Okay, so I’ve been messing around with trying to predict tennis match outcomes, and today I focused on Elina Svitolina. It’s not as easy as it looks, let me tell you!
Getting Started
First, I needed data. Lots of it. I spent a good chunk of time just scraping websites for Svitolina’s past match results, her opponent’s stats, the type of court they played on, everything I could think of. It was a bit of a mess, to be honest, a bunch of different formats and I had to manually clean a lot of it up.
Building the “Model” (if you can call it that)
- I started by just looking at win/loss ratios. Pretty basic, right? Svitolina’s win percentage on hard courts versus clay, that sort of thing.
- Then I tried to factor in her opponent. If she was playing someone ranked way higher, obviously that needed to be considered.
- I even looked at their head-to-head record. Had they played before? Who won? By how much?
I dumped all this into a spreadsheet, played around with some formulas, basically just trying to see if I could find any patterns. I’m no data scientist, so it was a lot of trial and error. I kept tweaking things, adding in new factors, seeing what made the “predictions” more accurate (based on past results, of course).
The Prediction Part
After all that, I finally had something that I felt was, well, somewhat usable. It wasn’t fancy, but it gave me a percentage chance of Svitolina winning her next match. I ran it for a few upcoming tournaments, just to see what it would spit out.
Results and Lessons Learned
Honestly, the results were mixed. Sometimes it was surprisingly accurate, other times it was way off. Which, I guess, is to be expected. There are so many variables in tennis – form, injuries, even just luck on the day – that it’s impossible to predict with 100% certainty.
But it was a fun experiment! I learned a lot about data gathering, cleaning, and basic analysis. It definitely gave me a new appreciation for how complicated sports prediction really is. I’m not quitting my day job to become a professional gambler anytime soon, but I might keep tinkering with this in my spare time. Who knows, maybe I’ll crack the code eventually!
