Archive for category: Whisperer

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

[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

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

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

[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

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?

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

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

Too often, the average player’s focus is on their “Hardware” — coordinating muscles to hit the ball.  True, for most, just coordinating your body to consistently hit the ball week in and week out is difficult to say the least. It quickly becomes very frustrating when playing in the wind, changing court surfaces or against, what I will call, an awkward opponent.  And escalates even faster as we age and our muscles lose strength and coordination.

Our Hardware skills pathway includes three essential skills which underpin any tennis stroke: ball watching, balance and rhythm.  The basic Tennis Whisperer program teaches the development of the core supporting muscles to both enhance those skills and prevent injury.  As an example, just improving your ability to “really see the ball” rather than merely trying to “watch” it during play can go a long way to improving your consistency — at any age and stage of tennis. These basic skills can be taught or refreshed at any age.

But Hardware is only one part of the equation. Hardware is very much about muscles, joints and physical traits. “Software” is brain perception, action and decision making. Software is what often gives a player a head-start on those who might be physically stronger, quicker or, dare I say, younger! And from time to time, a win against the ‘better hitter’.

Your neural system is the third part of this equation, and in basic terms, connects a player’s “Software” to their “Hardware”.

Software should be view as a “Pyramid”. At its base be more aware of your end of the court:  basic court positions when returning serve or covering the net.  And the positions change depending on the opponent and the conditions.  For the more powerful opponent, it’s better to play further back when returning serve — not only to give yourself a little more time to watch the ball, but more importantly to ensure you’re moving forward into the shot to stay on balance. This is why Nadal, one of the best players in the world, plays so far back to improves his balance by moving forward into each shot.

Moving up the Pyramid, and still at your end of the court, where you stand in the court, particularly in dubs,  has a huge impact on your ability to stay in the point. For example, at ANY level of tennis, Tennis Physics means that EIGHTY PERCENT (80%) of shots fall in a two (metre) circle around the middle T of the serve line. Merely standing in that circle guarantees you’ll get a shot at most balls — you might not make the shot but you’ll be in the point.

As the Pyramid narrows, and looking at the opponent’s end of the court, action and decision-making comes to the fore.  Your focus is on the Hardware of the opponent.  Do they have any “obvious weaknesses” — not just the weaker backhand side but where do they consistently return the ball? Any physical limitations in running down lobs?  Are they comfortable hitting volleys or overheads? Are they comfortable moving forward, backwards, sideways? What did you learn from the warm-up? [You didn’t try to win the warm-up, right??]

Even further up the Pyramid, and still at your opponent’s end of the court, your focus is on the opponent’s Software.   How can you identify and find a way to exploit their limitations? Where do they stand in the court, to return serve, at the net etc?  Do they stand too close to the net and therefore are suckers to a simple lob return?  What’s their state of mind at different times of the match?  Do they rush under pressure?  Consistently miss first serves on game and tie breaker points??  How can you adjust your Software and Hardware to take full advantage of your observations during play??

And lastly, at the very Pyramid Top, and now we are back to your end of the court, what’s your decision-making style to analyze opponents during match play.  It’s the rare player who can change their Hardware midpoint to hit a different shot under pressure. Even rarer, the player who can consistently play more than one type of game — to unsettle an opponent and match the conditions. For most of us, suffice to say, it’s better to rely on a simple ritual to prepare to play each point — at least to start out each point standing in the right position and with a calm mind.

Tennis is a great game.  And you’ll get so much more enjoyment by NOT leaving your Software on the sidelines. And who knows, perhaps a few more wins.

© Rob Muir, USPTA
Tennis Whisperer

• “I had mostly looked at the technical aspects. I had looked at the internet already because I remember doing some drills and stuff like that because I was really thinking that I needed to find the technical stuff that makes me be more consistent in my tennis. But then I realized, no, what is happening that I lose all this confidence in just a moment, in just a second? So either I fix that and I progress so that I can see that it’s no longer a disaster or I quit and do something else.”

• “I have a regular weekly match with someone I have been playing for many years. Our matches were always competitive but then I started overthinking my shots and forcing changes and he started beating me (badly).