Every week, Tennis Analytics dives deep into the data, bringing you a stat of the week to help you understand tennis better and become a little smarter.
For the month of August, we will look at junior data from the 2021 French Open and Wimbledon Championships. Clay and Grass are on two opposite ends of the court surface spectrum. Conventional wisdom is that clay plays slow (longer rallies, better for returners), while grass plays fast (shorter rallies, better for the server). We’ll see if conventional wisdom holds up.
Week 1 – Rally Lengths – This Week
Week 2 – The 1st Touch (Serve, Return)
Week 3 – The 2nd Touch (Serve+1, Return+1)
Week 4 – Ending Shot
Stat of the Week: 4%
The shorter rallies (1 to 4) dominate on both surfaces.
- For boys, there were 4% more shorter rallies on grass than there were on clay.
- For the girls, the difference was 3%.
- The longer rallies, those with more than 9 shots, accounted for less than 15% of all points on both surfaces for boys and girls.
Is this mainly due to the serve having a greater impact on grass? Tune in next week to find out…
On pressure points (where the server is facing break point or 1 point away from a break point), the numbers remained fairly similar.
Point of the Week
In the old days, before CD’s and iTunes, we would refer to a “broken record” – this was when dirt or a scratch got on the vinyl record and would keep replaying a segment over and over.
Well, like a broken record, we keep mentioning the dominance of the short rally lengths. The long ones make the highlight reels, but they do not dominate the sport.
Want to know how you perform in each rally length? Purchase a player package to find out.
Photo of the Week
Maria Sharapova’s forehand.
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