Slam title defence stats

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

As Murray prepares to defend his Wimbledon singles title, I thought I'd survey the frequency of success and failure in slam singles title defences. So far I've just done the men's for the last 20 years (i.e. from Krajicek's 1997 attempted defence of the 1996 Wimbledon title up to Djokovic's performance as defending champion in this year's French).

In those 80 events we had:

8 absences, and
1 retrospective disqualification (Korda, after reaching R3 in his 1999 attempted defence of his 1998 Aussie title)

From the 71 non-disqualified attempts at defence, we got:

26 champions
7 losing finalists
11 semis
11 quarters
7 R4
1 R3
6 R2
2 R1.

I'll post similar stats for the last 20 years in the women's if I get time later.

[Antepli Ejderha]

That's a really interesting stat, a 50% chance of getting to the final is quite high imho. I'm guessing it's going to be similar for the women.

[Janik]

My guess would be otherwise. Serena is about the only really consistent player within that particularly cohort. See the difference in length of the lists between the number of champions and runners-up on the Women's side compared to the Men.

Serena hits the 50% mark, as her 22 completed defences reads:

6 champion
3 runner-up
9 total

3 SF
2 QF
2 R4
1 R3
1 R2
9 total

4 absent

I doubt many others will be as high, if any. Maybe Henin.

Oh, and I would be intrigued to know how the numbers on the Men's side differ for '97-'07 to '07-'17. The latter is very much the big four period, when all of them were getting regularly to the Semis. My guess is that the defence stats will have improved over that period, and are likely above the norm.

[Satchmo Distel]

1976-80 will be high for the men due to Borg, who did not lose a title defence until he lost to McEnroe in 1981 IIRC.

Graf and Court likely to be highest in the women. Navratilova less so except the run of Wimbledon.

2005-2011 is a no-Brainer given that Federer and Nadal were clear top two so long.

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

First, the women's stats for the last 80 events (i.e. from Graf's absence in 1997 as defending champion of Wimbledon 96 through to Muguruza's 4th round exit in this year's French as defending champ from 2016).

16 absences

From the 64 attempted defences we got:

16 winners
11 defeated finalists
10 semis
7 quarters
10 R4
5 R3
2 R2
3 R1

The 16 successful title defences in that time frame were: Serena 6, Venus 3, Henin and Hingis 2 each, Azarenka, Capriati and Clijsters 1 each.

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

Oh, and I would be intrigued to know how the numbers on the Men's side differ for '97-'07 to '07-'17. The latter is very much the big four period, when all of them were getting regularly to the Semis. My guess is that the defence stats will have improved over that period, and are likely above the norm.
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Yes, certainly much stronger in the last 10 years in terms of percentage of title defenders making it to the QFs or further (and slightly better in terms of percentage making it to the semis or the finals, though NOT in terms of completely successful defences).

Comparative stats as follows for the last 40 men's defences (i.e. from the 2007 defence of 2006 Wimbledon onwards) and for the previous 40:


Last 40:

Absent 3

Champ 12/37
Final 6/37 (18/37 cumulatively)
Semi 6/37 (24/37)
Quart 9/37 (33/37)
R4 1/37
R3 1/37
R2 2/37
R1 0


Previous 40

Absent/retro DQ: 6 (including Korda's R3 which is ignored below)

Champ 14/34
Final 1/34 (15/34)
Semi 5/34 (20/34)
Quart 2/34 (22/34)
R4 6/34
R3 0
R2 4/34
R1 2/34