Why Murray belongs in the Big Four

Why Murray belongs in the Big Four
16 Jan 2019 – Charles Friesen

Talk of the Big Four has been going on for about ten years in tennis.   Federer, Nadal, Djokovic, and Murray have dominated the men’s game in the last decade.  But while Federer, Nadal, and Djokovic are into the teens in their slam title counts, Murray has three.  And there is another active player with three as well, Stan Wawrinka.  So is it exaggeration to put Murray in the Big Four and not Stan?

I’m not going to try to talk about the qualitative aspects of their respective games, Murray and Wawrinka, who plays better or whose style is more robust, or even about their direct match-up which is slightly in Murray’s favour (11-8).  And by no means is this an attempt to knock Stan down a peg.  Rather I think the numbers show that Murray’s performance over the past 10 years elevates him to the level of an elite player in a way that Stan’s does not.

Of course both have faced the enormous task of winning slams in era of all-time greats.  The big three have over 50 slam titles among them.  There have not been a lot of crumbs to go around. So for Murray and Wawrinka to claim even three slams has been a monumental accomplishment.  There’s no question that the other three of the Big Four have out-shone Murray – he’s clearly fourth of the four – but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t belong.

Titles

Let’s start with the big titles.  Stan has three slams and one 1000 title.  Andy has three slams, one Tour Final, two Olympic golds, and fourteen 1000’s. I think any objective judgment must be that Murray’s record is vastly superior on the big title front.  Wawrinka has four of the big titles of his era, whereas Murray has 20. And this I think is illustrative of Murray’s dominance.  Or perhaps ‘dominance’ is not the right word – it’s more like ‘his part of the dominance’ or hegemony of the top players in this generation.  They have largely shut out all the other players from repeated success on the big title stages.

And not only has Murray been winning many big titles, he’s been winning titles of all descriptions.  The ATP lists him with 45 titles.  About triple Wawrinka’s 16.  Looking at ATP title leaders in the Open Era (since 1968 when tennis became open to professionals):

ATP titles
Connors	109
Federer	99
Lendl	94
Nadal	80
McEnroe	77
Djokovic	72
Sampras, Borg	64
Vilas	62
Agassi	60
Nastase	58
Becker	49
Laver	46
Murray	45

This is elite company.  And Murray is ahead of such luminaries as Edberg and Wilander, (and nearly double Courier).  What this suggests is that Murray would be in the upper echelon of other eras. Probably his slam count is low for his other accomplishments, and it seems perfectly reasonable that this should be the case given his era.

Looking at just 1000 level tournaments, Murray is fifth on the list published by the ATP with 14 wins.  This is three ahead of Sampras.  If we extend the 1000 list, which goes back to 1990, a little further to 1970 at the dawn of the Open Era and include the nine Grand Prix Super Series tournaments, he is ninth on the list.

1000 and Super Series titles
Nadal	33
Djokovic	32
Federer	27
Lendl	22
McEnroe	19
Connors, Agassi	17
Borg	15
Murray	14
Becker	13
Sampras	11

There’s no doubt in my mind that based on his title-winning hi-jinks, Murray is in elite company, quite far ahead of Courier, Kuerten, Hewitt, and Wawrinka and most other 2-to-4-slam winners who may also be yearend #1’s.

Although Murray has only three slam titles, he played in 11 slam finals.  His match winning percentage in the slams is much more like 6- to 8-slam holders.  He is the 13^th best in the Open Era in match winning percentage.  The list is led by Borg, Nadal, Federer, Djokovic, and Laver in the first five spots.  On this list Murray is immediately ahead of Becker, Wilander, Edberg, Ashe, Courier and Vilas.  Positions 6 to 12 are Sampras, Rosewall, Connors, Lendl, McEnroe, Newcombe, and Agassi.  At Wimbledon, Murray has the 8^th best record of the Open Era, ahead of McEnroe and Connors.

Head to heads

I looked at the head to head records of all players who had won a slam in the Open Era – 54 men in this group.  But in this elite company of only slam winners, the men who have more winning records than losing ones are the best of the best.  There are 15 men who qualify, including all of the Big Four.  Of course, with active players, these numbers can still change, but here they are, as they stand.

	# of other slam winners played	% against which he has a winning record
Nadal	16	87.5%
Borg	22	86.4%
Becker	29	75.9%
Djokovic	12	75.0%
Lendl	31	74.2%
Federer	23	73.9%
Sampras	27	70.4%
Murray	12	66.7%
Laver	14	64.3%
Agassi	32	62.5%
Hewitt	24	58.3%
McEnroe	30	56.7%
Courier	23	56.5%
Wilander	25	56.0%
Connors	32	53.1%

For Laver, as for all others, this only includes Open Era matches and rivalries.

Again, Murray is in elite company, at eighth on this list.  However there is no question that Murray is fourth of the Big Four.  Looking directly at the head to heads of the Big Four plus Wawrinka, Djokovic has a winning record against the other four players, Nadal against three, Federer against two, Murray against one, and Stan against none.  However in the total matches won vs lost against this group, Nadal leads the way.

	Winning h2h	Total won	Total lost	Win %
Nadal	3 (Fed, Mur, Waw)	82	52	61.2%
Djokovic	4 (Nad, Fed, Mur, Waw)	96	63	60.4%
Federer	2 (Mur, Waw)	72	62	53.7%
Murray	1 (Waw)	40	64	38.5%
Wawrinka	0	19	68	21.8%

Rankings

I think probably the main reason Murray found a place in the Big Four has to do with the rankings.  Starting in 2008, Murray finished the year in the top four of the rankings six straight times, eight times in total, culminating in #1 in 2016.  For five straight years, the Big Four did not allow interlopers into the top four yearend rankings.  So this is obviously the source of the nick name, ‘Big Four.’

To be fair, Wawrinka later finished in the yearend top four 3 times.  But three is less than Murray’s eight and in two of those years, Murray was ahead of him.

With lots of hard numbers at my disposal I decided to take a more rigorous approach and construct a top ten index.  A simple top ten index might, for example, give 1 point for yearend #10, 2 points for #9, 3 for #8, etc.  But that seemed like an oversimplification to me.  Is being #6 (worth 5 points) really five times better than being #10?  Such a schema would tend to overestimate the top players.

Using ATP points it turns out that #6 is only about 1.35 times better than #10 – that is, on average the #6 player earns 1.35 more ATP points during a year than the #10 player.  I used the actual yearend points top-ten players earned from 1990 to 2018, (adjusting for changes to the ATP points structure over the years).  Where players had pre-1990 top-ten finishes, I used the average points at that position.

Murray finished 10^th on the list, between Edberg and Becker.  Perhaps those are his comparables in their era.  Hewitt was 18^th, Courier 26^th, Wawrinka 27^th, Kuerten 29^th.  These are the total number of points players earned in years they finished in the computer top ten.

Sum of ATP points when in yearend top ten
Federer	158,160
Connors	128,236
Nadal	127,750
Djokovic	121,660
Lendl	102,075
Agassi	94,500
Sampras	86,394
McEnroe	83,044
Becker	70,205
Murray	67,430
Borg	65,583
Edberg	63,178
Vilas	55,898
Roddick	48,545
Wilander	48,050

Again, Murray is in the thick of this elite company.  It’s interesting to see Andy Roddick near the end of this list – another good player victimized by a difficult era.  What I am trying to do with this list is show how much a player accomplished in their career.  They earned points at tournaments – and maximized their points when they won titles.  Of course, some players had short careers, like Borg or Wilander, but I am hesitant to give these players special treatment since, for whatever reason, they did not have the physical or mental fortitude to accomplish more.

Final thoughts

Murray has demonstrated tennis at the highest level over multiple years.  His numbers in titles, rankings, and head to head against other slam winners suggest that he is a top level player in the conversation with multi-slam winning yearend #1s.  In fact he is a multi-slam winning yearend #1.  But his total of grand slam titles is not high compared to other men in his position.  He is clearly behind the big three of Federer, Nadal, and Djokovic, making him the clear fourth of the Big Four.  But his body of work is also clearly far ahead of other three-ish slam winners like Wawrinka, Kuerten, or Courier.  He has won many more big titles than them, and outranked them consistently and over a longer period of time.

All of this suggests that Murray deserves a place among the best of the open era, slightly below the very best, but at least as good as Becker, Edberg, and Wilander.  There is no other man of his era, outside of the big three, who has come close to accomplishing what he has done, and that is why he is one of the Big Four.