More posts about tennis and wealth

A few weeks ago I blogged about the statistical oddity that, of the five top-ranked American women tennis players at the time, two of them are the daughters of billionaires (Jessica Pegula, who lost in the final of the US Open last night), and Emma Navarro (who reached the semis of the tournament).

I had some not to be taken too literally fun with some statistics on just how improbable this development is from an all other things being equal perspective, with some additional comments on what this all says about concepts such as meritocracy.

Andrew Gelman blogged about this same thing Friday, with some thoughts of his own, which generated some interesting comments from the extreme stathead outlier community.

I want to throw out the following fact, in recognition of the breaking of a truly astounding statistical streak, which is that of 60 major men’s finals (there are four of these a year) having gone by without the participation of an American player. Today Taylor Fritz is playing in the US Open final, breaking a streak that began after Andy Roddick lost to Roger Federer in the 2009 Wimbledon final. It remains to be seen if he breaks another, closely related, amazing piece of statistica, which is that no American man has won a major final since Roddick 21 years ago at the 2003 US Open.

To give you a sense of how far US men’s tennis has fallen, in the fifteen years from 1989 through 2003, US men won 29 of the 60 finals.

Part of this of course is a function of the fact that men’s tennis has been so utterly dominated by three players over the past 20 years, none of them Americans. But it goes well beyond that: No US man has finished the year anywhere close to the top five in the world since the end of Roddick’s career nearly 15 years ago, and the total number of US men appearances even in major semifinals has been almost zero.

So Fritz making it to the US Open final is a big deal in this context. Who is Taylor Fritz, demographically speaking? Well he’s the son of a former top ten in the world woman Kathy May, so there are some genetics helping out here, not surprisingly. But not just genetics: Kathy is the great-granddaughter of David May, the founder of the May department store chain, which eventually merged with Macy’s. David May is a real interesting historical figure in his own right, but this is another nice illustration of how in a sport like tennis social privilege can combine so powerfully with genetic gifts to get us Taylor Fritz, who I would like to see win, because I picked him out of the chorus eight years ago when I saw him at the Australian Open as an 18-year-old, and predicted great things for him in my head, which made me feel some tenuous connection to his future, in the absurd way we sports fans make such connections.