Well, Andy Murray going out was a bit of a shock. I’m still quite sad about it. Having said, that, both Andy and Nadal getting knocked out earlier than expected does make it rather exciting too.

When I heard what happened I immediately went to the Wimbledon Slamtracker to see what the keys to the match had to say about it.

The IBM Keys to the Match system – which is part of SlamTracker – runs an analysis of both competitors’ historical head-to-head match-ups, as well as statistics against comparable player styles.  This allows it to determine what the data indicates each player must do to do well in the match. It does this using predictive analytics based on 8 years of grand slam data and 41 million data points.

SlamTracker said that Andy had to win more than 29% of first serve return points; and he didn’t.

It’s all in the keys.

(There’s a good article in Yahoo about it here.)