Should the strongest serve first? Strategic ordering of servers in doubles tennis

Nikolai Avkhimovich

Applied Economics, 2024, vol. 56, issue 51, 6443-6452

Abstract: Do athletes adapt to changing conditions within the match, and how? Can their strategic choice of server lead to a better outcome in a match? Leveraging point-by-point data on Grand Slam tennis doubles, we show that better historical serving performance in singles matches leads to a higher probability of being assigned as the ‘first server of the match’ in doubles. We also show adaptive athletes’ behaviour during doubles matches: poorer serving performance in the previous set leads to a higher probability of being replaced as a ‘first server’ in the following set by the teammate. Both of those strategic choices lead to performance improvement: up to $5\% $5% more points can be won if the strongest athlete serves first.

Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00036846.2023.2273804 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:applec:v:56:y:2024:i:51:p:6443-6452

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RAEC20

DOI: 10.1080/00036846.2023.2273804

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Economics is currently edited by Anita Phillips

More articles in Applied Economics from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().