Entering tennis men’s Grand Slams within the top-10 and its relationship with the fact of winning the tournament

Résumé 0

The purpose of this study was to analyse the relationship between entering tennis men’s singles Grand Slams within the top-10 ranking (i.e. title favourites) and the fact of winning the tournament. In order to differentiate between these players in a more powerful way than just considering the ranking number, a cluster algorithm was used to classify the players into two groups depending on their number of ranking points (i.e. higher level top-10 players vs. lower level top-10 players). The possible winners entering the tournament outside the top-10 (if any) were also considered. The sample comprised all the 92 men’s sin- gles Grand Slams played between 1990 and 2012. As was expected, the majority of Grand Slams were won by players entering the tournament ranked in the top-10. However, the main result is contrary to the hypo- thesis that there would be significant differences in the number of titles won in favour of the players ente- ring the tournament from the higher positions of the top-10 when comparing to those won by the players entering from the lower positions of the top-10. Several factors that may influence whether and to what extent a player is more or less favourite to win a Grand Slam title are presented in the discussion.