Something has changed at Wimbledon.
Ten years ago, the average age of the men
who reached the second week of the tournament in the singles
was 26-years old.
This year, it's past 30 for the first time ever.
Thirteen years ago Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal
first played in a Wimbledon final.
This year they meet again in the semis, both of them
well into their '30s.
In the chart here we explore how the average age
of men reaching the latter stages
has steadily increased over recent years.
Across the chart we have years, and vertically we
have the distribution of all the players' ages
who reached the last 16, the fourth round.
So you can see that in 2019, for example,
Ugo Hubert, the Frenchman, is the youngest player who
reach the last 16, aged 21, while Roger Federer himself,
at around 38, was the oldest.
The full range of that bar represents the full range
of ages reaching the fourth round.
As you look towards the middle you see that average standing
out.
We can then draw a line cutting through all
of those annual distributions which shows how
the average age has progressed.
For around 30 years the average age
fluctuated between around 24 and 28, but over the last 15 years
there's been a steady and perpetual increase.
In the 70s and 80s, teenagers and young teenagers at that,
regularly reach the last 16 of the men's singles.
Bjorn Borg, the Swede, who went on
to win several major titles, Boris Becker and Michael Chang
were among the most obvious examples.
In the last few years a teenager in the last 16
has become a more rare occurrence.
At the same time the number of players in their 30s
has gone up and up and up.
This year, of the 16 players to reach the fourth round,
only two were aged under 28, and the majority
were aged 30 or higher.
Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer as well as Novak Djokovic
have all reached the semi-finals this year.
The three will compete over the next couple of days
to determine who wins the Wimbledon men's
title this year.
For any of them it would be yet another major victory.
So when these players go head to head
what happens when the pressure's on?
The most pivotal points in a tennis match are breakpoints.
- the opportunities for a player to win a game against
serve while their opponent is serving.
This chart here looks at who are the best
performers of all time on these crucial points in men's tennis.
The horizontal axis here shows the ratio
of the percentage of break points
that a player converts against her opponent
serve, versus the percentage of break points
that they lose on their own serve.
The higher the number the better these players perform attacking
and defending these crucial points.
Rafael Nadal is the standout.
Of all men's players in the entire open era
going right back to the 1960s, Rafael Nadal is about 33
per cent more likely to win or to defend these crucial break
points than the average player.
Novak Djokovic comes second, but there's a big gap there.
Nadal really is the coolest head under pressure on the tour.
Sampras, Federer and Agassi are the greats for behind that,
but this really is a case of Nadal being the man.
Andy Murray has won several major tournaments
and is undoubtedly one of the outstanding players
of the last few decades, but his performance
on these crucial break-point opportunities
and break-point defences is actually
much lower down the rankings than some
of the other top players of his generation and generations
before.
Now this doesn't mean, of course,
that the likes of Murray and Becker
fail to win tennis matches.
Winning break points is only one part of the story.
If you simply win far more points than your opponent
over the course of the entire match
you'll rack up far more break-point opportunities
than them.
And so even if you don't convert them in a super-high rate,
you're still going to win.
But what this does show is that for every break-point
opportunity forced, Rafael Nadal is much more clinical
in converting them than the likes of Andy Murray.
Moving onto the women's side of the game,
the big story at Wimbledon in 2019
was the emergence of teenage star Cori Gauff.
The 15-year-old American reached the second week
of the tournament, the fourth round, aged just over 15.
That makes her the fourth youngest women's player ever
to achieve this feat since Wimbledon has
been running in the Open era.
Here we're looking at the age at which
every one of the 272 women's players
to have reached the second round achieved that landmark.
Gauff is highlighted in red, and she
appears far towards the left, which
means she is very young across the grand scheme of things
for players to reach the last 16.
And aged just over 15, she was actually
the fourth youngest player ever to achieve this landmark.
Jennifer Capriati, Andrea Jaeger and the great Steffi Graf
were the only three to achieve this mark at a younger age.
Capriati and Graf went on to win multiple grand slams,
and Andrea Jaeger reached several finals
before her career was cut short with injuries.
So Gauff is certainly among elevated company here.
If we look slightly further to the right,
we see other familiar names, stars of the game.
Monica Seles, Martina Hingis, Sharapova,
and then further across we have Chris Evert,
and of course, Serena Williams herself.
All of these players reached the second week in their teams,
but were considerably older than Gauff this year.
Whether or not Cori Gauff goes on
to win major tournaments like the players around her
by this measure remains to be seen,
but the future certainly looks bright for the young American.
In the women's game, Serena Williams
has been the dominant force for more than a decade now.
But aside from her, the dearth of huge dominant forces
has created space for youngsters such as Gauff to come through.
The men's game has had more dominant players
for a very long time now, and it's not
until the likes of Federer, Nadal, and Djokovic
move on that we'll actually see opportunities for youngsters
to come through.