He may have lost to Federer but British hopeful Andy Murray was the most popular men's Wimbledon player on Twitter with the highest percentage of positive tweets, according to the IBM Social Sentiment Index.

The index – which was trialled at this year’s championship and analysed over 1,270,000 public tweets – also revealed Agnieszka Radwanska scored the highest percentage of
positive tweets among female players.

The analytics solution identified and measured positive, negative and neutral sentiments shared via Twitter, blogs, message boards and other social media to assess public opinion.

The index also monitored conversation topics with late running matches, ‘big serving’ players and unexpected knockouts as the three unexpected talking points on Twitter.

According to IBM, the Social Sentiment Index is an example of how analytics technologies are being applied to Big Data in order to gain new insights into players and spectators.

Alan Flack, Wimbledon Client and Programme Executive for IBM, said: “The ability to apply a quantified measurement to social media commentary surrounding the players and the event over a period of time, adds a valuable new dimension to the colour surrounding the Wimbledon Championships.

“The Social Sentiment Index again demonstrates that analysing data is not a game – it’s an important way to understand different constituencies and gain competitive advantage.”