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.
November is Doubles Month! Each week, we’ll bring you brand new doubles data.
Stat of the Week: 3.6
Last week we looked at doubles return data for 3.5 and 4.0 level players. We found that their backhand return outperformed the forehand in terms of winners and errors.
We’ll look at that same data today to determine if this holds true for groundstrokes. To do that, we’ll look at the winners and errors from each stroke.
- Forehand Errors/Winners: 166/46 = 3.6 errors per winner
- Backhand Errors/Winners: 114/22 = 5.2 errors per winner
It’s likely that many of these players are running around their backhands, especially since they’re on the doubles court. So we have more errors and winners on the forehand side.
That’s why it’s important to look at the ratio.
What we see is these players are more likely to hit a winner with their forehand than backhand.
Point of the Week
The forehand is a more “potent” shot in doubles. While it will commit a lot of errors, it is the more likely groundstroke to hit a passing shot.
When approaching the net, it’s typically best to make the opponent hit a backhand groundstroke whenever possible.
If you want doubles data on your matches, purchase a player package. You can split it 4 ways 😉
Photo of the Week
Grigor Dimitrov made a deep run at Indian Wells and the Paris Masters. Here is his forehand swing path.
Jack S. says
Could you elaborate on this statement: “What we see is these players are more likely to hit a winner with their forehand than backhand.”
As the ratio you’re drawing this conclusion from is errors / winners, it seems the actual conclusion that can be drawn here is that a player is likely to have fewer errors for every winning shot off the forehand wing. What is not exposed as a data point here is the number of ATTEMPTS made off of each wing. It could very well be that while the backhand side will see more errors occur for every winning shot that’s made, the ratio of winners / attempts could actually be higher than off the forehand wing.
Or am I missing something?
Warren Pretorius & Will Boucek says
Hi Jack, sorry for the late reply.
I think you’re right. We would need attempts to be sure. We don’t measure attempts in our data because it would be VERY cumbersome. This is where we have to use a bit of human judgment/tennis knowledge 🙂