Today's graph comes from
Novak Djokovic's "comeback" victory over
Stanislas Wawrinka in the US Open Semi-Finals. For evenly matched players, the probability graph below would have had a lot more movement to it. But this was not an evenly matched game as Djokovic had an initial win probability of 82%. Even in his deepest hole (dropped the first set and down 2-4 in the second), Novak's win probability only got as low as 40.2%. This is consistent with the in-play odds offered at
William Hill sportsbook, where Djokovic was never worse than 3/2 to win the match (~40% probability).
For a breakdown of the match by someone that actually knows a few things about tennis, see
Jeff Sackmann's recap at
Heavy Topspin.
Novak Djokovic | 2 | 7 | 3 | 6 | 6 | | Excitement | 8.0 |
Stanislas Wawrinka | 6 | 6 | 6 | 3 | 4 | | Comeback | 1.5 |
Point Probabilities (Model Inputs) |
Player | Serve | Return |
Djokovic | 0.653 | 0.404 |
Wawrinka | 0.596 | 0.347 |
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