(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)

It’s older players who will dominate top 100 more than younger players. That is certainly the trend recently (red. recorded in 2015). Looking at the rankings since the beginning in 1973, there are 3 things that I really would like to highligt.

The underlying statistic is that the top 50 and top 100 on the men’s tour is the oldest it has ever been.

That is set to continue next year as well (red. recorded in 2015). When rankings were first introduced the average age of a top 100 player was 27 years of age. Since 1980 through to the mid 19080s that gradually fell. To about 1985–1986 it was down to 24, so 3 years less than 1973. Since 1986 that average has once again gone increasing. 25 in the mid 1990s26 just 8–9 years ago. In 2011 it was 272013 it was 28 and there is an outside chance that it will reach 29 by the end of this year (red. recorded in 2015).

In 1989 there were 10 teenagers in top 100, and if you compare that to only 5 between 2008–2014 that’s a huge difference.

Because there are so few young players out there now a days they are so much more noticeable, so people will talk about Kyrgios, Thiem, Zverev, Rublev and Coric. They are though anomalies now. They are now breaking the top 100 at age 25.

For the 20 year period between 1980 and 2000 the average age breaking the top 100 was 22, so now it takes 3 more years to break into the top 100, which has huge financial consequences.

It also makes you reconfigure what a veteran is. When Roger Federer turned 30 it was generally thought to be the start of his last years on tour without a proper chance of really making damage at the Grand Slam level anymore. That has been the case in terms of Grand Slam titles so far (red. recorded in 2015, and Roger has done quite a lot of damage in 2017 and 2018 at the slams).

What is quite interesting though is that a player born in the 1980’s have a 1/5 chance of having their best ever ranking after the age of 30. That is unprecedented as that number used to be 10 percent.

What I will now elaborate on is 3 things.

1st, greater fitness. Players are better conditioned they are stronger and better able to overall stay injury free and be able to compete. 2nd, prize money and the allocation of them has lead to players who are higher ranked having a larger share of the prize money than before. 3rd, there is the Grand Slam Seedings which I think at the time was considered an irrelevant rule change whereby the Grand Slam committees brought in 32 seeds to the Grand Slam tournaments in 2001, which was designed to protect players seeded 17–32. Strongly felt by players on the ATP tour. That has also had an effect that helps to keep players at the top of the rankings for longer.

Broadly if you take the 3 together; better fitness, the allocation of prize money and the Grand Slam Seedings those are the top protected at the expense of those trying to break through unintentionally or otherwise that is actually what has happened.

If we look at some of these things in isolation. Hewitt and Roddick have recently retired and are well placed to talk about the change in the game in 10–15 years. They have both said this year (red 2015) players are bigger, stronger. You can’t just have a serve and expect to get by on the tour. They have specifically called people out people like Isner and Karlovic. If you are under any illusions, these guys are also athletes even if you think of them as primarily servers. They also have that level of fitness too. The top players will go around with a british newspaper calls a battalion of experts, so they will have dietitians, fitness trainers, masseurs etc. All of it designed to keep the players at their very peak physical fitness. The challenge here is that it costs money and there are fewer players towards the bottom part of the top 100 that can afford it.

Michael Russel reckons that it was 75.000 dollars to cover his base costs traveling around the tour without a coach yearly. The USTA did a report a few years ago and said it’s about a 140.000 to travel the tour with a coach and these are obviously large costs to bare for any prospective player.

It has become even more difficult if you look at the trends of prize money over the past few years.

The main ATP tour between 1978–2014 prize money adjusted for inflation has gone up 200 percent. At the same time on the challenger tour, these are the events where the players ranked 80–300 will play, are down by 29 percent adjusted for inflation.

If you think about it it’s extraordinary as it’s always extremely difficult to break through, it’s super competitive to break through. We now know that it’s taking 3 years longer to break through. We also know that you now have to do it with a lot less money compared to your peers on the main tour.

The ATP has said that between 2005–2015 the challenger tour has got a 100 percent increase. When you adjust for inflation it’s barely 5 percent over the last 10 years. In that time adjusted for inflation those last 8–10 years ATP tour price money has gone up 60 percent.

So what we have is a divergence in the way that up-and-coming-players will be able to use their limited ressources in order to challenge those on the main tour. It’s probably worth acknowledging that I’m certainly for more equality in the allocation of prize money, but the ATP tour does have real stars. Murray, Djokovic, Federer, Nadal, Nishikori. These are guys who have true star power and they do not get paid as much in prize money as other athletes in other sports. So sports in general has moved in that direction, but it’s a choice. When you start looking at how you will replenish the tour you have to look at how prize money become a factor particularly if it’s stopping people actually pursuing tennis as long as they need to if you know that on average you are not going to break the top 100 until the age of 25, then you have to spent another 3 years on the challenger tour. Just so you know the rough difference in prize money;

in 2014 James Mcgee was the 200th ranked player and earned 90.000 dollars, the 100th player Filip Krajinovic 168.000 dollars. If you get to the 50th ranked player Lleyton Hewitt 500.000 dollars. So there is a real disparity there in what players are earning.

Now that is all fine. Those are two big issues, but what the Grand Slam Seedings actually did, was that it shifted the balance just a bit further especially for the players 17–32 in the world. Prior to 2001 you only had 16 seeds at the Grand Slam Tournaments. That basically meant that your 1st seed for instance Novak Djokovic could face the number 17 in the tournament in the very first round. What the chance in 2001 did was that the top 32 seeds were separated equally out in the draw therefor the number one player in the world can only face the number 33rd ranked player in the world in the first round. More importantly what it means was that the 17–32 couldn’t face anybody in the top 16. So the extension of seeding protection has actually brought some interesting results.

So in the 11 years prior to 2001 players ranked 17–32 would get to the 3rd round 35 % of the time. In the 11 years since that has gone up to 53 % , which is a difference of 18 %.

Comes from Tennis Abstract’s web site which is done by Jeff Sackman who has done some really good articles of the effects of the 16–32 seeds. However what is really interesting about this is what this difference actually amounts to. The fact that more players ranked 17–32 are getting to that 3rd round than before is actually equates to around 40 ranking points a year.

40 ranking points equals getting to a quarterfinal in a regular tour event, which the players ranked 16–32 now are pretty much getting for free compared to earlier.

If we talk prize money then if you do make the 3rd round of a Grand Slam e.g. US Open this year (red. 2015) that difference of making the 2nd or the 3rd round is 50.000 dollars which pays for your coaches traveling all year.

All in all we have a fitter top 50, fitter top 100 who can pay through their prize money for that extra conditioning. At the same time the tour is structured in a way that they are less likely to face tougher players in the first 3 round of Grand Slam.

It’s my contention that these 3 factors together has lead to the aging of the ATP tour.

 

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