Tag: alex landa

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New Reports at Pro Racquetball Stats (part 3)

Part 3 of 3 posts going over the content we’ve added recently.

– Big news: we’ve started to add Amateur National Qualifiers to the Amateur database! We had to modify some queries and add others. We also have put in a number of additional Categories for searching. We’re still back-filling in lots of Canadian Qualifiers, but as of this writing…
o all USA doubles qualifiers from 2016-2020 are in
o All Canadian qualifiers from Nov 2017-present
o A bunch more Canadian qualifier events are in the staging xls, but not yet loaded.

Some new example queries:
– http://rball.pro/1BEF9F is Q/S/F for USA National Doubles qualifiers from 2016-2020.

– http://rball.pro/0AAA0E is the finals of the last few Canadian Men’s Open qualifier events, the last 6 of which was won by Samuel Murray

I have a ton more to go; two qualifiers a year in Canada going back more than a decade is a lot of events to transcribe. I’ll probably send out a different email upon final data catch-up.

– I’ve also been adding other country data besides the “big 3” of USA, Canada, Mexico in an attempt to widen the scope of the data. This spring we’ve captured Qualifiers and/or Nationals results from Bolivia, Ecuador and India. I’m having some issues getting the full results for these events (India used R2 Sports App but the other countries did not), but the goal is to start loading in more data. I’ve also reached out recently to countries like Chile and Mexico with the hope of building out historical results.

A call to the community: ANYONE with links to national organizations in other countries who may be able to provide data is welcomed. There’s a dozen other countries out there that run national events that I’d love to have in the database.

– I’ve started to work on a change_nationality() function that properly shows all countries of origin properly for players who have switched allegiances in their career. The most recent example is of course Alex Landa switching from Mexico to USA, so the function should properly show Landa being “from” the USA in tourneys after Nov 2019 and being “from” Mexico before that. There’s now many players who have switched and as we see reports that need more coding we fix them.

– fixed bug in player_history_alltours() to get Event links to properly render based on alternate tour variable. This is a common issue in the code actually, since we over load lots of variables to support all sorts of different use cases in the code.

– fixed a bug in the Draw Size queries that was improperly counting draw sizes for events that depended on round robins. I was counting total matches, not distinct losers. I also was mis-couting events that have 3rd place games.

– the most recent addition: A Year-End Rankings Matrix tracking the current pro players and their year over year season ending ranking in one place. http://rball.pro/8D2F5F

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Other general improvements
– I’ve begun adding direct links in some places to specific tournaments, so that if you’ve run (for example) All Finals for a season you can click on the tournament name to get immediately to the “All Matches per Event” report.

– We’ve added some additional fields to the Tale of the Tape reports for players as we can find it; we’re always looking for more and better data.

– We’ve added “As of Date” date logic printing to every report; we list the day the report was run as well as the date of the latest tournament in the database. We did this to help support the IRT’s broadcast team so that they know when the data they’re looking at (if its been printed) is as of for context.

– We have created a number of reports to help the Reaching Your Dream Foundation organization report on its sponsored players; these are only available via private links shared only with RYDF staff, but also are something we can support for other tours or other organizations as needed. I’ve also created custom jump pages for the IRT broadcasters for example, and can do other one-offs as needed.

– We’ve modified the code to handle the LPRT’s conversion to best-of-3 scoring in Aug 2019.

– Thanks to an observation from Jon Rafkind, we had some redirect and coding bugs preventing the website from using SSL properly. So now you should see all pages on the site loading via https:// … if not, you may have the non secure link cached in your browser.

– Fixed some code typos as noticed by Tj Baumbaugh where my footer links on the home page/choose_tour.pl page were going to the wrong link for the LPRT.

– We’ve added a third Player Pull-down for all players who have appeared in the current season to help navigate players more easily. Some people have asked how the “Historical tour player” is populated; its driven by 50 tour wins. Well, there’s players in the current top 10 who don’t have that many wins, so they’re not in the “Historical” or “Frequent tour players” list … instead of changing that number, i just added a third pull-down.

– Photo Attribution: I modified the player_profile table to hold Photographer credits for all player profile pictures used, and then modified the code to read in a JS library (label.css) to put in a photo caption and give photographer credit where its due. I’ve also started cleaning out photo usage to try to migrate all photo usage to use materials from photographers that I’ve got “agreements” with. Many of the photos in there right now are from Kevin Savory or Ken Fife, who have been doing a lot of the photography at local pro events the last couple of seasons. But I hope to incorporate more photos from other photographers later on.

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Tags

International Racquetball Tour
LPRT
International Racquetball Federation – IRF
USA Racquetball
Racquetball Canada
Federación Mexicana de Raquetbol
Federación Boliviana De Raquetbol – Febora
Federación Boliviana de Racquetball
Federación Chilena Racquetball
Racquetball Rancagua, Chile
Ferac Racquet
Federación Ecuatoriana de Racquetball – FERAC
India racquetball

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New reports at ProRacquetballStats.com! (Part 2)

Here’s some more reports we’ve added lately. There will be a part 3 of this post: we’ve added a lotta a stuff in the last year or so.

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– I added a couple of specific IRF queries around the time of the Pan Am games in Aug 2019 that i’ll cover in a separate post, probably revisiting the next time we actually have an IRF event (they have cancelled the Pan American Racquetball Confederation – PARC championships for 2020 thanks to Covid-19). But if you’re bored you can fire up the IRF section and run all sorts of new reports.

– In support of the UnitedHealthcare US OPEN Racquetball Championships last October, we created two new US Open specific reports:
o Player W/L Record just at US Opens: this was suggested by Dean DeAngelo Baer to help highlight just US Open performance and it has shown some amazing stats. Here’s Kane Waselenchuk’s US Open W/L record report: http://rball.pro/ABF04B (he’s 90-3 lifetime at the sport’s biggest event)
o Player Match History just at US Opens: a full list of all US Open matches per player. Here’s Conrrado kevin Moscoso Ortiz Racquetball‘s match history: http://rball.pro/2F8B8C

– Player Lefty-Righty W/L Splits: great suggestion from Brian Pineda (who still owes me $10 from a bet made during a match last fall), who surmised that some players are better than others against lefties. Well, now you can query that. Here’s Alex Landa ‘s splits L vs R: http://rball.pro/28335A

– Head to Head Summary report: interesting suggestion by Timothy Baghurst to emulate a graphic we saw posted on a Squash broadcast: if you fire up the “Tale of the Tape” report, you can now select this H2H Match Summary report, which breaks down the h2h wins/losses, plus gives details on 3-game wins, 4-game wins and 5-game wins in both the best-of-3 and best-of-5 format. Here’s an example of this data for matches between Kane Waselenchuk and Rocky Carson: http://rball.pro/49B9BA

– Slight improvement to the Player Summary report as suggested by Evan Pritchard (aka Kramer X, aka the guy who writes The Racquetball Blog) to add in # of tournaments played along side # missed and total per player, per year. This does make the report more readable definitely. Here’s an example of a player summary for Paola Longoria showing the new column: http://rball.pro/7F61BB

– Addition of Player Home pages as suggested by JT R Ball. We don’t know too many stand alone pages for players, so I’ve added in some known “Facebook home pages” that some players are using in lieu of an external page. This data is now seen on the Player Profile reports. I’ll continue to add home pages as I encounter them. JT also just sent me some youtube playlist links that I may use instead of home pages for some players.

– Added functionality to the “Oldest to…” and “Youngest to…” reports after a conversation where Keerti Kumar asked whether Lalo Portillo99 was the youngest player ever to break into the top 10. I’ve modified the “Youngest to..” and “Oldest to…” queries to also list the Youngest and Oldest players to ever finish a season ranked in the top 10 on tour.

Here’s the report
http://rball.pro/1DE1E5

The answer to the question, “was Lalo the youngest ever to break into the top 10?” requires a bit of a history lesson.

Short Answer: No.

Longer Answer: Prior to 1982 there wasn’t a points system on tour used to determine the year end winner; the year end Nationals tournament determined the winner. They did have a ranking system, but it was just used to seed events properly. In the early days of racquetball, the tour was dominated by very young players succeeding at an early age. Marty Hogan (racquetball) for example finished as runner up in the Nationals in 1976 and 1977 at the ages of 18 and 19 respectively. Brett Harnett amazingly played most of the 1980-1 season at the age of 16, then made the semis of Nationals just after turning 17. Newly elected Hall of Famer Gregg Peck was just a few months younger than Harnett and played alongside of him, making the quarters of the 1981 nationals also at the age of 17.

Harnett then finished ranked 4th on tour the first year there was a ranking system in 1982. Other teenagers to finish in the top 10 once there was a ranking system include Gregg Peck, Gerry Price in 1983, Cliff Swain in 1985, Jack Huczek in 2002 and most recently Daniel De La Rosa in 2013.

– Added a section to the “Oldest to..” report to have a “non Ruben Gonzalez version of the “Oldest players to make the round of 16” on the Men’s tour. Ruben held 19 of the top 20 spots; now you can see who else is getting close.

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We’ll do part 3 next week to spread out the rball content!

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tags:

International Racquetball Tour
LPRT
International Racquetball Federation – IRF
USA Racquetball
Racquetball Canada
Federación Mexicana de Raquetbol

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IRT 42nd Lewis Drug Pro/Am Wrap-Up

DLR the big winner this weekend, winning both Singles and Doubles. Photo US Open 2019, Photographer Kevin Savory

Congrats to your winners on the weekend:
– Singles: Daniel De La Rosa
– Doubles; Daniel De La Rosa/Alvaro Beltran

De la Rosa wins this event for the second time in four years (he loves Sioux Falls: he’s made the final here now four years running), and captures his 4th Tier 1 victory, moving him into a tie for 19th all-time with heady names like Steve Serot, Gregg Peck, Bo Keeley and his long-time Mexican rival Alex Landa . Click here http://rball.pro/E75E50 for a list of all 40 tier 1 men’s pro titlists throughout all of history.

R2 Sports App home page for event: https://www.r2sports.com/tourney/home.asp?TID=31789

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Lets review the notable matches in the Singles draw.

Singles Match report in the PRS database: http://rball.pro/FA1E69

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In the 128s:
– Minnesota amateur Lee Meinerz played some solid ball and hung with Tony Carson in his first tourney back, taking the first game 15-14 before Carson had to retire.

In the 64s:
– Meinerz continued to play tough and stretched #17 Sebastian Fernandez to 8,12 in his tourney opener.
– #25 Kadim Carrasco played a tough tiebreaker against #24 Jansen Allen to advance.
– #28 Sam Bredenbeck played #21 Felipe Camacho tough, falling 9,14 in a hard-hitting match.
– Charlie Pratt Racquetball got a solid win over Alan Natera Chavez 10,8 to move into the 32s.
– Set Cubillos Ruiz got a tie-breaker win over the Ref Scott McClellan to advance.
– Robert Collins got a tough earned win over Canadian Tim Landeryou 12,12 to move on.

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In the 32s:
– #16 Adam Manilla could not keep the momentum going from last weekend and fell to #17 Fernandez 6,10. Fernandez looked bulked up and ready to challenge #1 Landa in the main draw.
– #21 Camacho got his best win of the season, ousting #12 Carlos Keller Vargas in a tie-breaker to advance to just his second main draw of the season.
– #20 Javier Estrada went breaker but took out #13 Thomas Carter to get into his third main draw of the season.
– #19 Javier Mar eased past the Costa Rican number one #14 seed Andres Acuña to get into the main draw. Mar has a history of disrupting IRT draws, and he’s well positioned to do so again here.
– #22 Charles Pratt moved to 4-0 lifetime in top-level events against #11 Mario Mercado Valenzuela in a streaky game that looked like was going against him early. Pratt gets a juicy match-up against a player he shocked in last year’s PARC event in Moscoso (also his doubles partner on the weekend).

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In the 16s: some notable matches:

– #20 Estrada could not get the breakthrough win he’s been pursuing, losing to #4 Alvaro Beltran in two solid games.
– #19 Mar proved once again why fans wish he’d play the tour full time, topping #3 Andree Parrilla in an 11-9 breaker. Its the second straight one-and-done for Parrilla, having been shocked last week in Austin by Manilla.
– #6 @Luis Luis Conrrado Moscoso Serrudo] got revenge on Pratt from their last meeting (the 2019 PARC) and topped him in two. He seemed to show little side effect of whatever malady caused him to exit so easily in Austin.
– #7 Daniel De La Rosa continued his h2h dominance over country-man Rodrigo Montoya Solis, beating him 11-8 in the breaker in a tough match.

So, 7 of the top 8 seeds into the quarters; a slight surprise to this observer who keeps waiting for some of the guys in the 9-20 range to step-up.

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In the Quarters though … all upsets.
– #8 Samuel Murray got a walk over when #1 Alex Landa pulled up lame midway through the second game. Murray had won the first, and it was hard to tell if the core injury (strained back?) was affecting Landa early on. Murray has beaten his oft-doubles partner before, so it wasn’t a huge surprise for him to get a game up on the notorious slow-starting Landa … but Murray into the semis was unexpected, especially from the #8 spot.
– Whatever #5 Lalo Portillo figured out … he needs to bottle it up and sell it. After three straight one-and-dones since earning a top 8 seed … he held serve against a former top 10 touring pro in Camacho in the 16s, and then dominated #4 Beltran 5,6 in the quarters. He gets a second semi on the season, and a winnable one at that versus Murray.
– #6 Moscoso continued to have the upper hand over Mar, dating to their junior days (they’re the same age-year and often met in the back end of Junior World events), and advanced in two games.
– #7 DLR took advantage of #2 Rocky Carson’s first game back from injury, playing solid ball and advancing in two 12,11.

So; for the for the first time in recorded seeding history on the Men’s tour, all top 4 seeds are upset prior to the semis, leaving the rest of this tourney to be contested neatly by the #5, #6, #7 and #8 seeds. We’re guaranteed to have a shock finalist; Murray has just one finals appearance in his career, Portillo none. The Lewis Drug event continues to provide surprises year after year.

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In the Semis:

– #5 Portillo raced out of the gate to blow away #8 Murray in game one, then mounted a huge comeback after going down big in game 2 to advance 4,14 and move into his first tier 1 professional final. Lalo is just 20 years of age and is one of the youngest finalists we’ve seen in years, and will have his hands full against a seasoned pro.

– In just their 4th career meeting (pro or international), #7 DLR continued his red-hot form and reversed the result from the US Open earlier this season and topped the Bolivian 8,11 to move into the final. Its hard to say whether Moscoso showed any ill-effects of the leg injury he picked up in Austin; one observer in the chat-box noted that Moscoso was merely “shuffling” to his right and not crossing over footsteps, perhaps implying he still was favoring his left leg. I also find it curious that the foot fault issues that plagued him at the US Open continue to be a factor; its now to the point where the referee knows to look for the FF and I believe now calls it even when its a borderline case.

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In the Finals:

It looked for a while like the young Portillo may provide a shock, as he played consistent solid ball to jump out to a lead, but DLR pulled back, played smart racquetball and eked out game one, saving game point against 15-14. In game 2, it was never really as close as the eventual 15-9 scoreline showed; DLR was in control despite Portillo’s excellent game plan.

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Points Implications of results:
– Landa had a chance to take over #1 with a tourney win, but by existing at the qtrs along with Carson they stay 2-3 in the standings behind Kane.
– Parrilla and Beltran remain 4-5, but Alvaro picks up some ground.
– DLR moves up to #6 with the win, gaining enough points on Moscoso to switch places and dropping the Bolivian to 7th.
– Despite the finals appearance and the win over Murray in the semis, Murray and Portillo remian 8-9 in the standings.
– With the missed event, S.Franco drops to 12th, which elevates Jake Bredenbeck into the top 10 for what I believe is the first time in his career.
– Mar jumps from #23 to #20, which is important because more than a few guys in the 11-20 range right now are either stepping back from touring or periodically miss events, meaning Mar could slip into the top 16, meaning a bye into the 32s.

the IRT now has enough events on the 12-month schedule that they’re counting points in 11 events, dropping other events. Which makes it even more amazing that guys like Kane and Conrrado can maintain top-8 seeds despite not even playing the minimum # of events.

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Doubles review

Match report in the PRS database: http://rball.pro/548396

The doubles draw was chalk in the semis, with all four top seeds advancing. Landa’s injury took out the Murray/Landa team, giving Montoya/Mar a walk-over into the finals. There they met their long-time Mexican nemesis team of #1 DLR/Beltran.

DLR/Beltran vs Mar/Montoya is becoming a frequent match-up in major doubles events. This final is a rematch of the following major matches:
– 2018 Mexican Nationals final
– 2018 Mexican Worlds Selection event final
– Quarters of 2018 World Doubles
– Semis of 2018 US Open
– Semis of 2019 Atlanta open

The veterans DLR/Beltran won all these meetings. And they won again in the Sioux Falls final, though they had to go breaker to do so. Beltran continues to be such a skilled shot maker even at 41, that I wouldn’t be surprised if he remained a dangerous pro doubles player for years to come.

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Men’s Open:

The top four seeds in the Men’s Open draw are all IRT pros ranked in the 9-16 range, and as expected they all advanced into the semis. Only Gerardo Franco Gonzalez was really troubled along the way, taken to a tie-breaker by Canadian veteran Landeryou.

In the Open semis: Franco upset Acuna while Montoya handled Mercado, and in the final Montoya cruised to the Men’s Open singles win.

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Next up?

The third of three IRT events in a row; the Lou Bradley Memorial in Sun Prairie, WI. It should be interesting to see what toll these back-to-back-to-back events take on players: we’ve already seen Kane bow out of one, Landa forfeit out with injury, and see both Beltran and Carson exit earlier than their seeds. Will we see another run from an unexpected source next week?

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International Racquetball Tour
International Racquetball Federation – IRF
International Racquetball Federation
USA Racquetball
Racquetball Canada
Federación Mexicana de Raquetbol
Federación Boliviana De Raquetbol – Febora
Racquetball Colombia
Federacion Colombiana de Racquetball
F

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US Open Men’s IRT Round of 16 review

Moscoso upsets Carson again in the 16s of the US Open. Photo unk.

Man, the matches come fast at US Open on Wednesday and Thursday. Here’s a review of the 2nd half of Thursday’s matches, the round of 16. There were some big time results.

– #1 Kane Waselenchuk dominated #16 Gerardo Franco Gonzalez to move into the quarters. I feel like Kane’s path this year has been more straight-forward than last year, though he gets a tough player in Mar (who he beat 12,10 in the 16s last year) next.

– #24 Javier Mar outlasted #25 Carlos Keller Vargas in a tiebreaker, dropping the first then cruising in games 2 and 3.: Mar had about 20 minutes to get ready for this match after a marathon win over his doubles partner Rodrigo Montoya Solis in the earlier round. Despite their seeds, these two players would both be pushing for the top 10 if they played the tour regularly.

– #5 Álvaro Beltrán dominated the upset-minded #21 Thomas Carter, advancing in two quick games.

– #4 Alex Landa was pushed by long-time WRT rival David ” Bobby” Horn, and had some “disagreements” on the court at times, but advanced in 2 straight to setup a rematch of the 2019 Mexican national singles final in the qtrs with Beltran. This sets up a rematch between these two long rivals, who met for the 2019 Mexican Nationals final and in the final of the 2018 Florida pro-am just after Beltran had beaten Kane.

– #3 Andree Parrilla dominated his younger doubles partner #14 Lalo Portillo 5,4. Portillo keeps making incremental moves forward on tour.

– #6 Daniel De La Rosa held serve and took out #11 Jake Bredenbeck in two.

– #23 Sebastian Fernandezwon me an ice cream cone from Brian Pineda by defeating #26 Adam Manilla in two games.

– In the upset of the round, #15 Conrrado kevin Moscoso Ortiz Racquetball defeated #2 Rocky Carson for the second time in as many meetings in Grand Slam events 13,5. This was a dominant performance from Moscoso, much more-so than his win in Bolivia, where he was in real jeopardy of losing in two quick games before catching fire. This could open up a path for him to the finals; if he can beat Carson, he can beat anyone not named Kane in this draw.

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So, the 16s were comprised of these seeds:
1,2,3,4,5,6 of top top seeds, then 11,13,14,15,16 from the next set, and then 21,23,24,25,26 seeds of qualifiers.

Now, your quarter finalists are 1,3,4,5,6,15,23,24.26. So two qualifiers remain to the quarters, but 5 of the top 8 seeds are through.

Nationalities in the quarters: 6 Mexicans, 1 Canadian and 1 Bolivian. No Americans. Someone asked yesterday if this was a first? Here’s a Q/S/F report by nationality to help: http://rball.pro/F834D0

Answer: Yes this is the first time a US Open has not featured at least one American in the quarters of the Men’s draw. In 2007, 7 of the 8 quarter finalists were from the USA … now its nearly reversed to have 6 of the 8 be from Mexico.

But not only is this the first time an American has not made at least the quarters of the US Open … this is the first time in the history of the IRT that an American has not made a pro quarter … ever.

————
Quarters start today at 10am CDT. All four should be streamed.

International Racquetball Tour
UnitedHealthcare US OPEN Racquetball Championships
USA Racquetball
Federación Mexicana de Raquetbol
Federación Boliviana de Racquetball
Racquetball Canada

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IRT Season in Review 2018-19

Your new updated IRT logo, branded with the new website.

Pro Racquetball Stats fans may not know it, but at the bottom of the Report selection page for each tour I have some static pages of information that I maintain. One of those is kind of a running diary of the season of “events” as they occur.

http://www.proracquetballstats.com/i…/year_end_summaries.htm

Here’s a list of notable “events” from this past season, which has seen some significant change in the structure of the tour. This is a subset of what’s on the above link, with text abbreviated for brevity.

– August 2018: the IRT season opens with questions as to whether Kane Waselenchuk is actually “retired” after events stemming from the last event in Florida in April and comments made on social media and in interviews over the summer.

– Oct 2018: Kane enters and wins the US Open, his 14th title. Kane is now simultaneously the oldest and youngest ever winner of the US Open.

– Nov 2018: Commissioner Andy Kulback takes a “leave of absence” from the IRT, and IRT CEO John Scott announces new managerial structure for the tour, which installs Mike Grisz as the Chairman of the board.

– Nov 2018: thanks to Kane’s Jan 2018 injury, he drops in the 12-month rolling rankings to #6 while Alex Landa ascends to #1. This leads to a series of discussions and criticisms of the tour ranking system in racquetball forums, with calls for protected seeding or changes to the ranking system.

– Feb 2019: Scott resigns as CEO of the tour after experiencing some medical and personal issues. Current Chairman of the Board Mike Grisz takes over as interim CEO.

– Mar 2019: IRT announces a partnership with Pablo Fajre to broadcast events, a departure from the existing IRT Network infrastructure and presumably an end to the competing WRT tour.

– Mar 2019: the first ever IRT event occurs in Bolivia, the Open Iris Bolivia Grand Slam. #1 Waselenchuk, along with 4 other top 10 players do not make the trip. Bolivian #1  Luis Conrrado Moscoso Serrudo wins the event, defeating IRT #2 Rocky Carson in the final.

– April 2019: Former CEO Scott divests himself fully from the IRT by selling his ownership shares to Maryland-based racquetball enthusiast Slemo Warigon and his wife Charity. This ends Scott’s not-quite two year ownership of the tour, and a much longer involvement in the sport. Coinciding with this move, Grisz takes over officially as both CEO and Chairman of the IRT Board. The IRT is now a fully volunteer-driven organization.

– April 2019: Former Commissioner Kulbeck returns to the tour with some limited/as-of-yet to be determined involvement going forward.

– April 2019: Waselenchuk loses a quarter-final match in Sarasota to Alvaro Beltran breaking an 83-match winning streak on tour and becoming the first on-the-court, non injury related match loss since Sept 2013.

– May 2019: Kane wins the final Tier 1 of the season in Syosset to secure his 13th pro title.

– May 2019: US Open director Doug Ganim announces that he’s retiring after its 25th iteration in 2020, leaving some time to coordinate a replacement plan but also throwing the biggest racquetball event’s future into doubt.

– June 2019: After several non-Tier 1s wrap up, the final 2018-19 season finishes. The final event is won in surprising fashion by Javier Estrada, who takes out a slew of top IRT pros to win the title.

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Next Up: Pan Am Games. I’ll wait until the knockout draws are produced to do “previews.”