Shock or not?
All the talk during Wimbledon so far has been about the surprise at seeing seeded players crashing out of the tournament. Just how ‘shocking’ is it?
I looked backed at 12 years of Wimbledon and ranked each round by the lowest ranked loser in each round on the men’s Tennis. Averaging out the results in each round shows that there isn’t really much of a bias per round. The average rank of a losing player in any round is more or less 11. Hidden underneath that though is a fair amount of variability.
Biggest shock was in 2003 the second seed went out in the 1st round, now that’s what I call a shock. We also lost the top ranked player in the fourth. Lleyton Hewitt was the culprit in the first round , losing to Ivo Karlović. It was the first time in the history of Wimbledon that a defending champion had lost in the first round. Federer won the title that year, his first of five in a row. He was only ranked 5th that year.
In round two it seems it is more common. We have exits of a 2,2,3,3,3,5,5 & a 2 in the last twelve years. Round three has claimed the scalp of a top 5 or lower player in the last 7/12 years. As you head into the later rounds then, because of seeding, the likelihood of a top ranked player leaving the tournament obviously increases. But what the data shows you is that at Wimbledon, not only are shocks, not really shocking. They are actually quite common, depending on your definition of a ‘shock’.
Category: Tennis
