The victory of Nikolay Davydenko in the recent World Tour Finals in London highlighted a very interesting point when it comes to tennis form study. Something which, as students of the game, we need to consider when selecting outright tournament bets.
The point is, many backers consider 'tournament form' to be very important when choosing which players to back. The logic being that players who have done well in a particular event are more likely to win than those who have no track record of success in the same tournament.
Climatic conditions, altitude, time of the year, location, surface - all these factors could be seen to work against a player who has no past record in an event, whereas a past winner (or finalist) clearly performs well in these situations and must, it could be argued, have a better chance of victory.
And such a view has obvious merits.
However, the table opposite shows the list of players who made the final of an event in 2009 in which they had also made the final in 2008.
Low percentage make successive finals
The statistics show that 16 events out of 65 saw players make successive finals, a mere 25%, and of those only 11 players won in 2009 after making the final 12 months before, that's only 17%.
Look at the names as well. Federer (4), Nadal (2), Murray, Djokovic (2), Stepanek, Gonzalez, Del Potro, Almagro, Ferrer and, of course, Davydenko.
In short, all players from the top end of the game, all past or present top 20 players, and guys with clear ability (in the case of Almagro and Ferrer on clay).
What this illustrates is actually the opposite to our opening suggestion. Namely, the first players you should draw a line through for any given tournament are the two finalists from last year - should they be playing.
The only exceptions to make are for the real top players who are able to compete at the highest level whatever the standard of tournament - and, let's not forget, the 'Big Four' make up 9 of the 16 examples in this study, a total of 56%.
For sure, past form in a tournament is useful. It's also noteworthy to spot players who come back to an event year after year and never get past R1. But what you shouldn't do is to get drawn into backing a player simply because he is a defending champion. At regular tour level the statistics are very much against a player successfully retaining his title.
