Record of consecutive sets won

Question

Rafael Nadal, recently won his 50th consecutive set on Clay in his match against Diego Schwartzman in 2018. This apparently moved him in front of John McEnroe who won 49 consecutive sets on carpet in 1984.

My question is, is there any official statistics that show who has won how many consecutive sets in a particular court? And if yes, who is the third best in that category?

Answer 1

As far as I know there are no official records for this. At least not published. The ATP surely has the data. I calculated the answer to your question on my own (with the help of this awesome tennis dataset by Jeff Sackmann).

Here is the list of players with most consecutive sets won (columns denote player name, streak start, streak end, number of consecutive sets won):

Clay

Rafael Nadal    2017-05-29  2018-05-07  50
Guillermo Coria 2003-07-14  2004-02-16  35
Ilie Nastase    1973-05-18  1973-06-02  34
Rafael Nadal    2010-05-09  2011-04-10  32
Rafael Nadal    2007-05-28  2008-04-28  31
Rafael Nadal    2012-05-13  2012-05-27  30
Rafael Nadal    2006-09-22  2007-05-07  30

Hard

Novak Djokovic  2016-03-07  2016-07-25  34
Roger Federer   2005-08-29  2006-01-16  33
Ivan Lendl      1987-07-27  1987-09-01  33  
Roger Federer   2006-11-13  2007-02-26  31
Jimmy Connors   1975-02-17  1975-11-06  31

Grass

Roger Federer   2003-06-23  2004-06-21  36
John Mcenroe    1984-06-25  1985-06-24  31
Roger Federer   2017-06-19  2017-07-03  29
Roger Federer   2007-06-25  2008-06-23  29
Stefan Edberg   1990-06-25  1991-06-24  27
John Newcombe   1974-12-21  1975-12-26  27

Carpet

John Mcenroe    1984-02-24  1984-09-28  49
Jimmy Connors   1974-02-10  1974-09-23  45
Ivan Lendl      1982-09-20  1983-01-24  36  
John Mcenroe    1983-09-30  1984-01-23  33
Wojtek Fibak    1980-03-24  1980-11-04  31

Irrespective of surface

Jimmy Connors   1974-02-10  1974-03-24  44
Ivan Lendl      1985-08-27  1985-10-21  43  
Jimmy Connors   1976-03-22  1976-06-21  40
Bjorn Borg      1979-06-25  1979-08-28  40  
John Mcenroe    1982-10-01  1982-11-26  37
Bjorn Borg      1980-02-19  1980-04-22  35  
John Mcenroe    1984-02-24  1984-05-06  35
Ilie Nastase    1973-05-18  1973-06-02  34
Ivan Lendl      1987-07-27  1987-09-01  33  
Jimmy Connors   1975-09-21  1975-11-06  32
Ivan Lendl      1986-02-10  1986-03-24  32  
Guillermo Coria 2003-07-14  2003-07-28  32

To answer your question on who would be third best: This would then be the carpet streak of Jimmy Connors.

Jimmy Connors   1974-02-10  1974-09-23  45