Wikipedia talk:WikiProject tennis/Grand Slam Project

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Below is a copy of the discussion from Portal Talk:Tennis.

1 Historical Grand Slam draws
2 Pre-open results
3 Update on Open-Era grand slams, dates
4 Missing player entries
5 Grand Slam project nearing readiness
6 Request for feedback on some sample slams
7 WikiProject
8 Slam draw creation has begun
9 A page for every Slam
10 Progress on amateur-era slams
11 Two aticles for Roland Garros

[edit] Historical Grand Slam draws

I've recently begun work on a project to add draws for all the Open Era Grand Slams to Wikipedia. I believe that this would tremendously enhance Wikipedia's tennis coverage, and would also highlight gaps that need to be filled (e.g. prominent players without articles). My basic strategy is to pull the historical information off of the ATP Tennis website (e.g. [1]) and rework the data into the format that seems to have become standard for grand slam draws.

As a sample of what I intend to create, see these three computer-generated pages:

The idea is that these kinds of pages would serve as a springboard for people to add less generic content.

Before I generate all the historical draw pages, I'd like feedback on these sample pages. The format is the same as that of 2006 Wimbledon Championships - Men's Singles and 2006 French Open - Men's Singles, but there's nothing sacred about this layout. I created the "four sections" layout for this year's French Open largely to leverage existing bracket templates. The bizarre formatting of the scores is an unintended consequence of this.

Some more specific questions:

Do people like the flags?
What's the best way to format player's names? I'd go with last name, but then there are the Williams sisters. The above examples have last name in the first round, then first initial + last name in all subsequent rounds. All names are linked, but this is also open for debate.
Would a format similar to that on the ATP Tennis web site [2] be appropriate? I'm referring to placing the score underneath the winner's line, which seems to allow for more vertical compactness.
What other information needs to be there for these pages to be worthwhile? Prize money? Dates? Surface? (The Australian and US Opens haven't always been hardcourt events)
Is it OK to have so many red links in the older tournaments? (e.g. 1975 Wimbledon) Surely entering a single grand slam tournament doesn't qualify a person for a Wikipedia entry. On the other hand, having these links will encourage people to write more tennis player articles.

That's a great project. I think that flags need to be there because they catch people's eyes (meaning pages don't look boring), also I don't think most people know the three-lettered codes for countries. I suggest to use flags in the first round part only (like in ATP's bracket).

Placing scores underneath the winners' lines would cause confusion for some, I think, but I wouldn't mind. I think it's better to write 6-4 6-4 6-4 horizontally than 666 over 444 vertically like you have in all of your brackets.

Prize money, dates, and surfaces are OK. I would also add some trivial information, there always are some interesting information.

In my opinion, all players deserve at least a stub. This way, there will be no red links.

I found a nice example at es.wikipedia.org: Wimbledon 2006. Seeds can be "subbed" or "supped" next to the players' names. Crzycheetah 06:52, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree on the 6-4 6-4 6-4 format being preferable to the "666 over 444" format. The latter gives sometimes rise to misunderstandings (e.g., who won a 6-4 7-6 match when written in 67 over 46 format?)--HJ 21:09, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Pre-open results

I agree this is a great project. Has anyone, however, any ideas for projects going back in time (pre-Open area)? There are many gems there, that would be nice to get out.

How about we just get the Open Era up first, OK? =) I'd love to see this, though I haven't found an online source for draws that old. The atptennis.com site only goes back to 1968 (which makes sense, since I believe that's when the ATP Tour was started). If anyone can find such a source, I'd be glad to write a scraper. Also, I remember hearing that the format of major championships used to be very different than it is today, that the defending champion only needed to play one match against the winner of the rest of the draw to defend his title. --Dantheox 04:16, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Sure, one thing at a time. :-) The Slams (or, some of them) were at some time played under the format you mention, but definitely Wimbledon was not in the 1950s. So it goes back further. This again reveals the need for digging up this information. I have also searched the net, and found nothing, so this may require work in the old style, i.e., going to libraries (those with physical books :-) ). I will try at some point to see what I can find, as we otherwise gets a time-biased presentation of tennis. I got the interest when I started to gather information about Kurt Nielsen, since it is impossible to get any info except for finals. I got the info, however, that he beat Ken Rosewall en route to the final in 1953. Rosewall could have been no. 1 that year had he won Wimbledon. This is just an example of the many informations about pre-1968 champs and non-champs that must be out there. But getting them will take an effort. If someone can help out it would be great! (I am a newcomer, but is this something that could be "advertised" somewhat as a project needing help?). Enough, a lot of talk by me already. Regards, --HJ 10:50, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Update on Open-Era grand slams, dates

I'm making good progress on the Open Era grand slams project (see above). Right now the main roadblock is the surprising number of inaccuracies at ATPTennis.com. A few of the highlights:

Wimbledon 1973 What kind of end date is "%d-%b-%y," and what happened to player #61?
US Open 1984 What happened to player #5? He was Kevin Purcell and, unfortunately, he made it to the second round, thus completely throwing off this bracket. Also, what are we to make of "Date: 28-Aug-84 - 27-Aug-84"? There are over twenty missing scores on this bracket.
US Open 1988 How did Martin Jaite and Thierry Champion both advance out of their first round matchup against one another? (Jaite was the actual winner)
ATPTennis.com apparently uses its own country codes. Where they say "BAH", the rest of the world says BHS for the Bahamas. Same for IRI -> IRN and HAI -> HTI. This is a minor nuisance.

There are enough incorrect or missing dates (68 of them, all before 1985) that I'll need another source for grand slam start and end dates. Does anyone know of one? Just prowling around the internet, I couldn't find a thing. I'd really appreciate a link if anyone can come up with one. --Dantheox 22:09, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Re: #4: ATP uses IOC codes, that's why. See Comparison of IOC, FIFA, and ISO 3166 country codes and List of IOC country codes. --MC 01:01, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Missing player entries

As a spinoff of the Open Era grand slam project, I generated a list of all male players who'd won four or more matches in grand slams, and split it into red/blue links. See User:Dantheox/players. The good news is that 490/755=65% of the links are already blue, but there's no guarantee that the blue links all point at the right articles. The lists are sorted by number of wins, so the highest red links should get articles with the highest priority. --Dantheox 01:27, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Grand Slam project nearing readiness

I'm nearing the point where I can generate draws for all the Open-Era slams. I've drawn my data from ATPtennis.com and tenniscorner.net, which were the two best sources I could find online. In the interest of accuracy, I'll only be adding pages when the two sources agree precisely, or the resolution of any conflicts has been decided.

Currently, just over half of the slams are ready. Four of them (1973 Wimbledon, 1984, '88 US Open, 1968 French Open) have some major issues that need to be hammered out. The remaining slams have only minor discrepancies. I've created a status page at User:Dantheox/SlamProgress. Many of the conflicts, such as score mismatches, are minor and tedious. Determining whether John McEnroe lost five points in that tiebreaker or just four will involve finding some other source.

I'd appreciate help with this -- I've tried to lay out the conflicts as clearly as possible on the status page. Each conflict includes details and links to the relevant draws on ATPtennis.com and tenniscorner.net, so the problems should be relatively easy to spot. If you can resolve a conflict, just annotate the status page or put a message on my talk page. Thanks, --Dantheox 23:39, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Request for feedback on some sample slams

Many thanks to MC for his ongoing help with User:Dantheox/SlamProgress. I've written a program to create draws, and have prepared a few samples. Barring any major developments, this is exactly what the eventual draws for all the grand slams will look like.

Any thoughts more than welcome, especially on the wording of the two English sentences that occur on every page. --Dantheox 07:19, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Fantastic work and effort, so I feel bad about raising two (minor) critical points. a) The columns before player names appear to "grow" in size, when it's for a seed, WC or LL. It looks a little ackward. b) The way of presenting scores is confusing, but I can see that when player names are placed like they are, it is the only solution. However, is it possible to (i) put a little space between numbers (ii) to present scores in colums, such that stuff does not go crazy when the old days' long sets are reported? See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Dantheox/a1969 in the finals. The scores are a bit misaligned. To sum up: GREAT WORK!!!!!!--HJ 10:10, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

I think the solution to all these problems is to have a dedicated bracket for tennis tournaments. I toyed with this idea for a while, and even created a test bracket -- User:Dantheox/test. I think something that looked like this would be good, but that bracket has some problems. The layout is very brittle. If any name wraps to two lines, then the entire layout will be off in an incredibly confusing way. --Dantheox 17:12, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

What about something like the bracket on Spanish Wikipedia? Example here. --MC 17:41, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

The only problem I have with this is that the 16-team bracket already takes up the full width of the browser window. Some possibilities: (1) Use eight 16-team brackets instead of four 32-team brackets, or (2) put the finals in the same horizontal position as the semifinals, ala [3]. The 32-team tennis bracket would have a truly enormous number of parameters: a seed, name, five sets (=7 parameters) for each match (x63) = 441 plus round names and a width parameter = 447 parameters. Is this a bad thing? --Dantheox 18:12, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

I like option (1). --MC 23:10, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

I think the Spanish example is quite nice. There, the scorings are very simple to read. I don't think the R16 is too wide. Also, the ATP example, I don't like. It has the feeling of going "back in time". So, a wild thought: Could one for a Slam first present one "R128 table", that is a three-column (128 line) table with R128, R64 and R32 scores, and then a "R16 table", that is a four column (16 line) table with R16, Q, SF and F scores (like the Spanish). Is that feasible? It would cover the tournament at least.--HJ 18:32, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't get what you mean. Do you have an example? --MC 23:10, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

I was indeed not being very clear here; sorry. Upon re-reading, I see that my notion of a big "R128" table, corresponds exactly to Dantheox' suggestion of using eight "R16" tables. So I am all for option (1).--HJ 23:47, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

See User:Dantheox/w1981. I think the eight-section thing is OK, but the scores have a very "barred" appearance to them that I don't like. I could eliminate the bars between sets, but then we'd have the same problem as the current bracket setup. --Dantheox 19:36, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't mind the barred look. Do you think you can put a little more space between the numbers? That way eliminating the bars might not be a problem? --MC 21:20, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't mind bars per se; I actually think they should be there to avoid any potential confusion with this way of presenting scores. I just think the cells should be forced to have same width (like in the Spanish example above) - it facilitates overview tremendously. This, on the other hand, presents problems with the ovreall width of the table. There, I think one could spare some space by dropping the seeds boxes from every round but the first (as of now, one also ends with som very slim empty boxes, which in any case looks peculiar). Furthermore, the space for player names are generous. One could gain a lot by reducing them. In the Spanish example (in my browser, which I would "guesstimate" to a 1000px wide), only Justin Henin-Hardenne violates it, and goes into two lines (making the table look only a bit strange). This will happen so rarely, I think, that the gain of having more priority to nice scoring layout is sufficiently high (also, you can safely drop initials except for the first round). A final thing, with all the flags, seed numbers etc., it would make the tables "breath" a bit more if you had minor horisontal spaces between player pairs in first round also (as the Spanish example has). Thanks for all your efforts!!!--HJ 09:57, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

A question about naming convention. As of now, the draw is divided into eigth sub-draws labelled "Section 1" etc. Is that a naming convention also found in tennis, or just made here for presentational purposes? I understand the need to split things up, but could one present the sub-draws in just two sections (each with four 1/8 draw schemes) labelled "Upper half" and "Lower half", which are recognized terms in tennis?--HJ 09:57, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

I think it's usually just four sections. So maybe we should make it "Section 1 - Top Half" and "Section 1 - Bottom Half" etc. This is how it's done on ESPN, I believe. http://www.wimbledon.org uses four sections, see here. --MC 15:14, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

What are you referring to on ESPN? I only see this. I revised a few templates for the User:Dantheox/w1981 page, and I think it looks enormously better. I'm using the compact version of the 16-team bracket because I have a computer program that generates them. Modifications to Template:16TeamBracket will have to be made by hand. If anyone wants to do that, they should go ahead, but I'm not going to touch it. I don't know of any standards beyond "top half" and "bottom half" of the draw. --Dantheox 20:42, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

I've seen this on ESPN (maybe NBC?) TV broadcasts. --MC 17:18, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] WikiProject

Does anybody know if there is a tennis WikiProject? --MC 18:02, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't know of any, but there should be one. This grand slam project is certainly a WikiProject, especially if there's interest in filling in the draws prior to 1968. --Dantheox 20:44, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

I went ahead and proposed a WikiProject. See Wikipedia:WikiProject/List_of_proposed_projects#Tennis --Dantheox 02:47, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Slam draw creation has begun

I've begun the process of uploading back draws for grand slams. I've uploaded the first eight already, and barring any objections, I'm going to go ahead and upload the rest of 1978-1996 or so later this evening.

--Dantheox 18:57, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Most of 1974-1995 is complete now, excepting the Australian Opens before 1988, which had byes. See User:Dantheox/Progress for up-to-date info, and be sure to try out the links and fix problems on the pages! --Dantheox 04:29, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] A page for every Slam

The "Slams" table has turned all-blue. There's now a page for every Grand Slam tournament, from the 1877 Wimbledon to the present. This is pretty amazing. In the pre-open era the succession boxes work correctly. You can start with 1877 Wimbledon Championships and click "next" all the way into the open era. There's a lot of work still to be done in the Open Era, unfortunately. It would be wonderful if the succession boxes went all the way to the present. --dantheox 07:42, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Progress on amateur-era slams

I've used the ITF and French sources to generate amateur-era draws. I've also used them to fill out the open-era draws for Women's Singles, which had been rather sparse up to now. The men's and women's Australians are complete, as are the French. The US Open goes back to the 1930's for the men, and to the start of the open era for women. Wimbledon goes back to the end of the challenger era. ITF has some data from the challenger era, but it's incomplete. It only covers up to the challenge round. We've got enough info to piece that together though (winner and runner-up), so that should take us back to 1900.

Where to go from now? I still have to parse the wtaworld.com data, which will completely fill out the Women's draws. As for the men's draws, we'll need a new source to complete coverage back into the 1800's. --dantheox 06:57, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Two aticles for Roland Garros

There are 2 identical articles for Roland Garros: French Open (tennis) and Roland Garros (tennis). One has to be deleted or redirected. It should be the first one because "French Open" is a generic term used in other sports and is an unofficial appellation. The only official name of the tournament is "Roland Garros" and this must appear in the title. I expect the manager of the grand slam project to correct this sitruation and make the change. --Stymphal 18:33, 9 June 2007 (UTC)