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.
May is National Championship month for college tennis. For the next 2 weeks, we will take a look at some brand new college data from a study by Warren Pretorius (Tennis Analytics) and Craig O’Shannessy (Brain Game Tennis). They’ve compiled this data and more in their online course, A Million Points of College Tennis (coupon code “StatOfTheWeek” for 20% off).
Stat of the Week: 62%
To recap what we spoke about last week, you can have a first serve percentage that is “too high.”
Players that tend to make around the 70% mark hardly win a match. Making too many first serves means you are not really going for it enough and the ball is not “behaving” like a first serve.
Here is the data for college women.
- 2019 US Open Women = 61%
- College Tennis Women = 63%
Collegiate women were two percentage points higher at 63% compared to 61% in New York. These metrics will go up and down a little year-to-year so this really is not a big deal. The key here is that they are in the same ballpark.
Match Winner vs Match Loser
Only two percentage points separate all the match winners from the match losers. It’s not much. You are going to find a lot more areas where the difference is in double digits.
Point of the Week
The two important metrics on the first serve are percent made and percent won. Players are taught that a high first serve percentage is great. But this is not true if it is at the expense of first serve win percentage.
For example (based on 100 first serve points):
- Make 70% / Win 57% = 40 points
- Make 65% / Win 65% = 42 points
Get your match tagged to really understand your own game and then use this information to drive the practice court.
Check out A Million Points of College Tennis and use coupon code
statoftheweek to get 20% off.
Photo of the Week
Karolina Pliskova’s backhand slice.
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