Tennis Match Progression

Visualizing the progression of a tennis match, focusing largely on point duration as a proxy for perceived effort. Each row is an individual point, and the match progresses from top to bottom. The color represents on of the two players, and the width of each line corresponds to the duration of the point played. The lines grow leftward if the winner of the point is Federer, and rightward if it is Djokovic. This allows us to observe a few things — the relative effort each player takes to win a point, the general push and pull of player momentum, strongly contested parts of the match, and the relative length of sets, both in terms of point length and point quantity. It's also worth noting that Federer won significantly more points and games overall, but still ended up losing the match.

I applied this visualization style to other notable matches as well. Also, the duration data is a best guess that is created by analyzing total shot count. This eliminates the 'wait' that occurs between points, which in the case of Nadal and Djokovic can be significanct, since they are known to purposely take their sweet time between points in order to affect player momentum.

The inherent bias in this method is that it puts a lot more value on individual point wins and does not reward game or set wins, which are what inherently matter to the final outcome. To me, this is more interesting because it allows you to juxtapose the sheer effort each player put into the match against the actual outcome of that effort. Due to the unique scoring system in tennis, you often find a large disparity in perceived effort vs. final outcome, in other words it's a great analogy for the unfairness of life. Hard work isn't everything! (but to be honest it most often is).