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.
Stat of the Week: 72%
Emma Raducanu’s magic number at the 2021 US Open was 72. That number represents her percentage of first serves made, and crucially, also the percentage of first serve points won.
To back it up, she won 54% of second serve points, making it all but impossible for her opponents to break her serve. On average, Emma faced only four break points per match, and saved three out of four of them.
While Emma favored wide serves in the deuce court, and T serves in the ad court, she was more effective with the opposite. Lucky for her opponents, she didn’t make that adjustment!
Point of the Week
Emma Raducanu stands 5’9 tall, so pretty average by today’s tennis standards. Yet, she dominated on the serve in this year’s US Open. This is because of 3 factors:
- Sound technique
- Accuracy
- Serves aggressively
The first serve especially is the one shot that you can use to start dictating the point immediately. With good use of pace, spin, and placement, the goal is ideally to force a missed return, or set up an attack opportunity on the next shot (serve +1).
Too many players make the mistake of using the serve to start the point rather than control the point.
Knowing your serve stats over a few matches to get an aggregate (average) is the first step to setting a baseline to improve upon. Purchase a player package to get data on your serve.
Photo of the Week
2019 US Open champion, Bianca Andreescu’s backhand slice.
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