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A Gender Gap in Tennis Serving Strategy: What College and Recreational Data Tell Us

A Persistent Pattern Across All Levels Research published in 2023 found that men’s professional tennis players served more like pure theory would predict than women. For pro women's first serves in particular, the researchers showed that 45% of the time women demonstrated different win percentages when serving to their opponents’ left and right sides, compared to essentially never for pro men. Does This Pattern Hold at Lower Levels? At Next Level Stats, we partnered with Swi

1 day ago2 min read

Second Serves: Where Game Theory Goes Out the Window

The Second Serve Paradox Across nearly every level of tennis that we’ve studied at Next Level Stats via an exceptional dataset made available by SwingVision , one pattern refuses to disappear: servers overwhelmingly favor hitting to the returner’s left side, which usually means returners are forced into a backhand shot. This tendency shows up on most serves, but it becomes especially pronounced on second serves, when pressure rises and margin matters most. (note: earlier res

3 days ago3 min read

Why College Players Are More Predictable Than Rec Players

The Switching Pattern That Gives You Away In addition to choosing the right balance of wide and T serves, a sophisticated tennis player has to also think about their patterns of serving to each side of the service box. As discussed ( here ), professional tennis players are hitting wide and T with the right overall balance. But a really good returner (maybe an Andre Agassi or Iga Swiatek) could still exploit detectable patterns–think wide, wide, wide, T, T, T. And indeed, res

5 days ago3 min read

The (Economic) Lives of College Tennis Players

What Gauriot et al. Found in Professional Tennis When researchers analyzed nearly 500,000 professional tennis serves, they discovered something remarkable: professionals (especially the men with more dominant serves) played almost perfectly according to game theory in economics. Specifically, they served both to the left and right side of the returner often enough that they equalized their probabilities of winning the point on either side. From Gauriot, Page and Wooders (202

6 days ago2 min read

🎾 Pt 4 - What happens at different levels of the competitive ladder — and how a player's skills shape the structure of a match.

This is the last in a series on differences in how tennis matches play out at different levels of the sport. I compare women’s and men’s recreational matches, Division 1 college matches, International Tennis Federation events, and WTA/ATP tour level events. Data can tell great stories: here’s one of them. Four Key Takeaways 1. Rally patterns peak in length at the college level. College matches have longer rallies than both recreational and pro matches: players are skilled en

Nov 6, 20254 min read

🎾 Pt 3 - What happens at different levels of the competitive ladder — and how a player's skills shape the structure of a match.

This is the third in a series on differences in how tennis matches play out at different levels of the sport. I compare women’s and men’s recreational matches, Division 1 college matches, International Tennis Federation events, and WTA/ATP tour level events. Data can tell great stories: here’s one of them. Rally Structure: How Long Are Points, Really? If we zoom out from individual shots to the flow of entire rallies, a similar pattern emerges: as skill rises to the highest l

Nov 1, 20254 min read

🎾 Pt 2 - What happens at different levels of the competitive ladder — and how a player's skills shape the structure of a match.

This is the second in a series on differences in how tennis matches play out at different levels of the sport. I compare women’s and men’s recreational matches, Division 1 college matches, International Tennis Federation events, and WTA/ATP tour level events. Data can tell great stories: here’s one of them. Serve Dynamics: Risk and Reward At every level, the serve is tennis’s first and most direct test of a player’s skill level. It is also a balance of risk versus reward. The

Oct 27, 20253 min read

🎾 What happens at different levels of the competitive ladder — and how players' skills shape the structure of a match.

This is the first in a series on differences in how tennis matches play out at different levels of the sport. I compare women’s and men’s recreational matches, Division 1 college matches, International Tennis Federation events, and WTA/ATP tour level events. Data can tell great stories: here’s one of them. Point Outcomes What changes in the structure of points as a match level climbs from recreational to professional? We often talk about speed, power, and consistency, but few

Oct 23, 20254 min read

How Do Data Analytics Complement Coaching?

Your coach can't always be at your match. And no one can see the difference between a 3% improvement in your serve percentage or a 3%...

Sep 1, 20251 min read

Bring Your Game to the Next Level with Data-Driven Insights

Data analytics have been used in professional tennis for years. Aryna Sabelenka might be the most vocal professional about her use of...