The Winners

There are clear standouts in the title winners [we’ll get to some of them below], but let’s take a moment to recognize all the title winners in ATP and WTA. By country, it is clear how certain countries gained a lead. Here are a few reminders:

Hover over each bar to get the country, title, and number of titles.

Hover over each bar to get the country, title, and number of titles.

Martina Hingis and Leander Paes dominated Mixed Doubles — a tournament featured at Slams.

Novak Djokovic won 11 singles titles.

Serena won 5 singles titles.

Sania Mirza and Hingis, “Santina,” won 9 doubles titles together — both reached double digits: 10 and 13.

The Americans lead in total titles (primarily from doubles) but there were only 2 ATP singles titles. In second place — the Swiss — have the opposite effect, with 10 ATP singles and no ATP doubles.

The Best of the Best

We [tennis enthusiasts] are obsessed with who is the best in every aspect of the game. Lucky for us, ATP provides this information in detail while WTA provides the top 10 in each category. I decided not to illustrate these numbers because I am planning a bigger project for next year. Stay tuned!

AM Squared Prevails

When Amélie Mauresmo joined forces with Andy Murray, many voiced their doubt. Many also believed Ivan Lendl was a better coach because Andy won the Olympics and US Open. However, let’s compare Andy’s seasons in his first year of working with each coach. Murray won more matches under Mauresmo — primarily due to his success on clay and hard courts. He had better success at the Masters level and it was in fact the best he has ever performed. Because of this, he was able to raise his ranking from 11 to a career high ranking of 2. So while Andy may not have won a Slam this year, he has never won more than 70 matches in one season and don’t forget, he won Davis Cup for his country!

Stan Prevails in Paris

An interactive version of this visual is on Tennis Visuals. Stan’s average is in yellow. Stan did much better on his 1st serve and also capitalized on Djokovic’s 1st serve.

While it is still strange to see someone other than the original ‘Big 4’ win a slam, it is even stranger to see someone other than King of Clay, Rafael Nadal, win Roland Garros. Most predicted Novak Djokovic would finally complete his career Grand Slam. They believed he would defeat Nadal, which was not a surprise, and then assumed there was no other viable competition — it was his to lose. However, Stan Wawrinka denied Novak Djokovic the opportunity. How exactly did he do it? Check out the radar graph.

One memorable part of this match was Stan’s dominance during the rallies.

The rally summary illustrates the distribution for each player on serve and return. The overall percentage for each player is above the corresponding bar. Wawrinka dominated in most rallies but I will direct your attention to 4–6 shots on Djokovic’s serve, in which Wawrinka capitalized in an area I would expect Djokovic to dominate. A more detailed analysis of the rally can be found on Tennis Visuals.

An Italian US Open

An unexpected twist happened at the US Open. Every single person was ready and eager to write the fairy tale narrative…it just was not the one they were expecting! Let’s take a look back at how the Italian duo took out the top 2 players for the first ever Italian final in Flushing Meadows.