Figure 1

Group splitting among the players, based on their career peak. A Timelines of the ranking points accumulated through the career of players within each group. All individual sequences have been aligned according to appearances in ATP tournaments. Differences between player groups are visible in both (i) accumulated points and (ii) the number of appearances in the ranking. B Career peak distribution for the whole community of players relative to the length of the player’s career. The peak occurs after the first half of their careers. C Career peak distributions after splitting players into groups. For all groups, the ranking peak appears between 50% and 75% of the players’ career length. Histograms in panels B-C are normalized so that bar heights sum to 1 and are reported with a Kernel Density Estimation of the data (continuous curves)