Head-to-Head Debate Part Two

Earlier this week, I looked at just how significant head-to-heads are in tennis today. I want to take that argument a bit further by looking at certain cases. World No. 1 Roger Federer and Andy Murray faced each other in the semi-finals of the Masters 1000 event in Cincinnati this year.

Prior to that match much was made of the fact that Murray had a 6-2 career record against Federer, however a fact that seemed to be overlooked as that there one meeting in a Grand Slam was in the Final of the US Open final 2008 and Federer won this match comfortably 6-2 7-5 6-2.

Federer duly beat Murray in straight sets in Cincinnati and was asked for his thoughts on his record against the Scotsman Federer made a very interesting point, that even though he has lost six matches to Murray.

Murray has never beaten him comfortably. Indeed, the matches could have gone either way. Those comments prompted me to have a closer look at the stats and indeed, even though Murray now has a 6-3 record against Federer, in those nine matches the duo have played 24 sets and they have won 12 a piece, all three of Federer's victories against Murray have been in straight sets, while all but one of Murray's six victories have gone to a final set.

Another head-to-head matchup that I looked at was the one between Andy Roddick and Tim Henman. I was quite astonished to see that Henman, against the Betting Odds, had a 3-2 winning record against Roddick, but interestingly Roddick had won the more sets in the duos matches at 7-6 and in two of the Americans losses he had match points.

Can we really read to much into the head-to-head stats if the loser is coming out even or even on top with the winner?