. I applied the aging curves to each of them based on their current age and what type of player they are (hard-courter, surface-neutral, or clay-courter). Finally, I normalized the projected ranks relative to the top rank to provide a more apples-to-apples comparison. Here is your projected ATP leaderboard for the next five years:
Disclaimer: I’m sure injuries, junior players waiting in the wings, and general randomness will wreak havoc on this projection, and condensing each player into an “overall” rank doesn’t say much about how each player will do on specific surfaces. Even with all the flaws in the methodology, though, I still think this graph illustrates a couple general trends about the future of the tour:
- All hail the reign of Novak the Tyrant. Part of the reason why Djokovic is so far ahead of everyone else is because of the "overall" ranking methodology. He and Federer are the only ones without an identifiable bad surface. In addition, hard-courters age the best of all the types of players, and Djokovic is as good as they get on hard courts. Barring injuries, we could see Djokovic at the top for a loooooong time.
- The youth movement is not coming to fruition any time soon. If you at least believe the general shape of a tennis player's aging curve peaking at 22-23, then the peak age for the current crop of youngsters (Grigor Dimitrov, Ernests Gulbis, and Milos Raonic) has already come and gone. That's not to say they have no chance at the top 5 any time soon, but all evidence so far points to the big breakthrough not being there.
- The clay courters are approaching their cliffs soon. Ferrer is hitting his this year -- 32 is when the brutal downswing for clay players begins. Nadal probably has about two years remaining as the overwhelming favorite at the French Open. And Wawrinka (yes, he classifies as a clay player), despite his recent success, is still turning 29 this year. His window begins to close after this year. Which brings me to the strangest part of this graph...
- Federer, the ageless wonder? How long can he really go? And will he really keep up this level of play at age 37 (!)? Admittedly, post-35 is sparsely populated territory for the Advanced Baseline data set, so Federer's decline is probably getting understated. But if anyone has the capability to extend his run, I would pick Federer hands down because of his lighter style of play and carefully tuned schedule. For what it's worth, Federer himself seems to agree.
Federer on not retiring: "[M]ost of the guys now are between 26 and 28 now and have a lot of miles on their body." http://t.co/fpoSImKxbP
— Benjamin Morris (@skepticalsports) January 23, 2014 That quote just led to a moment of clarity: Federer isn't retiring because he's waiting to see how well his competition ages.
— Benjamin Morris (@skepticalsports) January 23, 2014 It’s not very exciting to see minimal projected movement at the top. I’m sure there will be plenty of actual movement, just none that I’d be comfortable projecting reliably. The men’s talent pool isn’t exactly cooperating with the breakout narrative either. If you’re looking for that, the women’s side -- coming next -- should be much more to your liking.
See More:
