To the backhand, obviously. Or is it down-the-line, to cut down angles? Or maybe mix things up, so the opponent won’t start leaning the right way. Should the advice be the same for men and women?
Start with the basics. For the ATP, looking at all forehand, backhand, and backhand slice approach shots (excluding serve-and-volleys and net-rushes on returns), the Match Charting Project gives us over 84,000 data points since 2020. About 96% of approach shots land in the court. Of those, a bit more than one-third end the point immediately, either as winners or opponent errors. If the approach shot comes back, the net player wins 58.6% of the time. Altogether, when an ATPer hits an approach shot, he wins the point 70% of the time.
Of course, not all approaches are created equal.
Here are men’s approaches broken down by direction:
Direction Share Ends Won% To FH 31.9% 37.4% 70.9% Middle 5.8% 23.9% 53.7% To BH 62.3% 30.8% 70.8%
Men overwhelmingly aim for the backhand. Approaches to the forehand are more likely to end the point immediately, but if the point goes longer, the netman fares better against the backhand. Apart from the weak results down the middle, we seem to have landed on a good balance. Maybe to-the-backhand is better against a naive opponent, but pros lean that way, knowing it’s the likely shot. To-the-forehands need to be better: ATPers miss those a bit more often, and judging from the winner/induced-error rates, those land closer to the lines.
If the forehand/backhand balance is an example of a well-executed mixed strategy, those down-the-middle approaches are … something else. The relatively poor results probably stem in part from circumstance. Players can be stranded in no-man’s land and hit an approach for a lack of decent options–those approaches are probably more likely to go down the middle. Apart from desperation shots, maybe there’s some benefit in an occasional approach at the feet, just to complicate the opponent’s guessing game. In any case, the down-the-middle share (under 6%) suggests that players know that approaches should usually go elsewhere.
The overall trends for women are similar. To-the-backhand is somewhat more successful (68.9% to 66.4% in overall win percentage), and down-the-middle approaches are even less so, at 49.6%.
What about the geometry?
All else equal, it’s best to approach from the middle, though it’s only slightly better than coming forward from the forehand corner. (For men: 70.8% win percentage to 70.3%, compared to 66.5% from the backhand corner.)
Down-the-line approaches make life harder for the opponent, but they are higher-risk. More errors, more winners, and mixed outcomes overall. For men, a down-the-line forehand approach beats a cross-court forehand approach by 1.7 percentage points. Among backhands, the risks and rewards cancel each other out. For women, there’s no net advantage from either wing.
If you’re in a corner, the important thing is to avoid approaching to the middle. You probably already figured that out, given the overall numbers. From a corner, the results are even worse. When men approach down the middle from a corner, they win only 50.8% of points. For women, it’s just 47.7%. Again, a lot of that disadvantage is situational. But that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea if you have a choice.
What about shot selection?
Forehands > backhands > backhand slices. Topspin backhand approaches are better than I would have guessed: ATPers coming in off the backhand win 67.9% of points, compared to 71.8% on forehands.
Slice approaches are a modern-game disaster. Once upon a time, slice approaches were a centerpiece of aggressive playing styles, hence the term “chip and charge” and all those graceful highlight-reel shots of Martina Navratilova and Pete Sampras. Now, baseline play is just too good. Men win barely half (50.4%) of backhand-slice approaches. As with down-the-middle approaches, some of that probably stems from net-rushing in suboptimal circumstances. But that’s doesn’t explain nearly all of it. Presumably slice approaches are better on fast surfaces, especially low-bouncing grass, than this dire average. Competitors themselves, though, are increasingly skeptical. Barely one in five backhand-side approaches are slices, as players tire of watching passing shots sail by.
The shot-type breakdown is almost identical for women. WTAers win 68% of forehand approaches, 66.2% of topspin backhands, and 45.6% of backhand slice approaches.
Context matters
Major factors that I haven’t addressed–and can’t with any precision, given Match Charting Project data–are court position and quality of the previous shot. Clearly these things matter: Regardless of shot selection or direction, an approach has a better chance of success from inside the baseline against a weak reply than it does from behind the baseline against a Jannik Sinner cannonball.
One simple proxy for these factors is rally stage. More than half of men’s approach shots in the dataset occur on the third shot of the rally: the plus-one shot. On average, this is the best opportunity to come forward, as there’s only so much the returner can do with the return.
Here’s how those compare to subsequent stages of the rally:
Stage Share Ends Won% shot 3 50.4% 33.9% 72.1% shot 4 9.4% 31.1% 65.8% shot 5+ 40.2% 31.0% 68.0%
A plus-one approach is rarely an awkward shot. Barring a net-cord or unexpected bounce, servers will only pounce on that next shot when the circumstances favor it. So while 72% isn’t quite the win rate for an approach shot when everything is set up just right, it’s pretty close. Net-rushers will always make errors, opponents will always come up with low-percentage passes made good, and so on. Still, by the standard of tennis’s small margins, a win rate in the 70s is huge.
Women don’t show quite the same splits. They win 67.7% of plus-one approaches, then 65.3% on fourth shots and the same 65.3% for everything beyond that. The serve doesn’t set up plus-one approaches to the same degree.
Try to distill all this to some simple advice, and you might end up with something generic like “pick your spots.” While not terribly helpful, it is true: Context probably matters more than forehand-versus-backhand or down-the-line-versus-cross-court.
As for concrete tips: If you’re forced to hit an approach up the middle, maybe don’t approach, unless the alternatives are even worse. And if you don’t need to go up the middle, hit your approach somewhere else. Anywhere else!