Breaking down the Deuce and Advantage side in Tennis

Looking through the eyes of Strategy Analyst Mike James

(Inspired by the podcast episode #71: “Navigating, Interpreting & Implementing Data in tennis” w. Mike James on The Adam Blicher Show — Dissecting High Performance in tennis)

Everybody can see statistics nowadays on the TV and everybody can find stats on players on different websites. My job as a strategy analyst is to take those numbers and look at them.

How do they affect the tactical side of the game?

How do they ultimately make the player win?

When I’m doing scouting reports for players the most important is breaking down the Deuce and the Advantage side of the court. You don’t win tennis matches unless you win at the end of some thing. The end of the game, the end of the set, the end of the match. So the advantage side of the court from the score point of view, you have 0–40. 40–0, 40–30 30–40, Advantage in, advantage out. So you have all of those score situations that create the opportunity to end the game, the set and the match.

On the Deuce side, the only time you have that, is 15–40, 40–15, 50, so 77 % of breakpoints come on the advantage side of the court. So for me now, when we’re talking about looking at winning plays and winning information, the advantage sides of the court is where the match is finished. The Deuce side of the court is the setup side.

If we coded 100 matches, 70 percent of points would be between 0–4 strokes. So serve +1 and return + 1.

So for the server we really are looking heavily at:

1. Where the serve goes
2. What type of shots are you hitting on the next ball?
3. Was it a forehand or backhand?
4. Are you in attack, neutral or defence?

Whether you’re female or male, you’re looking to hit a serve that is going to allow you to play a forehand and make you in control of the rally. So you need to know what direction the serve goes in which situation that’s going to allow you to be most effective. Working with players, we can take seasoned data and find out how well are they hitting that wide serve on the Deuce side, but also how well are they hitting at a 15–40 is there a difference?

For the returner:

1. Are we getting the ball in play enough
2. Were we putting the ball in the zone to create the best opportunity to break serve?

The return is interesting because you have the option to drive the ball, block the ball or you can back up like Rafa, Thiem or Stan is doing on the 2nd serve. You can come inside the baseline like Roger is doing. You can slice the ball as well as hitting with a lot of spin. All of these things are linked to game style and the strategy that you want to play on the surface, in the conditions on the day.

We play a sport where there is no home venue like a soccer team. So every week you’re using different balls, different surfaces and there might be a different altitude. All of these things affect how you want to play.

The numbers tend to be the same in certain situations. We know 70 % of returns on the ATP tour come back into play. We know 80 % on the WTA come back into play.

When and where you are putting the ball are the key parts of information with each player that makes a difference.