(Inspired by the podcast episode #7: “How to determine mental strenght by a number” w. Andrew Moss on The Adam Blicher Show — Dissecting High Performance in Tennis)
When the match is close and the pressure is on, we sometimes make the mistake of confusing close with lucky. You don’t even need to win more points than the other player. Not all points are created equally. You need to win the right points.
I think to an extent to say that somebody who consistently wins matches 7–6 7–6 is lucky is to miss the point.
A match can be close and certainly appear close, but the example I use is that Michael Schumacher always used to be 0,1 of a second faster than his peers in Formula 1 and that is not luck. If you look at the Clutch index over a number of years and you see players like Federer, Nadal, Djokovic and Murray right at the top, these are players that win sets 6–1 and 6–2, but when they really get pushed they are also the once that most often pull through. So close for me is not lucky.
The Clutch index is basically a proxy for mental strength in tennis.
These are statistics that do not exist and if you try to put a statistic on mental strength people will laugh at you. The reason it came about was because you would hear interviews from Djokovic or Murray at the ends of matches which they won very comfortably, but what they would say is that there was one or two points here or there, but if they didn’t win those points or if it would have been one all in set, who knows what might have happened.
My point and premise of the clutch index is that those one or two points are the entire match.
It’s not luck that they are going one way. It’s very much the ball game and players who have stronger mental frame of mind that will go on to win and will be the top players in the world.
Less luck, more by design
So what I did was to try to figure out what a good way of figuring out what would be a good way to find out mental strength in a match. What I decided to do was to take close sets, so sets that finished 7–5 7–6 and also in a Grand Slam Final set that might finish 7–5, 8–6, 9–7 and so on. I gave a score for each one. I gave a point if you won a set 7–5 and if you lost a set 7–5 you lost a point. If it was the deciding set you won 7–5 or 7–6 you would get an additional point. What came out of this was a series of scores for each player. I would do it on a season basis. Overwhelmingly the results of this was that better players scored higher rankings on the clutch index.
There is a strong correlation between those who win tight sets and have a better ranking. In 2013 5 top 10 players where in the top 10 of the clutch index. The same in 2014.
What is really interesting though is that it says different things about different players.
Over the course of a 5–6 year period Nadal, Djokovic, Federer and Murrayare in the top 10 of the clutch index, and you would expect them to be so, but what is interesting is that other players might be there for a whole host of other different reasons and that can lead us to interesting insight on these players. For some players it will matter a lot more to have a high clutch score than others.
Isner, Raonic & Karlovic
For instance players like Isner, Raonic and Karlovic that will naturally play a lot of tight sets and tiebreaks. If they do not win the majority of those sets their ranking will suffer and they will fall out of the top 5.
In 2014 Isner actually came in 3rd in clutch index where he had a very good year. IvoKarlovic this year (red. 2015) has done quite well and has now lost 8 consecutive final set tiebreaks, which will very much impact his ranking. Over the years JohnIsner has been far stronger than Karlovic on the clutch index. Unfortunately there isn’t a strong correlation between doing well on the clutch index and then improving your ranking, which is actually quite interesting.
Bautista Agut
One of the examples where it actually does work is for Roberto Bautista Agut. Last year (red. 2014) he finished the year end ranking 15 having been 58 at the start of the year. He was 4th in the clutch index. When you know that then you can work back and think when he wins those tight matches, he is the kind of player that needs to win those tight matches. He is not going to blow people off the court, so he needs to perform at his best when the other players don’t and that was exactly what he succeeded in doing in 2014.
Fabio Fognini
Surprisingly you might have other players who appear at the top of the rankings. One of the players who did very well in 2014 was Fabio Fognini who came 3rd in the clutch index. Now it’s not doing too much of a disservice to Fabio that the overall perception of him is that he is not the mentally strongest player. Sometimes his commitment is questioned because of his attitude and general demeanor, but what is interesting is that when he is in a tight spot and really competing he is someone who actually generally finds a way to pull through. When he does loose, of his 17 losses in 2014, only 4 of them got anywhere near a clutch scenario, but when he won, 19 out of 35 involved the clutch scenario.
So with Fabio we probably do a little bit of disservice to say that he is not strong mentally. What we probably can say is that he is a little bit in and out and when he is in there it’s a good chance that he will pull through.
Berdych
A player who most people would agree has all the tools to win a Grand Slam but somehow hasn’t done so and is consistently one of the poorest performers within the top 10 of the ATP rankings on the clutch index. You can kind of see it in the lack of titles. He had very few titles in 2014 and maybe he has won one this year or two (red. 2015), but for his ranking and compared to his peers at that same ranking level he wins few titles. One explanation might be that when it gets tight, he can’t always find a way. What is clear though is that he blows away a lot of people and they never get into those tight situations, but when they do then he struggles.
