There’s an old cliché in tennis: at crunch time, the match is won by the player who “wants it more.” Chris Evert is a big proponent of this myth. Anyone who has competed in any sport knows that this is complete hogwash. My claim is that winners and losers have equal amounts of desire. What then explains the sorting of winners and losers at …
The use of statistics to understand results in professional tennis is in its infancy. One way of finding out more about what really happened in a match is to look at point-ending strokes. When doing so it’s important to remember that point-ending strokes include not only winners/forced errors, but they also include unforced errors.
What actually happened in Roger Federer’s stunning 5-set loss to Grigor Dimitrov? I make a convincing case that his injury was far worse than he led us to believe.
As tennis players there all sorts of choices to make: target selection, how hard to hit, which side to play as a doubles returner given who your partner is, whether or not to serve or receive to begin the match etc. Normally, we sort of think that “more advanced” players make better choices. But is this really true?