US Open 2013: Telling the tale in numbers - Men's Draw

Rafael Nadal poses with the US Open Championship trophy, following his victory in the men’s singles against Novak Djokovic , in Central Park on September 10, 2013 in New York City. (Getty Images)

Translating opportunity is key to success:

Breakpoints are like death bullets in tennis. Make them stick and your opponent dies; let them slip and you will suffer seeing the man across the net slither past you with a hurtful grin. It is a telling statistic. Seven of the top eight places on this chart are occupied by the men who made the last eight. The exception, well who else but Hewitt again.

Djokovic converted nearly six break points in each of his seven matches, standing atop the chart with 41 points. Interestingly though, he does not figure in the top twenty players with the highest conversion rate. Nadal, on the other hand has checked off both ends of the survival trail, converting 40 of 75 from his opportunities. That is an impressive 53% success rate when the opponent was under pressure.

Hewitt was third best with 30 points and unlike Djokovic, the Aussie too made the conversion charts. The unseeded warrior won 30 of 56 to notch a conversion rate of 54%. Some of these numbers almost explain the secret behind the spirited Aussie’s run to the round of 16. Ferrer (30) and Mikhail Youzhny (29) round out the top five on this important statistic.

Patience is bitter, but the fruit is sweet:

Sometimes, at vital junctures in a tennis match, resilient players pitch a tent and retrieve everything you throw at them before stinging with a painfully venomous bite. Their perseverance not only earns them the point, it often swings the tide in their favour. Yes, we are speaking about the seemingly endless rally.

Djokovic and Nadal took the art to insane heights indulging themselves in the fetish with gay abandon. Their 54-shot (75 second) rally – containing 32 backhand strokes and 22 off the forehand – took this stat off the charts completely and emphasised the brutal demands of modern day tennis. In fact Djokovic straddles the breadth of this list, having been part of seven of the twenty longest rallies on this list.

Sadly for the Serbian, despite winning each of his four longest rallies against Nadal, Djokovic failed to use the effort to his advantage. Nadal may have lost each of those four rallies, but has a consistently higher success rate on rallies that last longer than ten strokes in each of his matches. He is a master at the art of grinding his opponents to submission and it is no wonder to see him visit these confines on four different points.

Somdev Devvarman also embodies the spirit of resilience – the Indian was engaged in a 48-stroke rally with Andreas Seppi, which he won and another 32-stroke rally against Lukas Lacko, which he lost.

The usual suspect, Hewitt is there too. The Aussie went three and two in the five rallies involving him – four of them came against the Russian assassin, Youzhny. Hewitt finished on the right side of a 46-stroke rally against the Russian. The two took the fetish to almost narcissistic heights by indulging in one that lasted 35 strokes and two other instances of 30 strokes each.

Calling the bluff:

One look at the challenge numbers and you might wonder if some of these players were playing the system to earn a breather and gain some time. Our champion Nadal questioned a call 17 times and was right on five of those points. Djokovic fared worse, calling help 16 times to find out he was off the mark on twelve of those points.

Bernard Tomic and Roger Federer bring up the rear side of this list. No wonder they have a low opinion of the hawk-eye system. The two men were right just once each after challenging a call on 12 and 10 occasions respectively.

The one who could transition into a successful match official might be Pablo Cuevas. The 462^nd ranked Argentine is already 27, so it might not be such a bad option to consider as he got each of his three challenges right.

Ron DeLegge II, the author of “Gents with No Cents” says “99 percent of all statistics only tell 49 percent of the story.” While he may have been dissecting the Wall Street in that chart busting book, he is just as right about our sport too. The rest is defined by the weight of the moment and a player’s reaction to it.