Category: Research

Does Serving First in a Tiebreak Give You an Edge?

Italian translation at settesei.it

Tiebreaks are so balanced, with frequently alternating servers and sides of the court, that it seems they must be fair. As far as I know, there is no commonly-cited conventional wisdom to the effect that the first server (or second server) in a tiebreak has any kind of advantage.

Let’s check. In a dataset of over 5,200 tiebreaks at ATP tour events, the first server won 50.8% of the time. Calculating each player’s service points won for the entire match and using those numbers to determine the likelihood that the first server would win a tiebreak, we get an estimate that those first servers should have won only 48.8% of them.

Two percentage points is a small gap, but here, it’s a meaningful one. It’s persistent across each of the three years most heavily represented in the dataset (2013-15), and it holds regardless of the set. While there might be some bias in the results of first-set tiebreaks, since better servers often choose to serve first and lesser servers choose to receive, the effect in each set favors the first server, and the impact of serving first is greater in the third set than in the first.

However, this effect–at least in its magnitude–is limited to ATP results. A survey of 2,500 recent WTA tiebreaks shows that first servers have won 49.7% of tiebreaks, compared to 49.4% that they should have won. Women’s ITF matches and men’s futures matches return similar results. Running the same algorithm on 6,200 men’s Challenger-level tiebreaks confuses the issue even further: Here, first servers won 48.1% of tiebreaks, while they should have won 48.7%.

A byproduct of this research is the discovery that, for both genders and at multiple levels of the game, the first server in a tiebreak is, on average, the weaker player. At first glance, that doesn’t make a lot of sense: We think of tiebreaks as deciding sets when the two players are equal. And since the effect is present for the second and third sets as well as the first, this finding isn’t biased by players choosing who will serve first.

As it turns out, this result can be at least partially explained by another byproduct of my recent research. In my attempt to determine whether it’s particularly difficult to hold when serving for the set, I calculated the odds of holding serve at every score throughout a set, compared to how frequently players should have held. At most holds–including those with the set on the line–there aren’t any major discrepancies between actual hold rates and expected hold rates.

But I did find some small effects that are relevant here. In general, it is a bit harder to hold serve as the second server, at scores such as 3-4, 4-5, and 5-6, than as the first, at scores like 3-3, 4-4, and 5-5. For instance, in the ATP data, players hold serve at 4-4 exactly as often as we would expect them to, based on their rate of service points won throughout the match. But at 4-5, their performance drops to 1.4% below expectations. In the WTA data, while players underperform at 5-5 by 1.4%, they are far worse at 5-6, winning 5.2% less often than they should.

In other words, if two players of equal abilities stay on serve for the first several games of a set, the second server is a little more likely to crack, getting broken and losing the set. Thus, if neither player is broken (or the number of breaks is equal), the second server is likely to be just a little bit better.

That explains, at least in part, why second servers are favored on paper going into tiebreaks. What it doesn’t account for is the discovery that on the ATP tour, first servers overcome that paper advantage and win more than half of tiebreaks. For that, I don’t have a good answer.

Digging Out of the Holes of 0-40 and 15-40

In the men’s professional game, serving at 0-40 isn’t a death sentence, but it isn’t a good place to be. An average player wins about 65% of service points, and at that rate, his chance of coming back from 0-40 is just a little better than one in five.

Some players are better than others at executing this sort of comeback. Tommy Robredo, for instance, has come back from 0-40 nearly 60% more often than we’d expect, while Sam Querrey digs out of the 0-40 hole one-third less often than we would predict.

Measuring a player’s success rate in these scenarios isn’t simply a matter of counting up 0-40 games. That’s what we saw on the ATP official site last week, and it’s woefully inadequate. That article marvels at Ivo Karlovic‘s “clutch” accomplishments from 0-40 and 15-40, when we could easily have guessed that Ivo would lead just about any serving category. Big serving isn’t clutch if it’s what you always do.

Statistics are only valuable in context, and that is particularly true in tennis. Simply counting 0-40 games and reporting the results hides a huge amount of potential insight. Whether a player wins or loses (a game, a set, a match, or a stretch of matches) is only the first question. To deliver any kind of meaningful analysis, we need to adjust those results for the competition and consider what we already know about the players we’re studying.

Rather than tear apart that article, though, let’s do the analysis correctly.

The number of times a player comes back from 0-40 or 15-40 isn’t what’s important. As we’ve seen, big servers will dominate those categories. That doesn’t tell us who is particularly effective (or, dare we say, “clutch”) in such a situation, it only identifies the best servers. What matters is how often players come back compared to how often we would expect them to, taking into consideration their serving ability.

Karlovic is an instructive example. Over the last few years–the time span available in this dataset of point-by-point match records–Ivo has gone down 0-40 56 times, holding 17 of those games, a rate of 30.4%. That’s third-best on tour, behind John Isner and Samuel Groth. But compared to how well we would expect Karlovic to serve, he’s only 7% better than neutral, right in the middle of the ATP pack.

Before diving into the results, a few more notes on methodology. For each 0-40 or 15-40 game, I calculated the server’s rate of service points won in that match. Since we would expect 0-40 games to occur more often in matches with good returners, in-match rates seem more accurate than season-long aggregates. Given the in-match rate of serve points won, I then determined the odds that the server would come back from the 0-40 or 15-40 score. For each game, then, we have a result (came back or didn’t come back) and an estimate of the comeback’s likelihood. Combining both numbers for all of a player’s service games tells us how effective he was at these scores.

For 30 of the players best represented in the dataset, here are their results at 0-40, showing the number of games, the number of successful comebacks, the rate of successful comebacks, and the degree to which the player exceeded expectations from 0-40:

Player                  0-40  0-40 W  0-40 W%  W/Exp  
Tommy Robredo            110      30    27.3%   1.59  
Denis Istomin            114      26    22.8%   1.36  
John Isner                87      31    35.6%   1.34  
Guillermo Garcia-Lopez   161      29    18.0%   1.32  
Kevin Anderson           130      38    29.2%   1.28  
Bernard Tomic            110      24    21.8%   1.25  
Fernando Verdasco        141      30    21.3%   1.17  
Rafael Nadal             140      32    22.9%   1.15  
Kei Nishikori            122      23    18.9%   1.15  
Marin Cilic              125      26    20.8%   1.14  
                                                      
Player                  0-40  0-40 W  0-40 W%  W/Exp  
Jo-Wilfried Tsonga       124      29    23.4%   1.14  
Novak Djokovic           124      34    27.4%   1.12  
Andreas Seppi            145      24    16.6%   1.09  
Grigor Dimitrov          115      22    19.1%   1.08  
Philipp Kohlschreiber    146      28    19.2%   1.08  
Roger Federer            107      26    24.3%   1.07  
Ivo Karlovic              56      17    30.4%   1.07  
Santiago Giraldo         113      18    15.9%   1.06  
Alexandr Dolgopolov      141      25    17.7%   1.03  
Milos Raonic              82      23    28.0%   1.01  
                                                      
Player                  0-40  0-40 W  0-40 W%  W/Exp  
Tomas Berdych            149      30    20.1%   1.01  
Jeremy Chardy            122      21    17.2%   0.98  
Feliciano Lopez          136      26    19.1%   0.97  
Fabio Fognini            211      24    11.4%   0.97  
Mikhail Youzhny          155      18    11.6%   0.92  
David Ferrer             203      32    15.8%   0.89  
Richard Gasquet          152      25    16.4%   0.87  
Andy Murray              164      24    14.6%   0.80  
Gilles Simon             158      16    10.1%   0.72  
Sam Querrey               84      12    14.3%   0.68

As I mentioned above, Robredo has been incredibly effective in these situations, coming back from 0-40 30 times instead of the 19 times we would have expected. Some big servers, such as Isner and Kevin Anderson, are even better than their well-known weapons would leads us to expect, while others, such as Karlovic and Milos Raonic, aren’t noticeably more effective at 0-40 than they are in general.

Many of these extremes don’t hold up when we turn to the results from 15-40. Quite a few more games reach 15-40 than 0-40, so the more limited variation at 15-40 suggests that many of the extreme results from 0-40 can be ascribed to an inadequate sample. For instance, Robredo–our 0-40 hero–falls to neutral at 15-40. Here is the complete list:

Player                  15-40  15-40 W  15-40 W%  W/Exp  
John Isner                238      122     51.3%   1.33  
Milos Raonic              215       98     45.6%   1.18  
Feliciano Lopez           304      108     35.5%   1.17  
Jo-Wilfried Tsonga        301      119     39.5%   1.17  
Denis Istomin             304      101     33.2%   1.17  
Rafael Nadal              320      118     36.9%   1.16  
Ivo Karlovic              148       68     45.9%   1.15  
Kevin Anderson            338      132     39.1%   1.15  
Guillermo Garcia-Lopez    405      106     26.2%   1.14  
Andreas Seppi             396      113     28.5%   1.12  
                                                         
Player                  15-40  15-40 W  15-40 W%  W/Exp  
Bernard Tomic             273       86     31.5%   1.12  
Kei Nishikori             298       96     32.2%   1.10  
Novak Djokovic            348      132     37.9%   1.07  
Richard Gasquet           325      106     32.6%   1.07  
Roger Federer             281      109     38.8%   1.07  
Fernando Verdasco         306       94     30.7%   1.06  
Philipp Kohlschreiber     352      110     31.3%   1.06  
Andy Murray               431      135     31.3%   1.06  
Santiago Giraldo          331       86     26.0%   1.05  
Tomas Berdych             398      131     32.9%   1.05  
                                                         
Player                  15-40  15-40 W  15-40 W%  W/Exp  
Marin Cilic               357      109     30.5%   1.05  
Sam Querrey               244       78     32.0%   1.04  
Jeremy Chardy             300       91     30.3%   1.04  
Fabio Fognini             422       98     23.2%   1.03  
Tommy Robredo             285       78     27.4%   0.99  
Grigor Dimitrov           307       89     29.0%   0.99  
David Ferrer              498      138     27.7%   0.98  
Alexandr Dolgopolov       299       77     25.8%   0.95  
Mikhail Youzhny           339       77     22.7%   0.94  
Gilles Simon              426       93     21.8%   0.91

The big servers are better represented at the top of this ranking. Even though Isner is expected to come back from 15-40 nearly 40% of the time–better than almost anyone on tour–he exceeds that expectation by one-third, far more than anyone else considered here.

Finally, let’s look at comebacks from 0-30:

Player                  0-30  0-30 W  0-30 W%  W/Exp  
John Isner               338     229    67.8%   1.19  
Bernard Tomic            299     146    48.8%   1.15  
Grigor Dimitrov          342     166    48.5%   1.11  
Novak Djokovic           409     235    57.5%   1.10  
Santiago Giraldo         344     142    41.3%   1.10  
Fernando Verdasco        373     175    46.9%   1.10  
Rafael Nadal             376     194    51.6%   1.09  
Tomas Berdych            492     262    53.3%   1.09  
Tommy Robredo            296     132    44.6%   1.08  
Roger Federer            344     193    56.1%   1.08  
                                                      
Player                  0-30  0-30 W  0-30 W%  W/Exp  
Feliciano Lopez          326     161    49.4%   1.07  
Alexandr Dolgopolov      347     154    44.4%   1.07  
Marin Cilic              378     179    47.4%   1.06  
Jo-Wilfried Tsonga       357     185    51.8%   1.06  
Guillermo Garcia-Lopez   380     146    38.4%   1.06  
Ivo Karlovic             186     118    63.4%   1.04  
Philipp Kohlschreiber    395     185    46.8%   1.03  
Denis Istomin            314     135    43.0%   1.03  
Kei Nishikori            341     145    42.5%   1.03  
David Ferrer             529     227    42.9%   1.02  
                                                      
Player                  0-30  0-30 W  0-30 W%  W/Exp  
Kevin Anderson           361     181    50.1%   1.02  
Mikhail Youzhny          390     142    36.4%   1.00  
Andy Murray              419     185    44.2%   1.00  
Andreas Seppi            418     164    39.2%   0.99  
Jeremy Chardy            316     132    41.8%   0.99  
Milos Raonic             246     139    56.5%   0.99  
Fabio Fognini            478     153    32.0%   0.99  
Sam Querrey              292     131    44.9%   0.97  
Gilles Simon             442     155    35.1%   0.96  
Richard Gasquet          370     159    43.0%   0.95

Isner still stands at the top of the leaderboard, while Bernard Tomic and Grigor Dimitrov give us a mild surprise by filling out the top three. Again, as the sample size increases, the variation decreases even further, illustrating that, over the long term, players tend to serve about as well at one score as they do at any other.

Forecasting the Effects of Performance Byes in Beijing

To the uninitiated, the WTA draw in Beijing this week looks a little strange. The 64-player draw includes four byes, which were given to the four semifinalists from last week’s event in Wuhan. So instead of empty places in the bracket next to the top four seeds, those free passes go to the 5th, 10th, and 15th seeds, along with one unseeded player, Venus Williams.

“Performance byes”–those given to players based on their results the previous week, rather than their seed–have occasionally featured in WTA draws over the last few years. If you’re interested in their recent history, Victoria Chiesa wrote an excellent overview.

I’m interested in measuring the benefit these byes confer on the recipients–and the negative effect they have on the players who would have received those byes had they been awarded in the usual way. I’ve written about the effects of byes before, but I haven’t contrasted different approaches to awarding them.

This week, the beneficiaries are Garbine Muguruza, Angelique Kerber, Roberta Vinci, and Venus Williams. The top four seeds–the women who were atypically required to play first-round matches, were Simona Halep, Petra Kvitova, Flavia Pennetta, and Agnieszka Radwanska.

To quantify the impact of the various possible formats of a 64-player draw, I used a variety of tools: Elo to rate players and predict match outcomes, Monte Carlo tournament simulations to consider many different permutations of each draw, and a modified version of my code to “reseed” brackets. While this is complicated stuff under the hood, the results aren’t that opaque.

Here are three different types of 64-player draws that Beijing might have employed:

  1. Performance byes to last week’s semifinalists. This gives a substantial boost to the players receiving byes, and compared to any other format, has a negative effect on top players. Not only are the top four seeds required to play a first-round match, they are a bit more likely to play last week’s semifinalists, since the byes give those players a better chance of advancing.
  2. Byes to the top four seeds. The top four seeds get an obvious boost, and everyone else suffers a bit, as they are that much more likely to face the top four.
  3. No byes: 64 players in the draw instead of 60. The clear winners in this scenario are the players who wouldn’t otherwise make it into the main draw. Unseeded players (excluding Venus) also benefit slightly, as the lack of byes mean that top players are less likely to advance.

Let’s crunch the numbers. For each of the three scenarios, I ran simulations based on the field without knowing how the draw turned out. That is, Kvitova is always seeded second, but she doesn’t always play Sara Errani in the first round. This approach eliminates any biases in the actual draw. To simulate the 64-player field, I added the four top-ranked players who lost in the final round of qualifying.

To compare the effects of each draw type on every player, I calculated “expected points” based on their probability of reaching each round. For instance, if Halep entered the tournament with a 20% chance of winning the event with its 1,000 ranking points, she’d have 200 “expected points,” plus her expected points for the higher probabilities (and lower number of points) of reaching every round in between. It’s simply a way of combining a lot of probabilities into a single easier-to-understand number.

Here are the expected points in each draw scenario (plus the actual Beijing draw) for the top four players, the four players who received performance byes, plus a couple of others (Belinda Bencic and Caroline Wozniacki) who rated particularly highly:

Player               Seed  PerfByes  TopByes  NoByes  Actual  
Simona Halep            1       323      364     330     341  
Petra Kvitova           2       276      323     290     291  
Venus Williams                  247      216     218     279  
Belinda Bencic         11       255      249     268     254  
Garbine Muguruza        5       243      202     210     227  
Angelique Kerber       10       260      224     235     227  
Caroline Wozniacki      8       208      203     205     199  
Flavia Pennetta         3       142      177     144     195  
Agnieszka Radwanska     4       185      233     192     188  
Roberta Vinci          15       120       91      94      90

As expected, the top four seeds are expected to reap far more points when given first-round byes. It’s most noticeable for Pennetta and Radwanska, who would enjoy a 20% boost in expected points if given a first-round bye. Oddly, though, the draw worked out very favorably for Flavia–Elo gave her a 95% chance of beating her first-round opponent Xinyun Han, and her draw steered her relatively clear of other dangerous players in subsequent rounds.

Similarly, the performance byes are worth a 15 to 30% advantage in expected points to the players who receive them. Vinci is the biggest winner here, as we would generally expect from the player most likely to suffer an upset without the bye.

Like Pennetta, Venus was treated very well by the way the draw turned out. The bye already gave her an approximately 15% boost compared to her expectations without a bye, and the draw tacked another 13% onto that. Both the structure of the draw and some luck on draw day made her the event’s third most likely champion, while the other scenarios would have left her in fifth.

All byes–conventional or unconventional–work to the advantage of some players and against others. However they are granted, they tend to work in favor of those who are already successful, whether that success is over the course of a year or a single week.

Performance byes are easy enough to defend: They give successful players a bit more rest between two demanding events, and from the tour’s perspective, they make it a little more likely that last week’s best players won’t pull off of this week’s tourney. And if all byes tend to the make the rich a little richer, at least performance byes open the possibility of benefiting different players than usual.

The Slow but Steady Erosion of the Server’s Advantage

After a couple of weeks of data-driven skepticism, I can finally confirm a bit of tennis’s conventional wisdom. Over the course of a typical match, breaks of serve are a little easier to come by.

This result–based on tens of thousands of matches from the last few years–is similar for both men and women. After about twelve games (total, not service games for each player), a hold is roughly 2% less likely than it was in the first few games of the match. By the 25th game, a hold is approximately 5% less likely than at the beginning of the match.

To control for the vagaries of surface, opponent, and other conditions, I’ve compared each service game to the server’s hold percentage within that match. Only the closest matches are likely to go very long, so it’s important to compare the last games of those matches to games with similarly even opponents.

It seems that this effect is the result of one or both of two factors: server fatigue (which may have more of an effect on results than an equivalent amount of returner fatigue), and the returner’s increasing familiarity with the server. It would be difficult to separate these two–and with this dataset, probably impossible–so for today, let’s stick with the nature of the effect, not its causes.

The following graph shows the relative probability of a hold of serve based on how much of the match (in games) has been played:

Relative hold percentage

I’ve set the hold probability of the first game at 100%, so all other numbers are relative to that. I’ve excluded tiebreaks from these calculations, though I considered them when counting games–that is, the first game of the second set after a tiebreak is considered the 14th game, not the 13th.

The results get a lot noisier starting around the women’s 25th game and the men’s 35th game, for the simple reason that most matches don’t get that far. For example, while the WTA calculations are based on 11,000 matches, only one-third reached the 25th game and less than one-tenth made it to the 31st.

The general downward trend indicates that the fatigue and/or familiarity effect dwarfs the effect of new balls. I have found that in men’s matches, the age of balls has a very small effect on hold percentage, and in women’s matches, it has no effect. In any case, the steady ebb of the server’s advantage is a stronger effect.

It is likely that some players suffer more from fatigue or familiarity than others. Due to the smaller size of the per-player samples, especially beyond the 20th game or so, I’m reluctant to draw any strong conclusions. Still, there are some intriguing numbers for the players for whom the dataset contains the most matches.

Here, I’ve calculated the hold percentage for several top players at various stages of the match, relative to their hold percentage in the first ten games. Thus, a number below 100% indicates less frequent holds, while a number above 100% means more frequent holds:

Player                 Matches  11 to 20  21 to 30  31 to 50  
Tomas Berdych              337     98.5%     98.3%    101.5%  
David Ferrer               330     97.0%     99.4%    102.4%  
Novak Djokovic             325    100.1%    101.8%    101.7%  
Roger Federer              325    100.2%     99.6%    100.4%  
Andy Murray                295     97.7%     98.7%     97.9%  
Rafael Nadal               293     99.2%    100.3%     93.7%  
Jo-Wilfried Tsonga         255    100.4%    100.9%     99.6%  
Philipp Kohlschreiber      252    101.4%     97.9%     96.7%  
John Isner                 251    100.4%    100.4%    100.3%  
                                                              
Player                 Matches  11 to 20  21 to 30  31 to 50  
Kevin Anderson             247    100.0%     98.1%     97.5%  
Richard Gasquet            246     99.1%     98.4%    105.1%  
Gilles Simon               245    100.1%    103.7%     95.0%  
Milos Raonic               238     97.1%     96.1%     96.7%  
Marin Cilic                238     95.4%     97.5%     94.5%  
Fabio Fognini              235    100.4%     99.6%     98.2%  
Kei Nishikori              233    101.8%    104.1%    107.2%  
Grigor Dimitrov            224    100.9%    100.3%     94.6%  
Andreas Seppi              221    106.4%    100.4%    103.1%  
Feliciano Lopez            221     99.2%     99.7%     98.4%  
                                                              
Total                    23326     98.1%     96.1%     95.1%

While John Isner is steady throughout the stages of the match, other big servers such as Milos Raonic and Marin Cilic are less dominant as the match progresses. The players whose hold percentage improves through the match–such as Novak Djokovic and David Ferrer–tend to be those without big serves, so we may be looking at more of an overall fatigue effect in those cases.

The most extreme number in the table is Rafael Nadal‘s relative hold percentage after the 30th game. Perhaps after that much time on court, his opponents finally figure out how to defend against the ad-court slider.

Here are the same calculations for top WTA players:

Player                Matches  11 to 15  16 to 20  21 to 40  
Agnieszka Radwanska       299    101.0%    104.9%     98.0%  
Sara Errani               279     97.7%     91.2%     92.7%  
Caroline Wozniacki        279    103.1%    102.3%    104.9%  
Serena Williams           266    102.8%    102.4%    104.9%  
Angelique Kerber          265    101.9%    103.0%    101.5%  
Samantha Stosur           253     99.2%    105.0%     97.6%  
Carla Suarez Navarro      252    102.2%    101.8%     93.7%  
Petra Kvitova             251     93.9%    100.4%     95.9%  
Roberta Vinci             250     94.2%     97.9%     95.4%  
Ana Ivanovic              241    100.8%    106.0%     95.2%  
Jelena Jankovic           241    102.2%    108.7%     96.4%  
                                                             
Player                Matches  11 to 15  16 to 20  21 to 40  
Maria Sharapova           236    100.1%    105.9%    104.9%  
Victoria Azarenka         228    100.6%    103.7%     97.8%  
Lucie Safarova            227    102.7%    100.5%     94.4%  
Simona Halep              224     89.2%     95.3%    101.7%  
Dominika Cibulkova        210     98.7%     89.9%     99.9%  
Alize Cornet              210     96.2%    102.8%     96.4%  
Andrea Petkovic           194    101.5%    104.2%    107.5%  
Sloane Stephens           185     97.5%     90.1%     88.7%  
Sabine Lisicki            185     97.4%     97.5%     96.6%  
Ekaterina Makarova        185     96.6%    102.8%     92.8%  
Flavia Pennetta           180    105.1%     92.9%    103.9%  
                                                             
Total                   22406     98.6%     97.2%     95.0%

Here is some confirmation that Serena Williams–at least on serve–gets better as the match progresses. Many of the other players with the strongest serve results late in matches are those known for fitness (like Caroline Wozniacki) or steeliness (Maria Sharapova).

Whether the root cause is fatigue or familiarity, most players are less effective on serve as the match progresses. With further research, I hope we’ll be able to better understand the cause and determine whether there are advantages to serving particularly well at certain stages of the match.

The Odds of Successfully Serving Out the Set

Italian translation at settesei.it

Serving for the set is hard … or so they say. Like other familiar tennis conceits, this one is ripe for confirmation bias. Every time we see a player struggle to serve out a set, we’re tempted to comment on the particular challenge he faces. If he doesn’t struggle, we ignore it or, even worse, remark on how he achieved such an unusual feat.

My findings–based on point-by-point data from tens of thousands of matches from the last few seasons–follow a familiar refrain: If there’s an effect, it’s very minor. For many players, and for some substantial subsets of matches, breaks of serve appear to be less likely at these purportedly high-pressure service games of 5-4, 5-3 and the like.

In ATP tour-level matches, holds are almost exactly as common when serving for the set as at other stages of the match. For each match in the dataset, I found each player’s hold percentage for the match. If serving for the set were more difficult than serving in other situations, we would find that those “average” hold percentages would be higher than players’ success rates when serving for the set.

That isn’t the case. Considering over 20,000 “serving-for-the-set” games, players held serve only 0.7% less often than expected–a difference that shows up only once every 143 attempts. The result is the same when we limit the sample to “close” situations, where the server has a one-break advantage.

Only a few players have demonstrated any notable success or lack thereof. Andy Murray holds about 6% more often when serving for the set than his average rate, making him one of only four players (in my pool of 99 players with 1,000 or more service games) to outperform his own average by more than 5%.

On the WTA tour, serving for the set appears to be a bit more difficult. On average, players successfully serve out a set 3.4% less often than their average success rate, a difference that would show up about once every 30 attempts. Seven of the 85 players with 1,000 service games in the dataset were at least 10% less successful in serving-for-the-set situations than their own standard.

Maria Sharapova stands out at the other end of the spectrum, holding serve 3% more often than her average when serving for the set, and 7% more frequently than average when serving for the set with a single-break advantage. She’s one of 30 players for whom I was able to analyze at least 100 single-break opportunities, and the only one of them to exceed expectations by more than 5%.

Given the size of the sample–nearly 20,000 serving-for-the-set attempts, with almost 12,000 of them single-break opportunities–it seems likely that this is a real effect, however small. Strangely, though, the overall finding is different at the lower levels of the women’s game.

For women’s ITF main draw matches, I was able to look at another 30,000 serving-for-the-set attempts, and in these, players were 2.4% more successful than their own average in the match. In close sets, where the server held a one-break edge, the server’s advantage was even greater: 3.5% better than in other games.

If anything, I would have expected players at lower levels to exhibit greater effects in line with the conventional wisdom. If it’s difficult to serve in high-pressure situations, it would make sense if lower-ranked players (who, presumably, have less experience with and/or are less adept in these situations) were not as effective. Yet the opposite appears to be true.

Lower-level averages from the men’s tour don’t shed much light, either. In main draw matches at Challengers, players hold 1.4% less often when serving for the set, and 1.8% less often with a single-break advantage. In futures main draws, they are exactly as successful when serving for the set as they are the rest of the time, regardless of their lead. In all of the samples, there are only a handful of players whose record is 10% better or worse when serving for the set, and a small percentage who over- or underperform by even 5%.

The more specific situations I analyze, the more the evidence piles up that games and points are, for the most part, independent–that is, players are roughly as effective at one score as they are at any other, and it doesn’t matter a great deal what sequence of points or games got them there. There are still plenty of situations that haven’t yet been analyzed, but if the ones that we talk about the most don’t exhibit the strong effects that we think they do, that casts quite a bit of doubt on the likelihood that we’ll find notable effects elsewhere.

If there is any truth to claims like those about the difficulty of serving for the set, perhaps it is the case that the pressure affects both players equally. After all, if a server needs to hold at 5-4, it is equally important for the returner to seize the final break opportunity. Maybe the level of both players drops, something we might be able to determine by analyzing how these points are played.

For now, though, we can conclude that players–regardless of gender or level–serve out the set about as often as they successfully hold at 1-2, or 3-3, or any other particular score.

How Important is the Seventh Game of the Set?

Italian translation at settesei.it

Few nuggets of tennis’s conventional wisdom are more standard than the notion that the seventh game of each set is particularly crucial. While it’s often difficult to pin down such a well-worn conceit, it seems to combine two separate beliefs:

  1. If a set has reached 3-3, the pressure is starting to mount, and the server is less likely to hold serve.
  2. The seventh game is somehow more important than its immediate effect on the score, perhaps because the winner gains momentum by taking such a pivotal game.

Let’s test both.

Holding at 3-3

Drawing on my database of over 11,000 ATP tour-level matches from the last few years, I found 11,421 sets that reached three-all. For each, I calculated the theoretical likelihood that the server would hold (based on his rate of service points won throughout the match) and his percentage of service games won in the match. If the conventional wisdom is true, the percentage of games won by the server at 3-3 should be noticeably lower.

It isn’t. Using the theoretical model, these servers should have held 80.5% of the time. Based on their success holding serve throughout these matches, they should have held 80.2% of the time. At three-all, they held serve 79.5% of the time. That’s lower, but not enough lower that a human would ever notice. The difference between 80.2% and 79.5% is roughly one extra break at 3-3 per Grand Slam. Not Grand Slam match–an entire tournament.

None of that 0.7% discrepancy can be explained by the effect of old balls [1]. Because new balls are introduced after the first seven games of each match, the server at three-all in the first set is always using old balls, which should, according to another bit of conventional wisdom, work against him. However, the difference between actual holds and predicted holds at 3-3 is slightly greater after the first set: 78.9% instead of the predicted 79.8%. Still, this difference is not enough to merit the weight we give to the seventh game.

The simple part of our work is done: Servers hold at three-all almost as often as they do at any other stage of a match.

Momentum from the seventh game

At 3-3, a set is close, and every game matters. This is especially true in men’s tennis, where breaks are hard to come by. Against many players, getting broken so late in the set is almost the same as losing the set.

However, the focus on the seventh game is a bit odd. It’s important, but not as important as serving at 3-4, or 4-4, or 4-5, or … you get the idea. The closer a game to the end of the set, the more important it is–theoretically, anyway. If 3-3 is really worth the hoopla, it must grant the winner some additional momentum.

To measure the effect of the seventh game, I took another look at that pool of 11,000-plus sets that reached three-all. For each set, I calculated the two probabilities–based on each player’s service points won throughout the match–that the server would win the set:

  1. the 3-3 server’s chance of winning the set before the 3-3 game
  2. his chance of winning the set after winning or losing the 3-3 game

In this sample of matches, the average server at three-all had a 48.1% chance of winning the set before the seventh game. The servers went on to win 49.4% of the sets [2].

In over 9,000 of our 3-3 sets, the server held at 3-3. These players had, on average, a 51.3% chance of winning the set before serving at 3-3, which rose to an average of a 57.3% chance after holding. In fact, they won the set 58.6% of the time.

In the other 2,300 of our sets, the server failed to hold. Before serving at three-all, these players had a 35.9% chance of winning the set, which fell to 12.6% after losing serve. These players went on to win the set 13.7% of the time. In all of these cases, the model slightly underestimates the likelihood that the server at 3-3 goes on to win the set.

There’s no evidence here for momentum. Players who hold serve at three-all are slightly more likely to win the set than the model predicts, but the difference is no greater than that between the model and reality before the 3-3 game. In any event, the difference is small, affecting barely one set in one hundred.

When a server is broken at three-all, the evidence directly contradicts the momentum hypothesis. Yes, the server is much less likely to win the set–but that’s because he just got broken! The same would be true if we studied servers at 3-4, 4-4, 4-5, or 5-5. Once we factor in the mathematical implications of getting broken in the seventh game, servers are slightly more likely to win the set than the model suggests. Certainly the break does not swing any momentum in the direction of the successful returner.

There you have it. Players hold serve about as often as usual at three-all (whether they’re serving with new balls or not), and winning or losing the seventh game doesn’t have any discernible momentum effect on the rest of the set [3]. Be sure to tell your friendly neighborhood tennis pundits.

Continue reading How Important is the Seventh Game of the Set?

Should Andy Murray Skip the Tour Finals to Prepare for Davis Cup?

After advancing to the Davis Cup final, Andy Murray floated the idea that he might skip the World Tour Finals to prepare. The Belgian hosts are likely to choose clay for November’s Davis Cup tie (in part to make Murray less comfortable), and if Murray reached the final round in London the week before, he would have only four days off to recover and adjust to the different surface.

A lot of factors will go into Murray’s ultimate decision: how much importance he gives each event, how much he thinks fatigue will affect him, and how likely it is that the ATP would sanction him for skipping a required event. For today, I’ll have to ignore all of those and focus on the one most amenable to analysis: The effect of switching surfaces right before a Davis Cup tie.

Shifting from one surface to another immediately before Davis Cup is common. From 2009 to the present, there have been just over 2,000 World Group, Group 1, and Group 2 Davis Cup singles rubbers, and almost 450 of those involved at least one player who had played the previous week [1] on a different surface. It’s very rare that both players switched surfaces, so we have a sample of 432 matches in which one player changed surfaces from the previous week, and the other player either played or (presumably) prepared on the same surface.

At the simplest level of analysis, the switchers have been surprisingly effective. In those 432 matches between switchers and non-switchers, the switchers won 275, or 63.6% of the time. When we narrow the sample to the 130 times the switcher reached at least the round of 16 the week before Davis Cup (and, thus, had even less time to adjust), the results are surprisingly similar: 82 wins, or 63.1% in favor of the switchers.

Of course, there are all sorts of biases that could be working in favor of the switchers. The better the player, the less likely he can change his schedule to better prepare for Davis Cup, leaving him stuck on the “wrong” surface the week before a tie. And the better the player, the more likely he was a switcher in the smaller sample, one of those who reached the round of 16 the week before.

To evaluate the effect of switching, then, we must proceed with more subtlety. If switchers are more likely to be the favorites, we need to consider each player’s skill level and estimate how often switchers should have won. To do that, we can use JRank, my player rating system with surface-specific estimates for each competitor.

Immediately, we lose about 15% of our sample due to matches involving at least one player who didn’t have a rating at the time [2]. These are almost all Group 2 matches, so its doubtful that we lose very much. In the slightly smaller pool of 361 matches, the switcher won 62.0%, and when the switcher reached the round of 16 the previous week, he won 60.0%.

JRank confirms that the sample is strongly biased toward switchers. The player changing surfaces was favored in 69.8% of these contests. To take an extreme example, Murray went from hard courts at the 2013 US Open to clay courts in the World Group playoff against Croatia. Against Borna Coric, who hadn’t played the week before, Murray was a 99.1% favorite, and of course he won the match.

Once we calculate the probability that the switcher won each of the 361 matches, it turns out that the switchers “should have” won 227, or 62.8% of the time. That’s almost indistinguishable from the historical record, when the switchers won 224 matches. In the smaller sample of 120 matches when the switcher reached the round of 16 the previous week, switchers “should have” won 72 matches. As it happened, they won exactly 72.

In other words, it doesn’t appear to be a disadvantage to play Davis Cup matches on an unfamiliar surface. JRank-based predictions are primarily based on “regular” matches, so if switchers are performing at the level that JRank forecasts for them, they’re playing as well as they would at, say, the third round of a Slam, when the surface is familiar.

This isn’t a clear answer to Murray’s dilemma, of course. If he plays, say, Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic in back-to-back three-setters on Saturday and Sunday, then travels to a different venue, handles tons of press, and practices with a different set of coaches and fellow players before a big match the following Friday, he faces more of a challenge than your typical surface-switcher in our dataset.

However, there’s little evidence that surface-switching alone is a good reason to skip the Tour Finals. If history is any guide, Murray will play very well on the Belgian clay–just as well as he would at the same venue in the middle of the clay season.

Continue reading Should Andy Murray Skip the Tour Finals to Prepare for Davis Cup?

The Pivotal Point of 15-30

According to nearly every tennis commentator I’ve ever heard, 15-30 is a crucial point, especially in men’s tennis, where breaks of serve are particularly rare. One reasonable explanation I’ve heard is that, from 15-30, if the server loses either of the next two points, he’ll face break point.

Another way of looking at it is with a theoretical model. A player who wins 65% of service points (roughly average on the ATP tour) has a 62% chance of winning the game from 15-30. If he wins the next point, the probability rises to 78% at 30-all, but if he loses the next point, he will only have a 33% chance of saving the game from 15-40.

Either way, 15-30 points have a lot riding on them. In line with my analysis of the first point of each game earlier this week, let’s take a closer look at 15-30 points–the odds of getting there, the outcome of the next point, and the chances of digging out a hold, along with a look at which players are particularly good or bad in these situations.

Reaching 15-30

In general, 15-30 points come up about once every four games, and no more or less often than we’d expect. In other words, games aren’t particularly likely or unlikely to reach that score.

On the other hand, some particular players are quite a bit more or less likely.  Oddly enough, big servers show up at both extremes. John Isner is the player who–relative to expectations–ends up serving at 15-30 the most often: 13% more than he should. Given the very high rate at which he wins service points, he should get to 15-30 in only 17% of service games, but he actually reaches 15-30 in 19% of service games.

The list of players who serve at 15-30 more often than they should is a very mixed crew. I’ve extended this list to the top 13 in order to include another player in Isner’s category:

Player                 Games  ExpW  ActW  Ratio  
John Isner             3166    537   608   1.13  
Joao Sousa             1390    384   432   1.12  
Janko Tipsarevic       1984    444   486   1.09  
Tommy Haas             1645    368   401   1.09  
Lleyton Hewitt         1442    391   425   1.09  
Tomas Berdych          3947    824   894   1.08  
Vasek Pospisil         1541    361   390   1.08  
Rafael Nadal           3209    661   713   1.08  
Pablo Andujar          1922    563   605   1.08  
Philipp Kohlschreiber  2948    652   698   1.07  
Gael Monfils           2319    547   585   1.07  
Lukasz Kubot           1360    381   405   1.06  
Ivo Karlovic           1941    299   318   1.06

(In all of these tables, “Games” is the number of service games for that player in the dataset, minimum 1,000 service games. “ExpW” is the expected number of occurences as predicted by the model, “ActW” is the actual number of times it happened, and “Ratio” is the ratio of actual occurences to expected occurences.)

While getting to 15-30 this often is a bit of a disadvantage, it’s one that many of these players are able to erase. Isner, for example, not only remains the favorite at 15-30–his average rate of service points won, 72%, implies that he’ll win 75% of games from 15-30–but from this score, he wins 11% more often than he should.

To varying extents, that’s true of every player on the list. Joao Sousa doesn’t entirely make up for the frequency with which he ends up at 15-30, but he does win 4% more often from 15-30 than he should. Rafael Nadal, Tomas Berdych, and Gael Monfils all win between 6% and 8% more often from 15-30 than the theoretical model suggests that they would. In Nadal’s case, it’s almost certainly related to his skill in the ad court, particularly in saving break points.

At the other extreme, we have players we might term “strong starters” who avoid 15-30 more often than we’d expect. Again, it’s a bit of a mixed bag:

Player                 Games  ExpW  ActW  Ratio  
Dustin Brown           1013    249   216   0.87  
Victor Hanescu         1181    308   274   0.89  
Milos Raonic           3050    514   462   0.90  
Dudi Sela              1066    297   270   0.91  
Richard Gasquet        2897    641   593   0.93  
Juan Martin del Potro  2259    469   438   0.93  
Ernests Gulbis         2308    534   500   0.94  
Kevin Anderson         2946    610   571   0.94  
Nikolay Davydenko      1488    412   388   0.94  
Nicolas Mahut          1344    314   297   0.94

With some exceptions, many of the players on this list are thought to be weak in the clutch. (The Dutch pair of Robin Haase and Igor Sijsling are 12th and 13th.) This makes sense, as the pressure is typically lowest early in games. A player who wins points more often at, say, 15-0 than at 40-30 isn’t going to get much of a reputation for coming through when it counts.

The same analysis for returners isn’t as interesting. Juan Martin del Potro comes up again as one of the players least likely to get to 15-30, and Isner–to my surprise–is one of the most likely. There’s not much of a pattern among the best returners: Novak Djokovic gets to 15-30 2% less often than expected; Nadal 1% less often, Andy Murray exactly as often as expected, and David Ferrer 3% more often.

Before moving on, one final note about reaching 15-30. Returners are much less likely to apply enough pressure to reach 15-30 when they are already in a strong position to win the set. At scores such as 0-4, 0-5, and 1-5, the score reaches 15-30 10% less often than usual. At the other extreme, two of the games in which a 15-30 score is most common are 5-6 and 6-5, when the score reaches 15-30 about 8% more often than usual.

The high-leverage next point

As we’ve seen, there’s a huge difference between winning and losing a 15-30 point. In the 290,000 matches I analyzed for this post, neither the server or returner has an advantage at 15-30. However, some players do perform better than others.

Measured by their success rate serving at 15-30 relative to their typical rate of service points won, here is the top 11, a list unsurprisingly dotted with lefties:

Player             Games  ExpW  ActW  Ratio  
Donald Young       1298    204   229   1.12  
Robin Haase        2134    322   347   1.08  
Steve Johnson      1194    181   195   1.08  
Benoit Paire       1848    313   336   1.08  
Fernando Verdasco  2571    395   423   1.07  
Thomaz Bellucci    1906    300   321   1.07  
John Isner         3166    421   449   1.07  
Xavier Malisse     1125    175   186   1.06  
Vasek Pospisil     1541    243   258   1.06  
Rafael Nadal       3209    470   497   1.06  
Bernard Tomic      2124    328   347   1.06

There’s Isner again, making up for reaching 15-30 more often than he should.

And here are the players who win 15-30 points less often than other service points:

Player                  Games  ExpW  ActW  Ratio  
Carlos Berlocq          1867    303   273   0.90  
Albert Montanes         1183    191   173   0.91  
Kevin Anderson          2946    377   342   0.91  
Guillermo Garcia-Lopez  2356    397   370   0.93  
Roberto Bautista-Agut   1716    264   247   0.93  
Juan Monaco             2326    360   338   0.94  
Matthew Ebden           1088    186   176   0.94  
Grigor Dimitrov         2647    360   341   0.95  
Richard Gasquet         2897    380   360   0.95  
Andy Murray             3416    473   449   0.95

When we turn to return performance at 15-30, the extremes are less interesting. However, returning at this crucial score is something that is at least weakly correlated with overall success: Eight of the current top ten (all but Roger Federer and Milos Raonic) win more 15-30 points than expected. Djokovic wins 4% more than expected, while Nadal and Tomas Berdych win 3% more.

Again, breaking down 15-30 performance by situation is instructive. When the server has a substantial advantage in the set–at scores such as 5-1, 4-0, 3-2, and 3-0–he is less likely to win the 15-30 point. But when the server is trailing by a large margin–0-3, 1-4, 0-4, etc.–he is more likely to win the 15-30 point. This is a bit of evidence, though peripheral, of the difficulty of closing out a set–a subject for another day.

Winning the game from 15-30

For the server, getting to 15-30 isn’t a good idea. But compared to our theoretical model, it isn’t quite as bad as it seems. From 15-30, the server wins 2% more often than the model predicts. While it’s not a large effect, it is a persistent one.

Here are the players who play better than usual from 15-30, winning games much more often than the model predicts they would:

Player             Games  ExpW  ActW  Ratio  
Nikolay Davydenko  1488    194   228   1.17  
Steve Johnson      1194    166   190   1.14  
Donald Young       1298    163   185   1.13  
John Isner         3166    423   470   1.11  
Nicolas Mahut      1344    172   188   1.09  
Benoit Paire       1848    266   288   1.08  
Lukas Lacko        1162    164   177   1.08  
Rafael Nadal       3209    450   484   1.08  
Martin Klizan      1534    201   216   1.08  
Feliciano Lopez    2598    341   367   1.07  
Tomas Berdych      3947    556   597   1.07

Naturally, this list has much in common with that of the players who excel on the 15-30 point itself, including many lefties. The big surprise is Nikolay Davydenko, a player who many regarded as weak in the clutch, and who showed up on one of the first lists among players with questionable reputations in pressure situations. Yet Davydenko–at least at the end of his career–was very effective at times like these.

Another note on Nadal: He is the only player on this list who is also near the top among men who overperform from 15-30 on return. Rafa exceeds expectations in that category by 7%, as well, better than any other player in the last few years.

And finally, here are the players who underperform from 15-30 on serve:

Player               Games  ExpW  ActW  Ratio  
Dustin Brown         1013    122   111   0.91  
Tommy Robredo        2140    289   270   0.93  
Alexandr Dolgopolov  2379    306   288   0.94  
Federico Delbonis    1110    157   148   0.94  
Juan Monaco          2326    304   289   0.95  
Simone Bolelli       1015    132   126   0.96  
Paul-Henri Mathieu   1083    155   148   0.96  
Gilles Muller        1332    179   172   0.96  
Carlos Berlocq       1867    256   246   0.96  
Grigor Dimitrov      2647    333   320   0.96  
Richard Gasquet      2897    352   339   0.96

Tentative conclusions

This is one subject on which the conventional wisdom and statistical analysis agree, at least to a certain extent. 15-30 is a very important point, though in context, it’s no more important than some of the points that follow.

These numbers show that some players are better than others at certain stages within each game. In some cases, the strengths balance out with other weaknesses; in others, the stats may expose pressure situations where a player falters.

While many of the extremes I’ve listed here are significant, it’s important to keep them in context. For the average player, games reach 15-30 about one-quarter of the time, so performing 10% better or worse in these situations affects only one in forty games.

Over the course of a career, it adds up, but we’re rarely going to be able to spot these trends during a single match, or even within a tournament. While outperforming expectations on 15-30 points (or any other small subset) is helpful, it’s rarely something the best players rely on. If you play as well as Djokovic does, you don’t need to play even better in clutch situations. Simply meeting expectations is enough.

How Important is the First Point of Each Game?

Italian translation at settesei.it

A common belief among players, coaches, and commentators is that the first point of each game is of particular importance. It’s often suggested that the first point sets the tone for the entire game.

Of course, winning the first point is better than losing it, but that’s not what I’m talking about.  Winning any point is better than losing it. If the first point is more important than the others, winning it would have to give a player even more of an advantage than the simple fact of having reached 15-0 instead of 0-15.

The difference between 15-0 and 0-15–apart from any momentum it generates–is a substantial one. Using a theoretical model that treats each point as independent, a player who typically wins 60% of service points will hold about 74% of the time, meaning that at love-all, they have a 74% of winning the game. At 15-0, that probability jumps to 84%. At 0-15, it’s only 58%.

To say that the first point is particularly important, then, is to say that the gap between winning and losing it is even greater than that. On the evidence of over 20,000 recent ATP and WTA matches, covering nearly half a million games, though, the first point is no more important than it should be. Except for, possibly, a few players and a few in-match situations, it gives no momentum to either player.

The basics

The broadest finding is perhaps the most surprising. Winning the first point fails to give the server any extra advantage, but losing the first point does. The results for ATP matches and WTA matches are the same. If the server loses the first point, he or she is then about one percent more likely to win the game than if points were truly independent of each other.

Naturally, this is not a recommendation that a server should lose the first point of any game! For our 60% server, winning the first point still improves her odds of a hold to 84%. But instead of the 58% chance at 0-15 that the theoretical model predicts, it’s really between 58.5% and 59%.

An effect of this size is not something that one would ever notice simply watching tennis matches. It probably doesn’t have any practical import, either. But over multiple very large samples of recent professional matches, the effect demonstrates that winning the first point of a game does not endow a player with any additional benefits.

Situations where it matters

In general, the first point is only as valuable as its immediate effect on the score. However, there are certain situations where winning it seems to give the server a bit more of an edge, or where losing it isn’t the disadvantage that it should be.

The latter situation is most pronounced. In both men’s and women’s tennis, servers outperform the theoretical model when serving down two breaks, at scores such as 0-4, 0-5, and 1-5. They beat the model to a much lesser, but still real, extent when serving down one break. This could be due to their acknowledgement that these games are “must wins,” or in the double-break situations, to a lack of effort on the part of the returner.

Regardless of the reason, with a double-break disadvantage, the effect of going down 0-15 is much less than in the model. Our 60% server, instead of facing a choice between an 84% chance of winning at 15-0 or 58% at 0-15, is looking at a 91% chance of winning at 15-0 or a 71% chance of winning at 0-15.

When serving with the break advantage, the situation is reversed, but it is much less pronounced. At scores such as 6-5 and 3-2, the model is a good predictor of win probability from 15-0, but servers underperform against the model from 0-15. The difference, though only a few percentage points, could be due to more aggression or focus on the part of the returner, or to the server feeling nerves.

At the majority of the most common scores, though, the effect of the first point is no different than the aggregate numbers, with the first point having almost no effect beyond the score.

Susceptible servers

There are a few players for whom the first point does seem to have an extra effect. These fall into two categories: players who fit the conventional wisdom, doing much better (compared to the model) from 15-0 than from 0-15, and those who are the opposite, reducing the gap between the likely outcomes from 15-0 and 0-15.

Among the 38 ATPers for whom I have more than 2,000 recorded service games, the player in the first category who sees the greatest first-point effect is Richard Gasquet. From 15-0, he beats the model by about one percent, but from 0-15, he underperforms by five percent. He’s the only male player whose gap between these two figures is more than five percent.

At the other end of the spectrum is Santiago Giraldo, who from 15-0 underperforms against the model by two percent, but from 0-15, beats the model by seven percent.

The rest of Giraldo’s category is where things get interesting. The other four players with a gap of four percent or greater are Feliciano Lopez, John Isner, Juan Martin del Potro, and Rafael Nadal. It’s no surprise to see two lefties here, as left-handers typically win more points in the ad court. Every other lefty in the dataset fits the same pattern, though their gaps are smaller.

The presence of big servers at this end of the list is a bit tougher to explain. Because they are so likely to hold in any given service game, perhaps they are sometimes unfocused on the first point of a game and become more serious after falling to 0-15.

Among WTA players, the distribution is about the same. The most extreme effect is on the serve of Sorana Cirstea, who, like Giraldo, is much more effective (compared to the model) from 0-15 than from 15-0. The other women in this category with more than a five percent gap are Flavia Pennetta, Ekaterina Makarova, and Ana Ivanovic.

At the other extreme, in Gasquet’s category, are Francesca Schiavone, Li Na, Julia Goerges, and Eugenie Bouchard, all of whom are about two percent more effective than expected from 15-0, and four percent less effective than expected from 0-15.

Conventional overstatement

As is so often the case, the conventional wisdom proves to have a grain of truth in it … sometimes, maybe, and to a much lesser extent than is generally claimed. Even the most extreme effect on tour, like that of Gasquet or Cirstea, doesn’t change the result of a game more than once every two or three matches.

The first point of a game is quite meaningful, because 15-0 is so much better than 0-15. But except for a few players and a few situations–some of which actually shrink the gap between 15-0 and 0-15–there’s little truth to the common claim that the first point is more important than its mere effect on the scoreline.

The Effects (and Maybe Even Momentum) of a Long Rally

Italian translation at settesei.it

In yesterday’s quarterfinal between Simona Halep and Victoria Azarenka, a highlight early in the third set was a 25-shot rally that Vika finished off with a forehand winner. It was the longest point of the match, and moved her within a point of holding serve to open the set.

As very long rallies often do, the point seemed like it might represent a momentum shift. Instead, Halep sent the game back to deuce after a 10-stroke rally on the next point. If there was any momentum conferred by these two points, it disappeared as quickly as it arose. It took eight more points before Azarenka finally sealed the hold of serve.

Does a long rally tell us anything at all? Does it have predictive value for the next point, or even the entire game, or is it just highlight-reel fodder that is forgotten as soon as the umpire announces the score?

To answer those questions, I delved into the shot-by-shot data of the Match Charting Project, which now contains point-by-point accounts of nearly 1,100 matches. I identified the longest 1% of points–17 shots or longer for women, 18 shots for men–and analyzed what happened afterwards, looking for both fatigue and momentum effects.

The next point

There’s one clear effect of a long rally: The next point will be shorter than average. The 10-shot rally contested by Vika and Simona yesterday was an outlier: Women average 4.45 shots on the point after a long rally, while the overall average (controlled for server and first or second serve) is 4.85. Men average 4.03 shots on the following point, compared to an average of 4.64.

For women, fatigue is also a factor for the server. Following a long rally, women land only 61.3% of first serves, compared to an average of 64.6%. Men don’t exhibit the same fatigue effect; the equivalent numbers are 62.3% and 62.2%.

There’s more evidence of an immediate fatigue factor for women, as well. The players who win those long rallies are slightly better than their opponents, winning 50.7% of points on average. Immediately after a long rally, however, players win only 49% of points.  It’s not obvious to me why this should be the case. Perhaps the player who won the long rally worked a bit harder than her opponent, maybe putting all of her remaining effort into a groundstroke winner, or finishing the point with a couple of athletic shots at the net.

In any case, there’s no equivalent effect for men.  After winning a long rally, players win 51.1% of their next points, compared to an expected 50.8%. That’s either a very small momentum effect or, more likely, a bit of statistical noise.

Both men and women double fault more often than usual after a long rally, though the effect is much greater for women. Immediately following these points, women double fault 4.7% of the time, compared to an average of 3.3%. Men double fault 4.5% of the time after a long rally, compared to an expected rate of 4.2%.

Longer-term momentum

Beyond a slightly effect on the characteristics of the next point, does a long rally influence the outcome of the game? The evidence suggests that it doesn’t.

For each long rally, I identified whether the winner of the rally went on to win the game, as Vika did yesterday. I also combined the score after the long rally with the average rate of points won on the appropriate player’s serve to calculate the odds that, from such a score, the player who won the rally would go on to win the game. To use yesterday’s example, when Azarenka held game point at AD-40, her chances of winning the game were 77.6%.

For both men and women, there is no significant effect. Women who won long rallies went on to win 66.2% of those games, while they would have been expected to win 65.7%. Men won 64.4% of those games, compared to an expected rate of 64.1%.

With a much larger dataset, these findings might indicate a very slight momentum effect. But limited to under 1,000 long-rally points for each gender, the differences represent only a few games that went the way of the player who won the long point.

For now, we’ll have to conclude that the aftereffects of a long rally have a very short lifespan: barely one point for women, perhaps not even that long for men. These points may well have a greater effect on fans than they do on the players themselves.