Tennis fans are fortunate to have three active male players being considered for the prestigious title of Greatest Player of all Time (GOAT). Two of these players, Rafael Nadal (currently ranked #2 in the world) and Novak Djokovic (currently ranked #1) faced each other in a Grand Slam championship match this past October, where Nadal won easily, and many fans considered it to be one-sided. I was not shocked with the end result, but rather with the mismatch between the players throughout the match, which led me to ask “why did this happen? And “what factors (if any) contributed to Djokovic’s loss?”
Through a head-to-head analysis between Nadal and Djokovic, I plan to answer the following questions: Which player has the most wins? Are there factors which contributed to a player’s win? The factors I’m considering are: court surface (hard court, grass or clay), court location (indoor or outdoor), weather (temperature, humidity and weather forecast), previous round match duration and the number of sets played in the previous round. I’m interested in these metrics as an avid tennis fan, and will not imply causation when analyzing the end result. My primary target audience would be tennis fans, but I want to include tennis novices as well. I would engage tennis novices by including explanatory annotations about how the game is played throughout my visualizations, and providing historical context when necessary.
All the data will come from the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP), Roland Garros, Time and Date, World Weather Online, ATP Cup and Davis Cup websites. The ATP represents male tennis players, as opposed to the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) for female players. Roland Garros, ATP Cup and Davis Cup are tournaments held annually, while Time and Date and World Weather Online include historical weather data. The ATP includes all the major tennis related metrics I’m interested in analyzing on their head-to-head profile pages for each player. To answer these questions, I created a story within Tableau, with each tab dedicated to a dashboard. The first tab provides historical context on the rivalry, while the second page discusses Grand Slam performances and the overall head-to-head matchup. The third tab explores court surface, court location and a victory breakdown by round. The fourth page incorporates weather, while the last page discusses time spent on court in the previous match.
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