Tennis News

Nadal's 1,000th Win, Djokovic's Sixth No. 1 Finish Top 2020 Milestone Moments

ATPTour.com continues its Best of 2020 series with a look at some of the biggest milestones that were reached this year. Tomorrow we will complete the series by reviewing the charity work done by players and tournaments this year.

Rafa Eclipses 1,000 Wins
At the Rolex Paris Masters, Rafael Nadal earned his 1,000th tour-level win with a 4-6, 7-6(5), 6-4 victory against Feliciano Lopez in the opening round. That triumph made the Spaniard the fourth player in the Open Era to accomplish the feat, joining Jimmy Connors, Roger Federer and Ivan Lendl.

“[Winning 1,000 matches] means that I am old. That means that I played well for such a very long time, because to achieve that number is because I have been playing well for a lot of years,” Nadal said. “[That] is something that makes me feel happy.”

The legendary lefty finished No. 2 in the year-end FedEx ATP Rankings for the seventh time and in the Top 2 for a record 12th time. Nadal also claimed a record 13th Roland Garros title, tying Federer’s record of Grand Slam singles trophies with 20.

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Novak Claims Record-Tying Sixth Year-End No. 1 Finish, Passes 900 Wins
Novak Djokovic tied his idol Pete Sampras this year by earning a record-tying sixth year-end No. 1 finish in the FedEx ATP Rankings. The Serbian has now spent 299 weeks at World No. 1 and he is continuing to chase Federer’s record of 310 weeks atop tennis’ mountain.

“Pete was somebody I looked up to when I was growing up, so to match his record is a dream come true,” Djokovic said. “I will also keep striving to be a better player, hopefully have more success and break more records in a sport I love with all my heart.”

This year, Djokovic also became the third active player to surpass 900 tour-level wins, doing so at the Australian Open with a 6-3, 6-3, 6-1 victory in the third round against Jan-Lennard Struff.

50th Anniversary Of The Nitto ATP Finals
This year marked the 50th Anniversary of the Nitto ATP Finals, as well as the event’s final edition in London. To commemorate the milestone, the singles round-robin groups were named Group Tokyo 1970, after the event’s first edition, and Group London 2020, for its 50th anniversary.

Daniil Medvedev won the trophy with an incredible run during which he became the first player in tournament history to beat the top three players in the FedEx ATP Rankings en route to the title.

ATPTour.com also celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Nitto ATP Finals with a series of exclusive content with current and former champions from the event as well as deep dives into the tournament’s history, including a look at The O2 era, when tennis players were rock stars at Madison Square Garden and more. 

Roger Hits 900 Weeks In The Top 10, 100 Wins At The Australian Open
Roger Federer only played one event in 2020 due to a knee injury, but the Swiss made his mark this year. The 103-time tour-level titlist in January became the first player to spend 900 weeks in the Top 10 of the FedEx ATP Rankings (310 weeks at World No. 1). He broke into the Top 10 for the first time on 20 May 2002 after claiming his first ATP Masters 1000 title in Hamburg.

Federer also earned his 100th match win at the Australian Open with a memorable five-set triumph against John Millman in Melbourne. The Swiss rallied from 4/8 down in the fifth-set tie-break (a Match Tie-break to 10) in the third round to oust the home favourite. The 39-year-old owns more victories at the Australian Open (102) than any other tournament, with his 101 wins at Wimbledon right behind.

Three Top 10 Breakthroughs
Three players cracked the Top 10 of the FedEx ATP Rankings for the first time this year: Denis Shapovalov, Andrey Rublev and Diego Schwartzman.

Shapovalov became the 19th lefty to break into the Top 10 and only the fourth to do so this millennium, joining Nadal (25 April 2005), Fernando Verdasco (2 February 2009) and Jurgen Melzer (31 January 2011). Rublev became the eighth Russian to crack the Top 10, and Schwartzman was the first Argentine to make his Top 10 debut since Juan Monaco on 23 July 2012.

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A New Way To Evaluate First-Serve Performance

First-serve performance is split into two statistical categories: first serves made and first serves won. Would joining them together as one metric provide a better understanding of how well your first serve really performed?

An Infosys ATP Insights analysis of these two statistics identifies that they tell a good story in their own right, but a richer narrative emerges once they are blended together as one. For this hypothetical situation, let’s call the new metric First-Serve Rating.

Here’s why it’s a good idea. Take for example a first-round match from this year’s Erste Bank Open in Vienna, in which Jannik Sinner defeated Casper Ruud 7-6(2), 6-3. Below are their first-serve statistics.

Sinner
• First Serves Made = 56% (41/73)
• First Serves Won = 76% (31/41)

Ruud
• First Serves Made = 65% (49/75)
• First Serves Won = 65% (32/49)

So whose first serve outperformed the other?

At first glance, Ruud made 65 per cent to Sinner’s 56 per cent, so it was probably the Norwegian. But the Italian won 76 per cent to 65 per cent, which now muddies the water. The truth is that their first-serve performance was almost identical. You would never know it by looking at the two statistics separately, but it’s immediately recognisable once you combine them.

Here’s how it works. You start by taking the first-serve made percentage and simply turn it into a whole number (56% to 56). You then take the first-serve won percentage and turn it into a decimal (76% to 0.76), and then multiply the two to get a number out of 100.

Sinner
• 56% made / 76% won
• First-Serve Rating: 56 (made) x 0.76 (won) = 42.6

Ruud
• 65% made / 65% won
• First-Serve Rating: 65 (made) x 0.65 (won) = 42.3

Sinner’s rating of 42.6 narrowly edged Ruud’s rating of 42.3. They both actually did just fine behind their first serves in this match. What’s important to note is that the rating is mutually exclusive, meaning both players can perform well at the same time.

To understand the quality of the rating, the traditional grading scale of A to F is applied below to add clarification.

First-Serve Rating: Grading Scale

When Lorenzo Sonego defeated World No. 1, Novak Djokovic 6-2, 6-1 in the Vienna quarter-finals, his First-Serve Rating was 53.6, which translates to a solid grade of A. Djokovic could only muster a grade of D with a 33.6 rating, which was tied for the lowest rating of the tournament.

Sonego First-Serve Rating

• 67% made / 80 won
• First-Serve Rating: 67 x 0.80 = 53.6

Djokovic First-Serve Rating
• 55% made / 61% won
• First-Serve Rating: 55 x 0.61 = 33.6

Simple math blends two statistics that have always lived separately and turns them into a new rating that provides greater insight into the specifics of player performance. Below is a table containing all completed matches in Vienna last week. The average First-Serve Rating was a strong B+ at 46.1, which makes sense for an indoor event at altitude.

Only one player achieved the rare A++ First-Serve Rating during the tournament: Stefanos Tsitsipas. The Greek scored a 60.7 with his first-serve performance in his opening-round three-set victory against Jan-Lennard Struff. Interestingly, Struff’s first-serve performance was rated as a 48.2, which was a solid B+ effort.

Andrey Rublev, the tournament’s winner, scored an A+ (55.8) to defeat defending champion Dominic Thiem in the quarter-finals and an A+ (55.1) in defeating Norbert Gombos in his opening-round match. Rublev added a first-serve grade of A (52.2) in defeating Lorenzo Sonego in the final.

Making first serves is always a good start. Winning the vast majority of them is even better. This hypothetical First-Serve Rating factors in both.

2020 Erste Bank: First-Serve Rating

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Season Portrait: Diego Schwartzman

Beginning today with Argentine Diego Schwartzman, ATPTour.com over the next eight days will serve up a season snapshot of the eight players who qualified for the Nitto ATP Finals. The series is illustrated by intimate portraits shot by British photographer Simon Owen.

Memorable Moment
Diego Schwartzman earned one of the biggest victories of his career in the quarter-finals of the Internazionali BNL d’Italia, upsetting Rafael Nadal. The Spaniard had won their first nine ATP Head2Head meetings, winning 22 of their 24 sets. But Schwartzman showed his marked improvement by playing aggressive tennis, overpowering and outmanoeuvring the best clay-court player in history at a venue, the Foro Italico, where the legendary lefty has lifted nine trophies. The 28-year-old won more sets in a day against Nadal than he had in nine previous matches combined.

Key Stat
Schwartzman led the ATP Tour in return games won in 2020 at 34.9 per cent, just beating out World No. 2 Rafael Nadal (34.4%). The Argentine played 40 matches this year and broke serve 175 times, an average of more than four service breaks per match. His career winning rate in return games is now 31.8 per cent.

Quotable
“I’m really proud because I did many great things in many different weeks this year. But also I have the feeling in my body that I have to improve, because I want to be here [at the Nitto ATP Finals] again.”

The Road Ahead
Schwartzman, the No. 1 player from Argentina, enjoyed a year of firsts in 2020, reaching his first ATP Masters 1000 final (Rome) and Grand Slam semi-final (Roland Garros). Now he will try to not just go further at those levels, but to add more trophies to the collection. The World No. 9 is a three-time ATP Tour champion, with his biggest victory coming in 2018 at the Rio Open presented by Claro, an ATP 500 event held in Brazil. He will also try to improve his hard-court results — Schwartzman has won 53 per cent of his tour-level matches on the surface compared to 57 per cent on clay.

Tomorrow… Andrey Rublev.

Photos: Simon Owen/Wonderhatch

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Spirograph & dancing in kitchens – Advent Answers with Judy Murray

Tennis coach Judy Murray faces our Christmas questions in day 17 of BBC Sport Scotland’s Advent Answers series.

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Australian Open 2021: Delayed tournament to start on 8 February

The Australian Open will start on 8 February next year after being pushed back because of the coronavirus pandemic.

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ATP Issues Five-Week Start To 2021 ATP Challenger Tour Calendar

The ATP has issued a five-week schedule for the launch of the 2021 Challenger Tour. Resuming on Monday 18 January, a total of 10 tournaments in four countries will highlight the first section of the new season.

It all starts with a Challenger 125 event in the Turkish metropolis of Istanbul, as the city celebrates its 31st consecutive year on the Challenger Tour. Turkey will host three consecutive tournaments to open the season, as the tour swings from the hard courts of Istanbul to the clay of the seaside town of Antalya. The week of 25 January will feature the first of back-to-back Challenger events in Antalya, along with an indoor hard-court stop in Quimper, France.

The tournament in Quimper is followed by two additional French indoor events to kick off the February slate, including the prestigious 125-level tournament in Orleans and the 28th edition of Cherbourg. Hard-court events in Biella, Italy and Potchefstroom, South Africa join Cherbourg in the week of 8 February.

The picturesque mountain town of Biella will host consecutive tournaments, with a 125-level event slated for the following week. Located in the Italian Alps, the Piedmont region is also the new home of the Nitto ATP Finals in 2021, in nearby Turin. A second straight hard-court event in Potchefstroom will accompany Biella the week of 15 February.

A further update on the intended schedule beyond the first five weeks will be provided in due course.

SCHEDULE & DRAW SIZES
As part of a number of measures related to COVID-19, tournaments at the Challenger level will span eight days and feature 32-player singles and 16-player qualifying draws in 2021.

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ATP Announces Updated Start To 2021 Calendar

The ATP has today announced an update to the 2021 ATP Tour calendar, outlining a revised schedule for the first seven weeks of the season as tennis continues to navigate its return during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Confirmed details of weeks 8-13 will be announced separately, while all subsequent sections of the 2021 calendar, beginning with the Spring clay-court season from week 14, remain unchanged at this time, with all tournaments planned to take place as originally scheduled.

The opening week of the season will kick off with the ATP 250 Delray Beach Open by VITACOST.com, alongside a new single-year ATP 250 license on hard court in Antalya, Turkey.

Australian Open men’s qualifying will take place from 10-13 January in Doha, and the allocated dates of 15-31 January will then allow for travel and a 14-day quarantine period for all players and support staff travelling to Melbourne, in accordance with requirements of Australian public health and immigration authorities. The controlled environment quarantine period will enable players to prepare ahead of a 12-team ATP Cup in Melbourne, played alongside the relocated Adelaide International, as well as an additional ATP 250 tournament, all held in Melbourne.

The Australian Open, the first Grand Slam of the season, will follow from 8-21 February.

ATP 250 events confirmed as not taking place in 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic include the ASB Classic (Auckland) and the New York Open, while the Tata Maharashtra Open (Pune) is unable to stage in its scheduled February week.

The Rio Open presented by Claro, an ATP 500 event, will not take place as originally scheduled, and alternative dates in the calendar will be assessed for it to potentially take place later in the year.

Andrea Gaudenzi, ATP Chairman, said: “The reconfigured calendar for the start of the 2021 season represents a huge collaborative effort across tennis, under challenging circumstances. Together with the support of our tournament and player members, partners, and Tennis Australia, we have been able to adapt and create an exciting start to the season. Health and safety will continue to be paramount as we navigate the challenges ahead, and I want to thank everyone involved for their commitment to finding solutions to launch our 2021 season.”

The ATP will continue to assess opportunities for additional single-year licenses to be scheduled in the first quarter of 2021 and will communicate any additions once confirmed.

The ATP Challenger Tour season will begin the week of January 18, following the completion of Australian Open qualifying.

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Q&A With Coach Of The Year Nominees Cervara, Chela, Massu, Piatti & Vicente

The 2020 ATP Coach of the Year award goes to the coach who helped guide his players to a higher level of performance during the year. This year’s nominees are Gilles Cervara, Juan Ignacio Chela, Nicolas Massu, Riccardo Piatti and Fernando Vicente. The winner, as selected by fellow ATP coach members, will be announced later this month.

Learn more about all the nominated coaches and their seasons as they speak exclusively to ATPTour.com.

Gilles Cervara 

• Coaching Daniil Medvedev since 2017, named Coach of the Year in 2019
• 2020 Highlights: Nitto ATP Finals champion, Paris champion, US Open semi-final

Q: What makes your partnership with your player a success, both on a personal and professional level?
Cervara: “This question is difficult, because there are so many points to explain why our partnership is a success. I would say the main point is the good connection we have together. This connection is a mix between many things: I think I understand Daniil, the way he thinks, the way he works. I think our connection is a good one to make him be at his optimal level all the time. To find the best way he can work, the best way he can play, and to put him in the best conditions to prove his quality – I think that’s a part of my coaching, to make him succeed. I think that’s the main point, the relationship and the work… giving him the space that he needs to work and to play at his best.”

Q: What were you most pleased to achieve in 2020?
Cervara: “I will say maybe to finish the year like this [winning the Nitto ATP Finals]. Because when you finish with victories like this, it gives you confidence to start the new season with a lot of hope and confidence. Also, it gives us confidence in the work that we did. Even if sometimes you don’t win for a few weeks, you still have to work and still believe in the work you do. So then when you win, you realize that the work you did, even in difficult moments, means that you were going in a good direction. That’s what makes me the most pleased this year.”

 

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Juan Ignacio Chela 

• Coaching Diego Schwartzman since 2017
• 2020 Highlights: Rome finalist, Roland Garros semi-final, Nitto ATP Finals debut, career-high No. 8 in FedEx ATP Rankings 

Q: What makes your partnership with your player a success, both on a personal and professional level?
Chela: “Diego and I have a great relationship both on and off the tennis court. We are both professionals, and we know how to differentiate between the time to work and the time to relax. We both have similar personalities, and we like to decompress from the hard situations of the tour and the competition. When it comes to work, we like to have clear objectives and work hard to achieve them.”

Q: What were you most pleased to achieve in 2020?
Chela: “This year, despite all the difficulties, we are very happy because we have accomplished many goals and new achievements. The highlights and the ones we worked the hardest for were reaching the Top 10, reaching the first ATP Masters 1000 final [in Rome] and the semi-finals at Roland Garros.”

Nicolas Massu

• Coaching Dominic Thiem since 2019
• 2020 Highlights: US Open champion, Australian Open finalist, Nitto ATP Finals finalist, career-high No. 3 in FedEx ATP Rankings

Q: What makes your partnership with your player a success, both on a personal and professional level?
Massu: “I think that we understand each other very well on both a personal and professional level. We have great communication, a lot of respect and a willingness to improve every day. I’m about to celebrate two years working with Dominic, and I think the results have been incredible. There is a lot of motivation from both parties. The way we work, we’re both trying to bring our 100% every day.

“We’re from different cultures; I’m South American, he’s European. But I think that strengthens us, because we have different personalities but share the same passion for being our best every day. We don’t have a big age difference either, and that helps us have a great energy on and off the tennis court.

“Also, I retired seven years ago from tennis, and that’s not too long ago. So I believe that a lot of the things I experienced as a tennis player, I can pass on to him. On a personal level I think we’re getting to know each other more and building up trust every day.”

Q: What were you most pleased to achieve in 2020?
Massu: Despite the few tournaments that could be played this year, there are two very important things for me about him in 2020. One: in the few tournaments that he played, he was very consistent and played with a high level of tennis. That’s a big step for a tennis player, to be consistent tournament after tournament. 

And obviously, the three most important tournaments were the final of the Australian Open, winning the US Open, and the final of ATP Finals. But of course, winning the US Open, winning his first Grand Slam, and the way that he did it – I think that’s the biggest achievement of 2020. And after that, the two big finals.

 

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Riccardo Piatti

• Coaching Jannik Sinner since 2014
• 2020 Highlights: Sofia champion, Roland Garros quarter-final, career-high No. 37 on FedEx ATP Rankings

Q: What makes your partnership with your player a success, both on a personal and professional level?
Piatti: “For me, it’s really important to educate the player more than coaching him. With all my players I’ve always tried to deal with their existing talent. These players are all very good, what we need to do, or at least what I like to do, is to give them order, to bring out what is already in them.

“Jannik was very young when he came to me and he still had to learn a lot from every point of view. But the more they improve the more they need someone who’s there to educate them to this game, and I think this is what I’m doing with him.”

Q: What were you most pleased to achieve in 2020?
Piatti: “Well, 2020 has been a very difficult year for everyone, but I would say Paris. Roland Garros was very good despite the temperature, and of course when he won Sofia – although for me the important moments are the ones when there is a difficulty to overcome. In New York, he started cramping against [Karen] Khachanov but managed to finish the match even if he lost it. In Rome, he played two very important matches against [Stefanos] Tsitsipas and [Grigor] Dimitrov. Normally the matches he loses are the ones he learns the most from.”

 

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Fernando Vicente 

• Coaching Andrey Rublev since 2018
• 2020 Highlights: Hamburg champion, St. Petersburg champion, Vienna champion, Nitto ATP Finals debut, career-high No. 8 in FedEx ATP Rankings

Q: What makes your partnership with your player a success, both on a personal and professional level?
Vicente: “Honestly, we’ve been working together for four years now and both the way we work together and the way we coexist is really great. We know how to respect each other’s spaces off the court. And in addition to that, I think that we’re both very passionate about tennis, so we can spend lots of hours on the court working to improve many aspects of his game.

“I would say Andrey has made me a better coach. I’ve learned and continue to learn a lot with him. I think that on my end, he understands what I’m trying to impart on him and there’s a very good personal connection, too. If not, it would be impossible to stay together so long.

“We’ve been through very tough moments and now we’ve had a great year. The key is to keep working with passion and the work will bear fruit. So we have to keep going and not be satisfied, there is a lot to improve if we want to stay at this level!”

Q: What were you most pleased to achieve in 2020?
Vicente: “What I’ve been most pleased to see was Andrey’s steady mentality during the weeks where our objective was to reach the Nitto ATP Finals. Those were weeks with so much tension, and he managed to compete at a very high level. Of course, I’m pleased with almost everything. It was his best year in terms of ranking, he won the five finals he played and in general his entire game improved a lot. I would give him an ‘outstanding’ on the season.

“During the time that we couldn’t compete, Andrey worked like an animal and I was really pleased about that. I liked to see that look in his eye during his practices, and see that he wanted to become a better player in the future. That motivates me a lot!”

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Battle of the Brits: Andy Murray and Heather Watson in event line-up

Andy Murray and Heather Watson are among the players who will compete in the Battle of the Brits event at Roehampton from 20-23 December.

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Soaring Sinner Highlights Stats Of 2020

Yesterday we began a two-part story on the best stats of 2020, looking at which players excelled this year by surface, against certain opponents and in pressure situations.

Now we’ll look at more interesting stats from the season, including Jannik Sinner’s sophomore leap, the season’s longest match and more.

Top Movers For Year-End Top 50 Finishers

^*Career-High
Sinner stepped into the spotlight in 2019 with a series of impressive wins throughout the year, but he made his biggest splash at the Next Gen ATP Finals, where he triumphed as a wild card.

This year, the Italian showed no interest in a “sophomore slump”. Sinner consistently continued his ascent, reaching a career-high No. 37 in the FedEx ATP Rankings, where he finished the year. He lifted his first ATP Tour trophy in Sofia.

Top Movers For Year-End Top 100 Finishers

Vasek Pospisil, whose career-high FedEx ATP Ranking is No. 25, underwent back surgery in January 2019. The Canadian came back in a big way this year, climbing 89 spots to reach a year-end No. 61.

2020 Fast Facts
– The longest ATP Tour match of the season was Thiago Seyboth Wild’s 5-7, 7-6(3), 7-5 triumph against Alejandro Davidovich Fokina in Rio de Janeiro, which lasted three hours and 50 minutes. There were 19 ATP Tour matches that lasted more than three hours this year.

– There were four all tie-break matches in 2020. In one of those matches, Nick Kyrgios’ 7-6(7), 6-7(3), 7-6(5) victory against Stefanos Tsitsipas at the ATP Cup, there were no service breaks. 

– Four qualifiers made an ATP Tour final in 2020, but none of them lifted the trophy. Those players were Corentin Moutet (Doha, l. to Rublev), Lloyd Harris (Adelaide, l. to Rublev), Gianluca Mager (Rio de Janeiro, l. to Garin) and Yannick Hanfmann (Kitzbuhel, l. to Kecmanovic).

– There were two lucky loser finalists this year: Pedro Sousa at the Argentina Open in Buenos Aires (l. to Ruud) and Lorenzo Sonego at the Erste Bank Open in Vienna (l. to Rublev). 

– Two of 19 tour-level champions came from outside the Top 50 of the FedEx ATP Rankings this year: World No. 182 Seyboth Wild in Santiago and World No. 107 Jiri Vesely in Pune. 

2020 First-Time Winners

There were only six first-time winners in this year’s shortened season, as play was suspended for more than five months due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Five of the six first-time champions were 21-and-under. John Millman, a 31-year-old Aussie, earned ATP Tour glory at the Astana Open in Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan.

Titles Won Without Losing A Set

Six of this year’s champions triumphed without losing a set, and all of them were Top 10 players at the time. Nadal (Acapulco, Roland Garros) and Rublev (Doha, Vienna) both accomplished the feat twice.

Infosys ATP Stats – 2020 Leaders (at least 10 matches)

Although the 2020 season was shortened due to COVID-19, there were no surprises in the season’s statistical leaders. Diego Schwartzman, who cracked the Top 10 in the FedEx ATP Rankings for the first time this year, led the ATP Tour in return games won at 34.9 per cent. 

The Argentine has long tussled with Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic in this category — they are also the top three players in career return games won. But Schwartzman had the best returning season of his career, even topping his 2017 performance. That year he topped the Tour by winning 34.8 per cent of his return games.

Rapid Fire
Most Aces in Best-of-3 Match: 36, Reilly Opelka (l. to Cuevas, Adelaide R1)

Most Aces in Best-of-5 Match: 52, John Isner (l. to Johnson, US Open R1)

Longest Winning Streak: 26, Novak Djokovic

Youngest Final: Stefanos Tsitsipas (21) def. Felix Auger-Aliassime (19) in Marseille

Oldest Final: Rafael Nadal (34) def. Novak Djokovic (33) at Roland Garros 

Read All Best Of 2020 Stories

– Research contributed by Greg Sharko

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