Early Career Wins and Tournament Prestige Characterize Tennis Players' Trajectories

TL;DR

This study investigates how early career wins and tournament prestige influence tennis players' career trajectories, using network analysis of ATP tournaments and introducing a new measure of tournament importance.

Contribution

It introduces a novel eigenvector centrality-based method to quantify tournament prestige and links early success in prestigious tournaments to future top rankings.

Findings

Early wins in prestigious tournaments correlate with higher chances of becoming a top player.

Participation in central tournaments during early career stages significantly impacts career progression.

The proposed prestige measure effectively captures tournament importance within the tennis network.

Abstract

Success in sports is a complex phenomenon that has only garnered limited research attention. In particular, we lack a deep scientific understanding of success in sports like tennis and the factors that contribute to it. Here, we study the unfolding of tennis players' careers to understand the role of early career stages and the impact of specific tournaments on players' trajectories. We employ a comprehensive approach combining network science and analysis of ATP tournament data and introduce a novel method to quantify tournament prestige based on the eigenvector centrality of the co-attendance network of tournaments. Focusing on the interplay between participation in central tournaments and players' performance, we find that the level of the tournament where players achieve their first win is associated with becoming a top player. This work sheds light on the critical role of the initial stages in the progression of players' careers, offering valuable insights into the dynamics of success in tennis.