Welcome back to the series everyone is talking about*! The one in which we examine the questions: how advantageous is it to have the home court on the ATP tour? Does it confer the same enormous weight as it does in team sports like football and basketball? (You know, the pressing issues of the day.)
Let’s have a look at the data:
| Player | Home Hard Court Win% | Away Hard Court Win% | Home Clay Win % | Away Clay Win % | Home Grass Win % | Away Grass Win % | Overall Home Win % | Overall Away Win % | % of matches played at home |
| Matt Ebden | 58.14% | 59.04% | 0.00% | 40.63% | 68.97% | 61.54% | 58.64% | 56.42% | 35.37% |
| James Duckworth | 46.30% | 58.82% | 60.00% | 70.33% | 60.00% | 50.00% | 49.28% | 65.69% | 33.50% |
| John Millman | 55.74% | 68.70% | 69.23% | 53.42% | 85.71% | 45.45% | 60.49% | 60.48% | 27.84% |
| Nick Kyrgios | 77.27% | 65.45% | N/A | 50.00% | 0.00% | 50.00% | 73.91% | 63.93% | 27.38% |
| Sam Groth | 59.80% | 56.69% | 68.75% | 52.08% | 70.00% | 67.39% | 62.32% | 57.82% | 31.94% |
| Matt Reid | 59.81% | 50.89% | 41.67% | 63.33% | 44.44% | 46.67% | 57.03% | 55.50% | 36.99% |
| J.P. Smith | 28.57% | 70.73% | N/A | 60.00% | 50.00% | 50.00% | 31.25% | 64.54% | 10.19% |
| Greg Jones | 58.06% | 53.90% | 77.78% | 58.93% | 66.67% | 55.26% | 61.04% | 54.32% | 35.65% |
| Matthew Barton | 62.07% | 56.52% | 42.86% | 40.00% | 42.86% | 0.00% | 56.56% | 55.56% | 65.95% |
| Ben Mitchell | 65.79% | 62.16% | 64.71% | 25.00% | 75.00% | 0.00% | 66.19% | 51.52% | 58.40% |
| Player | Home HC Wins | Home HC Loss | Away HC W | Away HC Loss | Home Clay W | Home Clay L | Away Clay W | Away Clay L | Home Grass W | Home Grass L | Away Grass W | Away Grass L |
| Matt Ebden | 75 | 54 | 111 | 77 | 0 | 4 | 13 | 19 | 20 | 9 | 24 | 15 |
| James Duckworth | 25 | 29 | 20 | 14 | 6 | 4 | 64 | 27 | 3 | 2 | 6 | 6 |
| John Millman | 34 | 27 | 79 | 36 | 9 | 4 | 39 | 34 | 6 | 1 | 5 | 6 |
| Nick Kyrgios | 17 | 5 | 36 | 19 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Sam Groth | 61 | 41 | 89 | 68 | 11 | 5 | 25 | 23 | 14 | 6 | 31 | 15 |
| Matt Reid | 64 | 43 | 57 | 55 | 5 | 7 | 57 | 33 | 4 | 5 | 7 | 8 |
| J.P. Smith | 4 | 10 | 58 | 24 | 0 | 0 | 12 | 8 | 1 | 1 | 7 | 7 |
| Greg Jones | 72 | 52 | 83 | 71 | 14 | 4 | 33 | 23 | 8 | 4 | 21 | 17 |
| Matthew Barton | 54 | 33 | 26 | 20 | 12 | 16 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 4 | 0 | 2 |
| Ben Mitchell | 75 | 39 | 46 | 28 | 11 | 6 | 5 | 15 | 6 | 2 | 0 | 5 |
In Part I of the Home and Away series, we saw that American players spend the majority of their year at home. Even Wayne Odesnik, who spends the most time playing abroad, spends 64.4% of his match time in North America.
This time around, we see the Aussies are just the opposite**. Since there aren’t enough events (and enough points on offer) inside of Australia, the Oz contingent must hit the road to ply their trade***. And once they’re overseas, they try to stay awhile; these guys (the smart ones, anyway) aren’t going to fly 24 hours to a destination only to play one event. That eventually would be fiscal, if not physical, suicide.
So away they stay. Whereas the American Top 20 play an average of 81% of their matches at home, the Aussie Top 10 (of those who still play regularly on the Challenger/Futures Pro Circuit) only play an average of 36% of their matches in Australia. Of that bunch, the person most like Marge Simpson’s husband (in that he’s the biggest homer) is also the only guy to play more than 37% of his matches at home. That would be 21-year-old Matthew Barton (with a whopping 66% of his matches played at home), and this year even he has played the majority of his tennis Up Over (as opposed to, you know, Down Under).
Homer and Matthew have never been seen in the same place, which I think is kinda suspicious.
Although one must reconsider the definition of “home tennis” when one considers the case of one John-Patrick “J.P.” Smith. The 24-year-old Townsville, Australia native made another home for himself in Knoxville, USA, where he was a four-time ITA All-American in singles and doubles at the University of Tennessee. Hmmmm, an Australian All-American, eh? The plot thickens.
When we look at the numbers, we see that J.P.’s only ostensibly played 10% of his matches at “home” (i.e. Australia). And he performs far better on non-Australian soil — he wins 64.5% of his “away” matches, as opposed to his 31% in Oz. It seems as if the table is inverted where J.P.’s concerned, and his true tennis home is much more Americentric these days.
Another road warrior is James Duckworth, who has a ripping 70% win percentage on clay away from home. I suspect his case is much like Bjorn Fratangelo’s is for the US: he thrives on the red clay courts one finds more of in Europe or South America.
There’s A Ducky on the Road!
But whatever they’re putting in the Australian clay really suits Greg Jones. The 24-year-old Aussie is 14 and 4 on the home (literal) soil. Alas, Mr. Jones would be better off if he could play every match at home, and not just the clay ones; while he’s a decent 151 and 127 on the road, his is the win percentage that dips the most when it travels.
I see that Ben Mitchell is 0-5 in his away matches on grass, which seems odd for a former Wimbleboys Runner Up (lost to Fucsovics in the 2010 Boys Final). Meanwhile, Australian Open Boys Champion Nick Kygios continues to be a dynamo wherever he plays — his 64% wins on the road is better than all but Mitchell’s home win percentage. And Nick’s 74% of wins at home is by far the best of the homers (even Matthew Barton!).
Welp, that concludes this epic second installment of the Home and Away series. Stay tuned for Part III: The English and/or Part IV: The Argies, coming soon (although not necessarily in that order). Per usual: if anything in the above numbers grabs your eyeballs and is something I neglected to mention, do speak up about it in the comment section. OK? Cool.
And for those wondering (and even those who aren’t), here is my methodology:
The win/loss totals were culled from this site and herded into a database. They are current through yesterday. I count all wins and losses at all levels of professional play, quals or main draws. I don’t count collegiate or junior results, however.
*At least, that’s what I assume to be the case (though I’ve no available empirical evidence at hand).
**Which I guess is appropriate, seeing as their toilets flush in the opposite direction and such.
***Unlike some South Americans, who can rise to the Top 100 solely by playing South American clay challengers, or, say, Rendy Lu who can gather Asian chally points in big bunches, Australians can’t rise to those same heights by staying at home.
Challenger Tennis 
You may say I am being overly picky, given the hard statistical work you have put into this project already, but I can’t help feeling we would have greater confidence if we could see the absolute numbers. Maybe ungracious of me, but I will admit to some scepticism about the conclusions when I don’t know whether we are talking about a sample size of 10 matches or 100.
YOU’RE OVERLY PICKY! ;)
Haha, just kidding. Yours is a totally legitimate gripe. I initially wanted to put all of the data into these posts, just as you’d want it, but then I couldn’t get the tables to work or to show everything when I tried to incorporate them into the articles.
My compromise was to just include the percentages. But for you, I’ll try to insert a second chart (although the post might not then be very legible). I was already today going to investigate if I could somehow use Google Documents to just direct readers to all the data, so maybe that will work going forward. Thanks for the comment! :)
Well, thank you very much. I appreciate the difficulty of getting all the data into a table.
It does seem like some of the numbers are pretty small, especially with clay and grass.