ATP Tournaments - Winners over 30+ (1968-2013 - Open Era)

SirFredPerry had asked this a couple of days back…

sirfredperry wrote:

laverfan wrote:@SFP… Are you asking what is the maximum number of tourneys won by 30+ in a year and which year?

Yeah, that's it

I will research. My guess is around the time when Rosewall was around.

The following list does not include Slams, which can be found here - http://www.tennis28.com/slams/wins_age.html

I am only posting images, instead of tables because it takes a bit of work to build tables here. (I should ask admins, if a Microsoft Excel can be imported into a table or not. It does have a 'Save as Web Page').

1975 has the most 30+ winners, 25, in the Open Era.



The list of winners is…



1982 is the next year as the chart shows….

For posters who are concerned about calendar scheduling and number of tourneys, the following chart may start a new debate…



If there is an interest in specific years, let me know, and I can post the lists (of 30+ or all winners) by year (roughly 45 years worth of data). 1968 and 1969 are partial because of unavailability of data.

Source: ATP Web Site Data - http://www.atpworldtour.com/Scores/Archive-Event-Calendar.aspx

Fascinating data, LF. Thanks for finding it. Looks like Ashe, Laver and Rosewall comprise much of the list, and Rosewall seems relatively unaffected by age compared to everyone else on that separate slam list, too.

More tournaments = spread fields = more opportunities for older winners, perhaps? In conjunction with the way that improved knowledge in sports science has moved the game on in the modern era.

LF. Many apologies for not spotting this before. Thanks for the research. Gosh, that was a lot of winners in '75.
  Fascinating to see the old names from those days. Lucky enough to see some of them at Wimbledon in the late 60s and early 70s.
Of course, we had a goodly number in 2013 and it would have been swelled if Ferrer had not lost seven finals. How many do you think we'll get in 2014 ? Could be as many as this year, as there are plenty of good older players still around. Big question is - will the likes of Djoko and Rafa be regularly winning titles in their 30s?

The tour has changed - now the best players will be at 8-9 Masters, 4 slams, the WTF, and a couple of well-supported 500's (such as Dubai, Barcelona, Basel, or China) where other top players are in the field. Then you think of a grass warm-up, where there'll invariably be other top 10 players. That's 16-17 tournaments with pretty solid fields, leaving very limited time to go 'pot-hunting' against lesser fields. In the 1970's-1980's the tour was different, and tennis was considerably less physically exhausting then than it is now (just like football). I think more players in their late 20's will be winning than in the past, the younger guys have to wait, but less in their 30's although there are always exceptions who prove the rule such as Haas and Ferrer.

This chart of the ATP tournaments, their numbers, and the surfaces that they were on is interesting.  It shows that the polarization between many tournaments on fast low bouncing surfaces (grass and carpet) and many on slow surfaces (clay) has changed to the current set up of more homogenisation (including the complete disappearance of carpet) and also that there are many less tournaments each year than there were overall.  It helps explain why old records of numbers of tournament wins and of matches played are unlikely to be overcome by the current generation http://www.tennis28.com/charts/ATP_Surfaces_1971_2013.GIF.

Interesting chart, thanks.

I think Ferrer, Federer, Haas, Stepanek, Lopez, Hewitt, and many others will keep playing till late 30s pushing the age graph upwards and perhaps close to the 1970-1980s.

Grass is seeing a mini-revival, with Halle and Queens being 500s, Stuttgart also switching to Grass.
Den Bosch, Halle, Queens, Eastbourne, Wimbledon, Stuttgart, Newport.

Connors with 15 titles in 1974 would be unthinkable now.