{"id":1972,"date":"2016-01-29T13:35:35","date_gmt":"2016-01-29T13:35:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/?p=1972"},"modified":"2016-01-29T13:35:35","modified_gmt":"2016-01-29T13:35:35","slug":"is-milos-raonics-return-game-improving","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/2016\/01\/29\/is-milos-raonics-return-game-improving\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Milos Raonic’s Return Game Improving?"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s no secret that Milos Raonic<\/a>‘s return game is a liability. He has reached the game’s elite level with a dominant serve, and he broke into the top five on the strength of a historically-great record in tiebreaks.<\/p>\n

Last year, Raonic’s tiebreak record fell back to earth<\/a> (as these things usually do<\/a>) and he dropped out of the top ten. Now, in a new season with a new coach, Carlos Moya<\/a>, Raonic reeled off nine straight victories<\/a>, finally losing in five sets to Andy Murray<\/a> in today’s Australian Open semifinal.<\/p>\n

Until today’s match, when\u00a0Raonic won a dismal 25% of return points<\/a>, the numbers were looking good. Milos won 36.5% of return points in his four matches in Brisbane, which is a little bit better than the 35% tour average on hard courts. With his serve, he doesn’t need to be a great returner; simply improving that aspect of his game to average would make him a dominant force on tour.<\/p>\n

This is a crucial number to watch, because it could be the difference between Milos becoming number one in the world and Milos languishing in the back half of the top ten. It’s incredibly rare<\/a> that players with weak return games are able to maintain a position at the very top of the rankings.<\/p>\n

Through the quarterfinals in Melbourne, the positive signs kept piling up.\u00a0For each of his 2016 opponents, I tallied their 2015 service points won on hard courts. In 6 of 10 matches this month, Milos kept their number below their 2015 average.\u00a0In a 7th match, against Gael Monfils<\/a>, he was one return point away from doing the same.<\/p>\n

By comparison, in 2015, Raonic held hard-court opponents to their average rate of service points won only 9 times in 35 tries. Even in his career-best season of 2014, he did so in only 15 of 41 matches.\u00a0Even with the weak return numbers against Murray, this is Raonic’s best ever 10-match stretch, by this metric.<\/p>\n

The difference is more dramatic when we combine all these single-match measurements into a single metric per season. For each match, I calculated how well Milos returned relative to an average player against his opponent that day.\u00a0For example, against Murray today, he won 25% of return points compared to an average hard-court Murray opponent’s 33.7%. In percentage terms, Raonic returned 26% worse than average.<\/p>\n

Aggregating all of his 2016 matches, Raonic has returned 6% better<\/em> than average. In 2015 hard-court matches, he was 10% below average; in 2014, 3% below average, and in 2013, 7% below average.<\/p>\n

A nine-match stretch of good form is hardly proof that a player has massively improved half of his game, but it’s certainly encouraging. While all know that Milos is an elite server, it’s his return game that will determine how great he becomes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s no secret that Milos Raonic‘s return game is a liability. He has reached the game’s elite level with a dominant serve, and he broke into the top five on the strength of a historically-great record in tiebreaks. Last year, Raonic’s tiebreak record fell back to earth (as these things usually do) and he dropped … Continue reading Is Milos Raonic’s Return Game Improving?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[97],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-return-stats"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1972","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1972"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1972\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}