Rafa vs. Rafa

Rafael Nadal won three Grand Slams in 2010. Novak Djokovic won three Grand Slams in 2011. That most basic method of tennis accounting would hold those two years to be equal, but it’s not difficult to see why Melog 75 rates Djokovic's season higher; the Serb simply performed better in the other events.

It is significantly more surprising, however, that Melog also holds Nadal’s own 2011 season, in which he won three tournaments and one Slam, to be better than his 2010, in which he captured seven total titles including the aforementioned three majors. 2011 is generally considered to have been a step back for Nadal, with Djokovic seizing his place at the top of the heap.

So what is Melog thinking? There is a short answer for this, and a long one. Let’s use the long one.

Start with the basics: Nadal went 71-10 in 2010, 68-15 in 2011. Both are exemplary records, but the 2010 mark is clearly better. The same is true of his performance in sets – 173-38 in 2010, 169-50 in 2011.

How about the Melog-preferred service games? In 2010, Nadal went 1220-813. In 2011, 1228-825.

Those records are practically identical; the difference is equivalent to one 6-4, 6-4 defeat. Nadal’s performance on the match level was better in 2010, but his underlying quality of play appears to have been virtually equivalent across the two seasons. But that similarity still fails to explain why his 2011 Melog 75 score is significantly higher than the one from 2010, 52.2 to 39.0.

The remaining factor, of course, is the players against whom those matches, sets, and service games were played. It’s here that the difference becomes very rapidly apparent. We’ll start with the other three members of the Big Four; here are their Games Against Nadal totals in 2010 and 2011:

Player	2010	2011
Novak Djokovic	60	172
Roger Federer	48	104
Andy Murray	112	153
Total	220	429

Nadal played Djokovic nearly three times as often in 2011 as he did in 2010, and Federer more than twice as much. Murray was his most frequent opponent in 2010, but even their matchups increased significantly the year after. In total, the other top-4 players faced Nadal in 10.8% of his service games in 2010; that fraction nearly doubled in 2011, leaping up to 20.9%.

The gap widens even further if you consider matches against the other players in Melog’s top 10 for each year. Nadal played 583 service games (28.7%) against top-10 opposition in 2010, compared to 818 (39.8%) in 2011. And Nadal maintained the same level of efficiency in winning service games, and exemplary (if slightly diminished) levels in winning sets and matches.

The increased playing time against top competition would be sufficient on its own to explain a significant gap  – but there’s still another angle to consider, which is the question of how those additional matchups came about. Nadal faced his top-of-the-rankings counterparts more often in 2011 than he had in 2010 because the other superstars more consistently lasted long enough in tournaments to face him. Here’s another Big Four table to illustrate:

Player	2010 record	2011 record
Federer	65-13	61-12
Djokovic	61-18	70-6
Murray	46-18	52-13
Total	172-49	183-31

Federer played a bit less in 2011 than in the year before, but kept a near-identical winning percentage when on the court. Murray, meanwhile, was clearly better in the latter year, and Djokovic’s massive improvement in 2011 is not news to anyone. And since Federer, like Nadal, was facing the improved Djokovic and Murray on a regular basis, his similar-looking results are also more impressive in 2011 than they were the season prior.

It’s this improvement in the other top players that resulted in Nadal’s weaker-looking match record in 2011. If you exclude matches against the Big Four from Nadal’s totals both seasons, his 2010 record was 66-7; his 2011 mark, a highly-similar 62-7. It’s even more striking if you leave out only Djokovic: 69-10 in 2010, 69-9 in 2011.

So, why does Rafael Nadal’s 2011 season score significantly better than his 2010? Because he achieved very similar results in both years, he played the best players in the world far more often in 2011 than he had in 2010, and those opponents were substantially tougher in 2011 than they had been in 2010. Which… seems like a pretty solid reason.