It may appear confusing at first but we hope that you will soon become familiar with it through the following description and examples.

The Search Options page contains a range of options to identify the data you are looking for. The more you select, the more you restrict the data that is returned.

The page contains two types of 'input box' where you tell the system what you are looking for. The first type is an 'options box' (such as the first box to the right of the Player 1 Name title on the first line). You can click on the arrow on the right-side of the box to select an item from a list of options that will appear when you click on the arrow. The second type of box does not have any selectable options and allows you to type in the data you are looking for (such as the second box on the line titled Player 1 Name on line 1).

You specify what you are looking for by completing ALL the options on a single line. If necessary, you can use other lines that give you more options if you need to narrow your search. Only use as many lines as you need to specify what you are looking for. If you do not complete all the options on a line that you use, you will receive an error message.

Let's try a few examples to see how it works:

Example 1

In our first example, we want to see how many times John McEnroe played Jimmy Connors. We do not care who won or lost or anything else about the match.

The first 2 lines give us the opportunity of specifying the 2 players we want to focus on. On line one, click on the first option box. There are 4 options: equals; begins with; contains; and ends with. These options allow us to find data when we're not absolutely sure of the spelling of a name or to take account of the fact that the database contains records that have been assembled from many sources. Not everyone who has entered the original data knows how to spell a persons name. Just to complicate matters further there is even some doubt about how some non-English names are spelled in English - particularly where the alphabet is not the same - such as with Arabic or Russian names.

So it is often a good idea to use one of the last three options rather than equals. If you use equals, you will have to know exactly how the name is spelled and there is always the chance that it may not be spelled correctly in the database even if you are correct.

So, in our example, let's use the contains option on line one and enter Enr in the second data box - just in case the name is spelled MacEnroe or McEnrow. (By the way, it doesn't matter if you use a capital E or not - the system ignores the case of letters).

On line 2, choose contains and then enter Conn. This will take care of the name being spelled Connors or Conners.

If we press the Search now button, we will get an error that tells us that, as we have selected two players, we also have to select an option to indicate who we want the winner to be.

Even though we don't care who the winner was in this example, we still have to tell the system to ignore who the winner was. We do this by selecting one of the options on line 3 - the options are: Either Player 1 or 2; Player 1; Not Player 1; Player 2. These options provide a way of selecting any combination of winner and loser. Let's select Either Player 1 or 2 because we want to see the results of all matches that they played.

This time we do not get an error and 39 records are displayed. Most of them are what we are looking for but there are a few odd ones - like matches between Jimmy Connors and Henri Leconte and Henrik Sundstrom. What's going on? These matches have been included because both of Connor's opponents have names that match our requirements - contain the letters Enr in that order. Now that we can see what the spelling of McEnroe's name is, we can go back and refine our search a little by changing enr to McEnroe. This time we get just 29 results. There are a couple of matches where McEnroe's opponent was Grant Connell - which we could have avoided by entering Connors or Conno rather than Conn if we were surer of the spelling and there are also two matches where Patrick McEnroe played Jimmy Connors (and won 1 of them!).

Also note that first and last names are always used in the database so, if you use Begins with, you need to enter the first name first.

Example 2

In our second example, we want to look at how often in the 1980's John McEnroe was able to win matches after losing the first set.

In line one, select the option contains and then enter n McEnroe. That will make sure we get John McEnroe's matches rather than Patrick's.

We are interested in identifying the winner of matches so, on line 3, we will select the Player 1 option.

We now need to restrict the results to those matches that were played in the 1980's. To do this we need to use the boxes on line 4. In the first we will enter 1/1/1980. In the second box enter 12/31/1989. (You do not need to enter both dates when you want matches played either before a certain date or after a certain date. For example, just enter 1/1/2000 in the the first box and leave the second blank if you want to find matches played on any date after 1/1/2000).

That's defined who we're looking for and narrowed the range of dates to the time frame we are interested in. Now we can complete our search form by specifying our final option - that McEnroe won the match after losing the first set. We can use line 17 (titled Match winner lost) to do this. Select all or any from the options box. In this case it doesn't matter which we choose as we are only going to select one set - set 1. If we were to select more than one, we could tell the system whether we wanted it to restrict the matches found to any or all of the sets that we selected by using one of these options. Now we can check the box under Set 1 to let the system know that we want details of matches where the winner of the match (John McEnroe) lost Set 1.

Press Search now and 52 records will be displayed that all show John McEnroe as the winner and a variety of opponents who lost the match. If you look down the results you will see that McEnroe lost the first set in each case.

Example 3

We could refine our search to identify all matches that he won where he lost the first two sets. Just go back and select all as the option in line 17 and also check the Set 2 box. Take out the dates in line 4 to find all matches in his entire career. Now we only see 2 matches. Both were, of course, 5 set matches - one against Darren Cahill and one against Goran Ivanisevic.

Example 4

It might now be interesting to see how many matches he lost after winning the first 2 sets. To do this we can change our search to select Not Player 1 in the winner option box then leave the other options as they are  - we are still interested in the winner losing the first 2 sets but this time we are interested in matches where the winner was not McEnroe. Click the Search now button and you will find that there are still just 2 matches listed - where he lost to Jimmy Connors and Ivan Lendl after winning the first 2 sets.

Example 5

For our final example, we will find matches where John McEnroe won the match after losing the first set 6-0. Change the winner option to Player 1 then, on line 17, return the option to Select (to indicate that we are not going to use this line) and uncheck the Set 1 and Set 2 boxes.  Next, on line 19, choose the Exactly option then enter 0 in the box next to it. Finally, check the Set 1 box and choose either all or any in the final option box on the line (as with our example above, it doesn't matter which we choose as we are only selecting 1 set). Clicking the Search now button reveals that McEnroe has only once won a match where he's lost the first set 6-0 - against Ferdi Taygan in 1980.

If you have followed these examples, you should be able to figure out how to use the remaining options and really get to the 'nitty gritty' of pro match statistics. Pro commentators and the Club bar 'expert' had better be a little more careful now that you are armed and ready to shoot back....