The analysis and forecasting of ATP tennis matches using a high-dimensional dynamic model

P. Gorgi (), Siem Jan Koopman and R. Lit ()
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P. Gorgi: VU Amsterdam, The Netherlands
R. Lit: VU Amsterdam, The Netherlands

No 18-009/III, Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers from Tinbergen Institute

Abstract: We propose a basic high-dimensional dynamic model for tennis match results with time varying player-specific abilities for different court surface types. Our statistical model can be treated in a likelihood-based analysis and is capable of handling high-dimensional datasets while the number of parameters remains small. In particular, we analyze 17 years of tennis matches for a panel of over 500 players, which leads to more than 2000 dynamic strength levels. We find that time varying player-specific abilities for different court surfaces are of key importance for analyzing tennis matches. We further consider several other extensions including player-specific explanatory variables and the accountance of specific configurations for Grand Slam tournaments. The estimation results can be used to construct rankings of players for different court surface types. We finally show that our proposed model can also be effective in forecasting. We provide evidence that our model significantly outperforms existing models in the forecasting of tennis match results.

Keywords: Sports statistics; Score-driven time series models; Rankings; Forecasting. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C32 C53 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018-01-26
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-ecm, nep-for, nep-ore and nep-spo
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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