Australian Open: Seedings and Tournament Winners

Between 1990 and 2023, using data from Jeff Sackmann's site, the top seed has won the tournament 15 times out of 34 (44%). The second seed has won 7/34 (20.5%), so less than half the top seed winning percentage. After that, it really drops off: 2/34 for the third seed, 3/34 for the fourth seed. The highest seed to win during that period was Federer, seeded 17th, in 2017. Curiously, players seeded 5,7,9,11,12,13,14,15 have not won the tournament since 1990. Most of these are in the top half of the draw.

Tennis: how frequently do number 1 seeds win the tournament?

Back writing after many years, has it really been 10 years?

I have been reading articles about seeding in tennis and how they are meant to protect top seeds so they can meet in the later rounds, and keep tournaments interesting for fans. It made me wonder: how frequently do outcomes reflect the seeding in a tournament? A first pass at answering this is the subject of this post: how frequently do top seeds win tournaments?

We have a remarkable database available to answer such question due to Jeff Sackman. Using this data, I analyzed ATP matches between 2000 and 2023. First, the raw results.

	Tournaments	Losses of #1S	L in R128	L in R64	L in R32	L in R16	L in QF	L in SF	L in F
All Matches	1521	1106	2	17	170	269	262	219	167
A level	1218	899		0	141	232	225	182	119
Masters	208	150	0	13	26	29	26	23	33
Slams	95	57	2	4	3	8	11	14	15

The numbers are more interpretable in percentages:

	Tournaments	Losses of S1	R128	R64	R32	R16	QF	SF	F
All	1521	73%	0.18%	1.54%	15.37%	24.32%	23.69%	19.80%	15.10%
A level	1218	74%	0.00%	0.00%	15.68%	25.81%	25.03%	20.24%	13.24%
Masters	208	72%	0.00%	8.67%	17.33%	19.33%	17.33%	15.33%	22.00%
Slams	95	60%	3.51%	7.02%	5.26%	14.04%	19.30%	24.56%	26.32%

April 4: Combs and Cowlicks

Today's tidbit is about something in mathematics called the "Hairy  Ball Theorem."  No, it's not what you are thinking about, but yes, it  does apply to what you are thinking about.

April 4 is the birthday of the mathematician Hopf, who is known for a  result called the Poincare-Hopf Theorem, an example of which is the  hairy ball theorem.  It says that if you have a hairy ball (like a  really fuzzy tennis ball) and you try to comb it flat, you will always  leave a cowlick or tuft of hair at one end; you cannot have all the  hairs lay flat.

April 11: Boring?

On April 11, 1905, Albert Einstein published his special
theory of relativity.  In 1814, Napolean was exiled to Elba.  In 1888,
one of the great orchestras of the world, the Concertgebouw in
Amsterdam, was established.

Now here is the interesting bit: by searching for news events, it was
claimed that April 11, 1954 was the most boring day of the 20th
century.  A team of scientists at Cambridge University scoured through
300 million news stories to find the day with the least number of
newsworthy events.

May 6: Soaring above the wing

May 6 is an interesting date in history, lots of stuff happened:
--It was the last day  of the second world war (the documents ending the war were signed on May 7)
--The Hindenberg exploded in 1937
--Roger Bannister ran a mile under 4 minutes
--The Eiffel Tower was first opened to the public.  Gustave Eiffel's company designed and built the tower.  Eiffel was also involved in building the Statue of Liberty.  He built many bridges all over the world, and was involved in an early attempt to build the Panama Canal.  That effort failed, and after that, he "quit engineering" and devoted himself to aerodynamics. Now comes the cool part: he built a wind tunnel in 1909 and made a big discovery: that lift (produced by an airfoil/airplane wing) was not caused by an increase of pressure under the wing but instead was due to a reduction of pressure above the wing.  For this, he was awarded the James Langley medal by the Smithsonian in 1913.

March 3: A Monumental Novella

Today is the anniversary of the first performance (Paris, 1875) of the opera Carmen, by George Bizet.  Though it is easily one of the most popular opera’s performed today, it was not successful at its launch.  Bizet died in June that year at age 36.  Just before he died, he had agreed to have it performed in Vienna, and the performance there, also in 1875, was a huge success.  This led to continuing performances and its eventual fame. 

 

The opera was based on a short novel by Prosper Merimee.  The story is about a young woman who seduces a soldier; the soldier deserts the military, but she scorns him in favor of a bullfighter, after which he kills her.  It was written as an opera comique (where dialog is spoken) but is now played as a grand opera (dialog is sung).   You can read an English translation of the novel at

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2465/2465-h/2465-h.htm#link2HCH0001 

 

Prosper was an archaeologist and short story writer.  Prosper apparently learned of the story of Carmen from the Countess of Montijo (Spain), whose daughter married Napolean III and became Empress Eugenie. He also discovered the amazing tapestries of The Lady and the Unicorn; these are shown hanging in the Gryffindor Common Room in the Harry Potter movies. You can see pictures of the tapestries at http://www.musee-moyenage.fr/ang/pages/page_id18368_u1l2.htm.  

 

He wrote several other novels. One is called Mateo Falcone, which was also made into an opera. It is short story set in Corsica, a translation is available at http://www.classicshorts.com/stories/mfalcone.html The movie The Golden Coach, starring Anna Magnani (Academy Award winner in The Rose Tattoo) is also based on one of his stores; the film was directed by Jean Renoir, son of the famous painter. Another enjoyable story is Colomba, also set in Corsica, available at http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2708/2708-h/2708-h.htm

 

Merimee was the person appointed as France’s inspector general of historical monuments, and the French list of national monuments is named after him.

January 18: Give me a word, another word

January 18 is the birthday of Peter Roget, the creator of Roget’s Thesaurus.   The word thesaurus comes from Latin and Greek words for treasure.  A thesaurus is not a dictionary since it does not give the meaning of a word, just synonyms or words with a similar meaning.  The Historical Thesaurus of the English Dictionary is the largest thesaurus, and has over 900,000 words, about twice the size of Roget's.  His original version had about 15000 words, and it was expanded by his son and grandson, and continues to have words added.   The Karpeles Manuscript Library has the original manuscript; you can see an excerpt and find out more about the history of Roget's Thesaurus at http://www.rain.org/~karpeles/rogfrm.html  If you click on the link, you will find an interesting quote from Peter Pan. 

 

One of the earliest thesaurus’ was compiled by Philo of Byblos.  The word “philo” derives from the Greek word for love.  Byblos was a Phoenician town.  It became the Greek word for papyrus because it was exported through Byblos.  The word Bible derives from this.  Philo derives from the Greek word for love, hence the meaning of bibliophile.  Phyllo, as in dough, is not related to philo but comes from the Greek word for leaf.

 

Other's named Philo: the person who created the first fully functional electronic TV set was named Philo Farnsworth. In the movie “Every Which Way But Loose,” Clint Eastwood 's character is named Philo Beddoe.