Important performance characteristics in elite clay and grass court tennis match-play

Anna Fitzpatrick, Joseph Antony Stone, Simon Choppin and John Kelley

International Journal of Performance Analysis in Sport, 2019, vol. 19, issue 6, 942-952

Abstract: The performance characteristics of elite tennis match-play differ depending on court surface. However, the performance characteristics (e.g. aces, first serve points won, forced errors) most associated with success on different surfaces are currently unknown. With three weeks typically separating Roland Garros and Wimbledon, the transition from clay to grass courts, whereby players must adapt their game style between surfaces, is crucial to understand. Using the recently validated PWOL method, we analysed 984 singles matches across the 2016 and 2017 Roland Garros and Wimbledon tournaments, to identify the most important performance characteristics in clay and grass court tennis. Results revealed that points won of 0-4 shot rally length, first serve points won and baseline points won were most strongly associated with success for both sexes; serve-related characteristics (aces, double faults and average first serve speed) were among the least associated with success. Furthermore, winning short points (points of 0-4 shots) was more closely associated with success than winning medium-length (5-8 shots) and long points (9+ shots). To be representative of match-play, findings suggest that players should afford sufficient practise time to short rallies and point-ending strategies during the clay and grass court seasons, rather than over-emphasising long rallies.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/24748668.2019.1685804 (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:rpanxx:v:19:y:2019:i:6:p:942-952

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RPAN20

DOI: 10.1080/24748668.2019.1685804

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Performance Analysis in Sport is currently edited by Peter O'Donoghue

More articles in International Journal of Performance Analysis in Sport from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().