THE NUMBERS GAME

THE WORLD NO. 1 RANKING FOR THE MEN
Courtesy Sally Easton and the Wimbledon site, here is a look at the possible scenarios for the ATP rankings post the grass court major.

Novak Djokovic needs to reach the final of Wimbledon to take over the world no. 1 ranking from Rafael Nadal. The only way Nadal can retain his top slot is by winning Wimbledon and hoping Djokovic does not get to the final. Djokovic currently trails Nadal by only 65 ranking points (12,070 vs 12,005).

If Nadal does not reach the final, the Serb will take the ATP ranking lead, even if he goes out in the first round (or any later round) himself.

Nadal could also be vulnerable from world No. 3, Roger Federer. If Federer wins, and Nadal goes out before the final, the Swiss will jump to no.2 in the rankings, forcing Nadal down to no. 3.

THE ACTUAL ODDS OF THE ISNER MAHUT REMATCH
Thanks to CNN Sports Illustrated editor Jon Wertheim and his Toronto reader Gilbert Benoit, here is the explanation of the chances that Isner and Mahut could have drawn each other in the first round at SW 19.

Each Grand Slam tournament draw includes 128 players. The top 32 players are seeded and placed in the draw first. That leaves 96 slots for the others, in this case including Isner (No. 46) and Mahut (No. 99).

Let’s consider Isner and Mahut and ignore the other players in the field.

• Pick either player. Say Isner. If he is drawn against a seed, he will not play Mahut. There are 96 possible slots where he can be drawn, and 32 of those will be against a seeded player, so he has a 2/3 chance of not playing a seed.

• Then, consider the conditional probability of Mahut drawing Isner, assuming that Isner is not playing a seed. There are 95 slots left, so the probability is 1/95

• We obtain the probability by multiplying the conditional probability (1/95) by the probability that governs the condition (2/3), and we obtain 2/285.

That is less than a 1% chance of the event happening (0.7% to be precise)