Seven Basics of Tennis Strategy | ATP

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Craig O’Shannessy is a well known tennis statistician.  He recently republished the stats below in the context of the Australian Open.

Our Tennis Whisperer attempts to explain the WHYs underlining Craig’s stats in simple terms of the three primary skills underpinning every tennis stroke: ball watching, balance and rhythm . [See WHY comments in these brackets].

These are the seven basics of tennis strategy and, as always, they will be the key to winning at this year’s Australian Open.

Lesson 1: Forehands and Backhands 

Nine-time Australian Open champion Novak Djokovic has arguably the best backhand in the world. But who cares.

When Djokovic last won the “Happy Slam” in 2021, he struck 98 forehand winners and 45 backhand winners. That’s why you see players running around backhands to hit forehands. They desperately seek to upgrade.

The forehand is the sword. The backhand is the shield. The sword accounts for about two out of every three winners from the back of the court.

Forehand and backhand winners

M/W Forehand winners Backhand winners
Men 70 per cent (3228) 30 per cent (1386)
Women 64 per cent (2236) 36 per cent (1247)

[Whisperer: The NADAL VARIATION creates more extreme angles because of the racket position in relation to body.]

Lesson 2: Tennis is a game of errors

The Australian Open features the best players on the planet, who rally back and forth ad nauseam on the practice court with precious few mistakes. Then matches start, and errors flow.

Winners and errors

M/W Winners Errors
Men 34 per cent 66 per cent
Women 30 per cent 70 per cent

Winners are rising at Melbourne Park, jumping from 30 per cent for the men in 2015 to 34 per cent last year. In the women’s game, there was a jump from 27 per cent in 2015 to 30 per cent in 2022.

Because errors are so prevalent, it’s much smarter to make opponents uncomfortable and force mistakes than chase winners. Obsess over the bigger pool of points.

[Whisperer: Minimizing errors by staying in the point has always consistently won more points. ]

Lesson 3: Eight ways to force an error

There are actually eight ways to make the opponent uncomfortable and extract an error.

 [Whisperer: WHY explained in Where column of the three primary skills in any stroke: ball watching, balance, rhythm—strength is NOT necessarily the key.]

Eight ways to force an error

# 8 ways Where
1 Consistency Court:  Watching
2 Direction Court: Balance
3 Depth Court: Balance
4 Height Court: Balance
5 Spin Ball: Watching
6 Power Ball: Rhythm 
7 Court Position Me: Balance
8 Time The clock: Rhythm

These eight elements are the holy grail of tennis. If a player hits a shot that contains just one of these eight, such as depth, they will have gained the upper hand in the point. 

If their shot includes two or more qualities, such as power and direction, they will be standing inside the baseline hitting with authority when the weak ball comes back.

If they combine three elements – such as height, spin and court position – the ball doesn’t come back.

Lesson 4: Rally length

Winning the short rallies is the best way to walk off court with a victory. The study of rally length started at the 2015 Australian Open and shook the foundations of the sport because of just how many short rallies occur.

Rally length

Shots Men Women
0-4 70 per cent 66 per cent
5-8 20 per cent 23 per cent
9+ 10 per cent 11 per cent

[Whisperer: Impact of powerful racket technology and advantage to server.  Corollary: get into the point as much as possible. Use typical Djokovic/Medvedev strategy of deep returns to put server off balance to nullify server advantage.] 

Rally length is predicated on the ball landing in the court, not hitting the strings. So a double fault has a rally length of zero as the ball didn’t land in, and a missed return is a rally length of one as the serve went in and the return was missed.

Seven points out of 10 are contested by players hitting the ball a maximum of two times each (four-shot rallies) in the court. 

The data also blew the doors off the myth that winning long rallies equated to winning matches. There are, typically, not enough long rallies to make a difference.

Lesson 5: Mode

The mode simply means the most common value in a data set. We can predict with certainty that the most abundant rally length at this year’s Australian Open will be the same as last year, and the year before that.  One shot in the court. No more. No less.

Ask someone which rally length is the most frequent, and the typical answers are from four to eight shots.  You can tell them that Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray thought they played more four-shot rallies than anything else. They were very surprised, like all players, that they play more one-shot rallies than any other. That equates to a made serve and a missed return.

2015 Australian Open men: Most common rally lengths

Rally length Percentage
1 shot 30
3 shots 15
2 shots 10
5 shots 9
4 shots 8

As you can see from the table above, one-shot rallies are incredibly frequent in a match (30 per cent). The next closest rally length is three shots at 15 per cent.

Notice that three-shot rallies occur more than two shots, and five-shot rallies occur more than four shots. That’s because of the halo effect of the serve, or how long the influence of the serve lasts before things become even in a rally. 

[To repeat. Whisperer: Impact of powerful racket technology and advantage to server.  Corollary: get into the point as much as possible. Use Djokovic /Medvedev strategy of deep returns to nullify server advantage.] 

Lesson 6: You win a higher percentage at the net than the baseline

The baseline seems like a safe haven for players, while the net seems a risky place to win points. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The baseline as a safe haven?

M/W Baseline win percentage Net win percentage
Men 47 67
Women 48 66

If you rally from the back of the court, you are lucky to win half of your baseline points. 

[WHISPERER: Volleys are an ESSENTIAL stroke for any serious tennis player, and particular for junior development,  not an afterthought. Moving forward to the net (from GHOSTLINE) wins about two out of three points.]

The net has always been a fun, prosperous place to win points and nothing has changed statistically to think otherwise.

Lesson 7: Serve and Volley works

No tennis strategy has been more maligned and misunderstood than the serve and volley. Pundits say it belongs to another era and is too difficult to employ in today’s game. It’s simply not so.

Serve and volley works

M/W Played/won Percentage won
Men 709/1053 67
Women 36/57 63

Both men and women won about two out of three points serving and volleying at last year’s Australian Open. 

That is a far superior tactic than serving, staying back and trying to eke out a living from the baseline to hold serve.

[WHISPERER: Enhances probability of winning the point because of the geometry and physics of relative court positions of each player]

Tennis Whisperer

Source: Craig O’Shannessy, SMH

Moneyball Comes to Tennis

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Tennis is on the verge of a belated Moneyball revolution. In the northern spring, the Association of Tennis Professionals, which runs the men’s tour, is planning to open up ball-tracking data from every match to all its players and coaches.

The shift will do much to level an uneven playing field. Until now, millionaire players such as the “Big Four” men have had the opportunity to buy better-quality data analysis than their less wealthy rivals.

One might imagine that access to data would be a basic right for all leading professionals. In fact, anyone wanting to use the information gathered by Hawk-Eye, the leading ball-tracking provider since 2014, has had to pay a £150 ($263) processing fee per match. On top of that, tour rules say you can order data only from matches you played in.

In April, this will change. “We want to give players more equal access to this information,” says Ross Hutchins, the Association of Tennis Professionals’ chief tour officer. “We believe it will improve performance levels. We are looking to bring player and ball-tracking online from every ATP tournament. We’re hoping to make this happen by the second quarter of 2023, and then bring in wearable technology, such as heart monitors and GPS location devices, by the second half of the year.”

Despite the relatively large amount of money at stake, tennis must rank as one of the most backward major sports when it comes to sophisticated data analysis, mainly because there are few economies of scale.

Six-figure sums for data

If you are lucky enough to come from a grand-slam nation such as Great Britain or the United States, you can usually dip into your federation’s sizeable dataset. Otherwise, the only way to gain access to more than a tiny percentage of matches is to hire one of the big analytical companies, such as Golden Set Analytics (GSA), which used to charge Roger Federer a six-figure sum annually for exclusive access to its scouting and performance reports.

“In tennis, the teams are smaller than most other sports, and almost everything has to come out of the player’s pocket,” says Philip Mauerhofer, who runs a well-regarded analytics firm called Tennis Stat. “Unless you’re at the top of the game, adding more expenditure to your coaching and your physio and your fitness training is always going to be a stretch. So to have a trove of data available on every player would be a game-changer.”

Agent Patricio Apey welcomed the ATP plan. One of Apey’s clients – America’s Sebastian Korda – has been able to benefit from his close relationship with the United States Tennis Association, which logs all the information from its home tournaments and has a data-pooling deal with Tennis Australia.

But another of Apey’s stable – Greece’s Stefanos Tsitsipas – has had no such support. Tsitsipas thus needs to spend considerably more to gain the same level of tactical insight. As a top-five player, he can probably afford the difference. Those lower down the ladder are not always so fortunate.

“I’m cautiously hopeful that the governing bodies will see that making this information available to all players and their teams will only make the sport better,” Apey says. “Look at how sophisticated Formula One is when it comes to using data. Maybe in the future we will see cutting-edge analysts in the player boxes doing their work in real time and passing useful feedback to coaches and players during matches.”

Test run for courtside coaching

Tennis has many governing bodies, and at the moment only the Association of Tennis Professionals – as opposed to the grand slams and the Women’s Tennis Association – is committed to opening up its dataset. But the scenario Apey mentions is already here, even if it was used only on an experimental level at last November’s ATP Next Gen Finals in Milan, where coaches were allowed to advise their players during matches, as is becoming the norm on the ATP Tour, and at the two hard-court slams. They were also given an electronic tablet showing live data from the match as it progressed.

“It was challenging to use at first,” says James Trotman, the British coach whose player, Jack Draper, was eliminated in the semi-finals of that event. “There was so much data, whether it be the direction of the serve, the accuracy of the return, or the speed of each player’s forehands and backhands.

“I had to keep it simple, so I just focused on the first of those categories. There was one opponent who was always serving in the same place, so when it came to the tie-break I was able to tell Jack to sit on that return, which helped a great deal.”

Four years ago, Germany’s No. 1 Alexander Zverev said that “all the big guys are using data analysis, they just don’t like to talk about it” – and leading players are still coy about their data support. A rare exception is the world’s best player, Novak Djokovic, who allowed his former analyst, Craig O’Shannessy, to speak publicly about their work together.

The bigger your database, the easier it is to supply reliable scouting reports on every opponent. GSA says it has an automated algorithm that “scrapes” data directly from TV coverage, but for the smaller operators, many thousands of hours have been spent on hand-tagging matches. The going rate for a one-off scouting report from these lesser outfits is $US300.

So what kinds of insight can a big company provide? “A lot of added value is obtained from using data richer than anything the human eye can detect,” says Ben Depoorter, GSA’s vice-president of player analytics. “Hawk-Eye’s ball-tracking system generates millions of data points. And the insights that show up are not always what you might expect.

“Contrary to most expectations, Djokovic is outstanding with his backhand on fast returns hit towards his feet, and weaker on loopy balls that land short but with more of an angle, because he likes to hit on the rise. People come in with set ideas about what works – and the only way to disprove their preconceptions is with data.”

Source: The Telegraph, London

6 Gadgets Which Improve Your Tennis (Maybe??)

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If you want to get better at tennis and improve your fitness, these gadgets maybe a starting point?

Tennis is a very physical sport. For example, the tennis serve represents a complex movement that requires muscles throughout the entire body to rotate in unison to deliver accuracy and power.

Whether you’re new to the game or a seasoned veteran looking to get just a little bit better, there are a handful of tech gadgets you should check out.

These gadgets can track and analyze your swing, keep track of the score, and measure the speed of your serves, among other things.

1. Sony Smart Tennis Sensor

2. Zepp Tennis Swing Analyzer

3. Babolat Pop Tennis Wristband

4. Ball Coach Pocket Radar

5. Hit Zone Air Suspension Tee

6. Scoreband Play Wristband

Read more –>

 

Don’t overthink each point | AskThePro

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I know this sounds pretty crazy, but you should not be trying to think while you are playing a point.

This idea goes against what our mind is telling us as well as what it is trying to do. We will usually have the tendency to try to work things out in our head during the exchange of shots in a point. Unfortunately, this will have a negative impact on all of the practice and training we have done, and it may cause us to make errors due to indecision.

It is much better to just play the point once it starts. [Just focus on bounce hit: Whisperer]

Before the point, choose one technique idea and one strategy idea to remind yourself how you would like to hit the ball and play the point.

After the point is over, assess what has just happened and repeat the one technique, one strategy idea. You may have to make some adjustments based on what the last point was like, but try to keep things simple.
​
On the changeovers you can have a little more detail in your own self-coaching, but overall, try not to over analyze.

Letting your body react automatically and instinctively gives you the best chance to execute your shot and play the point the way you want to. To do this, we need to have less going on in our head.

Don’t think during the point!

Steve Annacone, USPTA Pro

MLTC Seaside Results

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Congrats to a number of our club members who did very well.  Bede, Matthew & Milton were amongst the event winners.

A Grade Mens Singles
1

Tony Vo [1]
2

Lochie Mortensen [6]
3/4

Bruce Hinchcliffe [3]
3/4

Sylvain Sommacal [8]
OMS-Tier 2
1

Adam Walters [3]
1

Joel Hieswanto [5]
2

Nicholas Tozer
2

Luka Drazic
3

Petar Vuceta
3/4

Daniel Curran
3/4

Jesse Gothelf [2]
4

Minhoon Lee
OMS-Tier 3
1

Matthew Curtis [6]
1

Eitan Smith [4]
2

Lachlan Ming
2

Matthew Baker
3

James Nicols
3/4

Scott Browne
3/4

Adam Tomka
4

Ethan Elliott
OMS-Tier 4
1

Patrick Jonathan Anderson
2

Michael Ian Ridley Taylor [3]
3/4

Zedrick Chan
3/4

Mahim Khan [2]
Open Mens Singles
1

Cameron Edward Smith [3]
1

Eric Tripathi [8]
2

Jordan Smith [1]
2

Sam Wensley
3

Matthew Holl
3/4

Jay Andrijic [2]
3/4

Nathan Boniel
4

Ashton Mcleod
Senior Men 40+ Singles
1

Damien Connelly [1]
2

Elton Richard Stoney
3/4

Wayne Pascoe [4]
3/4

Tim Sedgwick [5]
A Grade Singles Women
1

Kirsty White [1]
2

Payal Chandra [2]
3/4

Ashleigh eve Robson
3/4

Shelley Parsons
Open Womens Singles
1

Amy Gray
1

Ashlee Narker [3]
2

Zarifa Ahmed
2

Linda Huang [2]
3/4

Natalie Gaft [5]
3/4

Ruby Quigley
3/4

Renee Mcbryde [1]
3/4

Kalina Aleksandrov
A Grade Mens Doubles
1

James Delohery [2]
Andrew Stevens
2

Ryan Ataii
Lochie Mortensen
3/4

Brett Harris [1]
Tony Vo
3/4

Aaron Tian [3]
Adam Tomka
OM Doubles – Tier 3
1

Matthew Curtis [1]
Bede Kirwan
2

Arden Asilo
Geoff Asilo
3/4

Byron Waller [2]
Gavin Waller
3/4

Eitan Smith
Minh Vu
OM Doubles- Tier 2
1

Joel Hieswanto [2]
Sam Wensley
2

Nicholas Connellan
Reagan Cooke
3/4

Matthew Holl
Chen Liang
3/4

Leroy Sze
Nicholas Tozer
Open Mens Doubles
1

Blake Smith [4]
Cameron Edward Smith
2

Paul Howe [3]
Eric Tripathi
3/4

Jay Andrijic [1]
Jordan Smith
3/4

Nicholas Turnham
Dimitri Vidin
Senior men 45+ Doubles
1

Milton Da Rocha
Wayne Pascoe
2

Andy William Phelan
Clive Wilkinson
3/4

Manuel Radic [1]
Greg Westwood
3/4

Tim Sedgwick [2]
Matt Taylor
Open Womens Doubles
1

Michaela Haet [1]
Renee Mcbryde
2

Tyra Calderwood [2]
Ashlee Narker
3/4

Lia Koulias [4]
Sofia Thorne
3/4

Melissa Anderson [3]
Lucia Gonzalez
A Grade Mixed Doubles
1

Kirsty White [2]
William Alan Yang
2

Ruby Quigley
Bede Kirwan
3/4

Lisa A Hartley [1]
Adrian Sturrock
3/4

Shelley Parsons
Tim Sedgwick
Open Mixed Doubles
1

Linda Huang [2]
Adrian Correa
2

Tyra Calderwood [1]
Jay Andrijic
3/4

Susannah Su [4]
Luke Mcmillan
3/4

Hannah Taleb
Daniel Jankoski