The State of the Game – Part VIII ATP Match Facts: What actually are the Facts??

Written by: on 5th March 2012
Regions Morgan Keegan Championships in Memphis
The State of the Game - Part VIII ATP Match Facts: What actually are the Facts??

epa03123422 Milos Raonic of Canada fails to make a return shot to Jurgen Melzer of Austria during their final match in the Regions Morgan Keegan Championships in Memphis, Tennessee, USA 26 February 2012. EPA/TANNEN MAURY  |

So I was looking over the ATP site last week looking for something different to write about as the Dubai tournament was getting underway.  There’s actually a lot of stuff there, especially when you consider there is a record of almost everyone who has played an ATP match and had a ranking since the beginning of the ATP almost 40 years ago. (Almost everyone.  They list me as Qualifier1, Q. in the one tour level event I got into as a wildcard in 1975.  Gotta get Sharko to fix that. See:http://www.atpworldtour.com/Share/Event-Draws.aspx?e=804&y=1975).  And also all the tournaments that have been played at tour level since that time.  But I lingered over the ATP Match Facts.  We are always talking about 1st serve percentages and winning percentages on 1st vs 2nd serves and things like converted break points.  Those are the stats that are generally available for all ATP matches, even at the challenger level.  For the majors, there is generally a little more with detailed serving statistics and graphics.  On TennisTV you can often follow details of the match in a side window as you watch the match and it will show you the trajectory and speed of almost every ball hit in the match.  It can be a little too distracting to really enjoy the match, but it certainly is interesting.  Shot patterns and ball strike areas eventually just meld into one big Rohrshock test.  But for every match that is played on the main level of the ATP Tour, they keep track of the players stats for 6 categories for the Server: Aces, 1st serve percentage, 1st Serve Points Won, 2nd Serve Points Won, Break Points Saved and Serving Games Won; and then there are 4 categories for the Receiver: 1st Serve Return Points Won, 2nd Serve Return Points Won, Break Points Converted and Return Games Won.  You can pull these stats down for an individual year, on a particular surface; it’s quite a bit of information.  And, of course, they rank the players in these performance statistics.

As a coach, I look for more specific details that will enable me to help my player.  I want to know if they are missing forehands or backhands.  In scouting a future opponent, I want to know where they are going to serve in a specific situation or which side they are more likely to try to pass in addition to any obvious vulnerabilities or deficiencies they might have in their stroking arsenals.  At the top levels of the game there are very few blatant weaknesses; it’s more a question of relative strengths.  But there certainly are different patterns that players fall into and certain reactions that players repeat in a certain situation.  It’s the responsibility of the player in our “mano-a-mano” sport to recognize these patterns and figure out a strategy that works.

That’s less the case in today’s age of power, but it is usually the responsibility of most of the tour coaches to scout his player’s opponents and look for some clues to give him before the match.  But the way I was coached was that the first set was for learning how to win the second and third.  Nice to win it, but you better know what to do by the time you get into the second set.  Segura used to work with Jimmy Connors at the Beverly Hills Tennis Club when he was just a junior, drawing court diagrams and patterns of play on napkins to show the future all-time tournament win leader what the fundamental angles of the game were all about.  We’ve seen a little of this aspect of the game come back as players have had to learn to attack the backhand down the line to deal with Nadal’s relentless attack to their backhands.  Djokovic and Murray have employed this counter tactic against Rafa with great effectiveness.  It helps to be well over 6′ tall and have a two-handed backhand.  It’s tougher for Federer with his one-hander when the ball gets high, but a large part of his improved results in this recent resurgence has been his ability and willingness to attack his one-hander, both cross-court and down-the-line.

Generally, one of the reasons it’s fun to watch  Federer play is you can see him in the course of a match dissect his opponent’s patterns and take his weapons away from him.  Certainly, he can just blow off all but the best players in the world, but when he plays some of his true challengers who actually hit the ball bigger than he does, at least on the backhand, you can see him giving them “stuff” they don’t want to hit: wrong height, wrong spin, wrong speed, wrong depth.  This is something the good players of the 60’s and 70’s did routinely.  Today most players “play their game”.  Old-timers like me miss the days when you had to think on the court a little bit more.  We do see that now when the top 4 play one another, although to a lesser extent when Roger is not involved.  It’s debatable how much we see it in matches involving the players below them.

Anyway, I like to look for tools that help me out.  If you look at my charts (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/263/rogermurrayset1dubai12.jpg/), you can see that I break the record down so that I can easily see the patterns of where a player serves in the deuce and ad courts; when they are likely to be more vulnerable.  Similarly, the raw stats from the ATP Match Facts are fascinating, but what do they really mean.  And as a coach, if I were coaching one of these players, what would I look for as a clue to what I should be working on with that player to give him his best chance to improve his performance.

So I decided to do a little experiment with these ATP Match Facts.  I wanted to look at just the top 10, but then by the time I included a couple of more that needed to be in there, I was up to the top 20.  And I had to include Milos Raonic who was doing so well and the next two Americans, Roddick and Young.  Suddenly, I was doing a lot of number crunching.  Fortunatly, this old-timer knows how to create a spread sheet in Excel!  I wanted to create an index for serving skills and one for receiving skills that would give me some kind of comparative rating.  And I then wanted to see where these players would stack up relative to the other players in the top 20.

First of all, here is the raw data for the top 20 plus Raonic, Roddick and Young.

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/638/tp20atpmtchfacts2261200.jpg/

I decided I would attach a value of 1 to anyone ranked 50 in these parameters and a value of 50 to anyone ranked #1.  Also, anyone ranked 100 would get a value of -50.  I felt that if you are in the top 20 in the world, you ought to be in the top 50 in these categories; otherwise, it is a definite weakness that needs to be addressed.  That value or score is based on a relative comparison to the standing against the other players.  To build my “index” for serving and receiving, I took just 3 of  the stats (I’m sure a true statistician will have plenty of issues with my choices and how they are weighted, but this is just a mental exercise, ok!), added them up and divided by three (that wasn’t really necessary).  Then I compared those numbers to the other members of the ATP top 20 (BTW, all this was done with stats for 2012 through Sunday, February 26 and the numbers on the ATP site will be updated now with this last week’s matches.)

Here is the outcome of the serve statistics.  This was based on 1st Serve Points Won, 2nd Serve Points Won and Break Points Saved, all percentages.  The players are listed in the order of their index ranking relative to the other players in the top 20.

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/27/tp20atpsrvindex22612002.jpg/

This is the outcome of the return statistics.  This was based on 1st Serve Return Points Won, 2nd Serve Return Points Won and Break Points Converted, also all percentages.  The players are listed in the order of their index ranking relative to the other players in the top 20.

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/13/tp20atprtnindex22612003.jpg/

I could have just taken the % of Serving Games Won and % Receiving Games Won, but I wanted to get at least a little closer to process related issues.  I’m not trying to do a double blind study here and cure cancer.  I’m just looking for something that might jump out.  You could also argue that I didn’t use the 1st serve percentage or aces, but I felt they would be reflected in the 1st Serve Winning %.  If I did it again, I think I would include the 1st Serve %.  But I did find a couple of interesting things that stuck out.

First of all, in the Serve Index.  No surprise for Raonic or Federer here.  But I would have thought Fish’s Serve Index and % Service Games Won Rank would be higher.  And he is only ranked 65th in Break Points Saved.  He actually needs to do a little more work on his serve.  And Murray needs to work on his second serve; only 56th in % 2nd Srv Points won, and that should rely on his all court abilities.  I also would have expected Isner to be higher up; he is only 17th on tour in % of Service Games Won and only 43rd in %Break Points Saved.  That surprised me.  Surprisingly, Monfils is ranked just 40th on tour in % Service Games Won and just 100th in % 2nd Serves Won; and he can easily serve second serves over 100mph; he needs work there. Nishikori’s 93 ranking on % First Serve Points Won is puzzling; I know he is not a big guy, but he has to do better than that; perhaps he is playing it too safe as he is a leader in First Serve %.

As for the Return Index, no surprise at the top with Ferrer, Djokovic and Murray.   Remember that the higher a player is ranked, the more points, games and sets he is going to play in later stages of tournaments against tougher opponents.  That fact does somewhat weight against the top guys, and yet here those three are right at the top.  It certainly is a surprise that Nadal is ranked 10th on my index and 17th on the ATP Tour in %Return Games Won, but it is early in the season and he has only 11 matches and two of them are those long matches at the Australian semis and finals.  Anyone with a negative index needs to put more focus on their return games, but up and comers Raonic and Isner need to head out to the practice court to work against Sports Attack’s “Ace Attack” or Playmate’s “Slam” and “Serve Lift” for hours on end.  Either that or wear someone’s shoulder out until they get better with their return games.  And these stats are from a period when they have both been playing very well.  There’s got to be room for improvement there.  There are also some other surprises there.  I figured Tipsarevic for a clutch returner, not the 76th ranked % Return Game Winner.  At least I thought he would be better on break points; perhaps he is going for a little too much.

Statistics are just numbers.  Statisticians can make them dance sometimes.  But there are clearly a few interesting trends that are evident here.  I wonder how much the coaches for these players actually pay attention to these ATP Match Facts.  I think some do, but too many run strictly by the seat of their pants.  One of the brightest lights in this area is Craig O’Shannessy whose Brain Game really breaks down the matches in much more detail (www.the braingame.net).  His stuff is worth a look.  One more thing I need to fit into my budget!  I already signed on for Dartfish.  Once I get a handle on how to use it, next will be to get a little more information from Craig’s site to help me go a little further.  Craig goes through the matches and “tags” virtually every critical stroke with Dartfish video analysis and then looks deep into the trends to give players much more sophisticated “hints” about their opponents strengths, weaknesses and tendencies.  Those services don’t come cheap, but you can see from the few statistics I’ve shown you here how much a 1% or 2% difference in one area can make in the eventual outcome.  I’m hoping to apply some of those techniques to my aspiring junior players.  Oh, … so many …. things to learn, … so little time!

Acapulco and Delray Beach
As for the tournaments in Acapulco and Delray Beach, the only real question was if John Isner could validate his win over Federer in Davis Cup with a win in Delray Beach.  He couldn’t and the return statistics tell a lot of the reason why.  In Acapulco it was nice to see Verdasco do well again, but I was really more curious to see if Nishikori could show us a little more.  Not yet.  Ferrer is way above everyone he faced in that field and he showed it once more.  The other disappointment was to see Roddick continue to struggle and lose against players he would have handled easily just a couple of years ago.  If he doesn’t turn it around at Indian Wells or Miami, he is in for a very long summer.  His lower ranking is going to earn him tougher and tougher 1st and 2nd round matches than he has had to play in almost 10 years.  Not a pretty picture!

In regards to the “state of the women’s game”, I just don’t know enough of the rank and file to have a real good feel for what is going on there.  However, at the top, they are in great shape with Azarenka coming on and Kvitova right there to challenge her.  Hopefully, Serena will be back on the court in Miami, but I think all these breaks for injuries have to take a toll eventually.  There are a whole host of players right behind Azarenka and Kvitova, and I think Kvitova will knock Vika off her newfound pedestal at #1.  Sharapova is playing better again, although she is definitely behind Azarenka and Kvitova.  She’s just a little too slow for those two, but don’t count her out; she is a workhorse and if she can get better, she will.  Wozniacki needs better weapons and the willingness to use them.   Zvonereva, Stosur, Na, Clijsters, Jankovic, and now, Radwanska are all dangerous, but definitely behind   Perhaps the most intriguing of that group is Radwanska because she has to win matches with her wits.  And new players seem to shoot up through the women’s ranks much quicker than in the ATP.  They may have to give some of them muzzles to stifle their grunting or at least their screeching.  If they could solve that problem, the women’s game would be much more attractive for both the casual and rabid fan of women’s tennis; I hope they take the advice of icons  like Navratilova and Evert and address this issue.  Otherwise, they have a good cast of characters that are fun to watch and, in many ways, much easier for the tennis fan to identify with.  They do need to do something to help the public understand the relative importance of the different tiers of WTA events.  The women’s events that just took place the last two weeks in Memphis, Acapulco, Monterey, Kuala Lumpur and Bogota don’t really move the meter as far as the general sports fan is concerned.  Fed Cup went by virtually ignored in this country.  They still have a long way to go as far as penetrating the foggy haze that is the consciousness of the casual sports fan with anything other than the grand slams and maybe Indian Wells and Miami.  The product is great, but they need some PR genius to get them to the next level of awareness with the general public.  Of course, the ATP is not very much better off, but they are at least moving the meter a little.

So this concludes my little 8-part “tome” on “The State of the Game”.  I hope you are planning on improving the state of your tennis game by tuning in for the coverage of the Indian Wells and Miami tournaments the next 4 weeks.  Better yet, get out and see the matches live.  Both venues are fabulous and a wonderful experience for even the casual tennis fan.  For crazy people like me, they are unbelievable opportunities to get up close and see just what these players are doing.  And I’ll be at Indian Wells in person next weekend and I’ll be bringing you some of my impressions.

10sChiro

to see other parts of “The State of the Game” and other articles by 10sChiro, go to
https://archive.10sballs.com/category/columnists/dr-chiro/

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