Every week, Tennis Analytics dives deep into the data, bringing you a stat of the week to help you understand tennis better and become a little smarter.
For the month of March, we will compare key stats of the pros vs college players.
Have you ever wondered what the differences are between pro and college players?
We looked at over 388,000 points (ATP – 213,391, NCAA-M – 174,619) from 2022 to 2023 to see what the differences are on strength of serve.
While 1st Serve % was very similar, Pros were 5% better than College players on both 1st Serve Points Won (71% vs 66%), and also on Aces (12% vs 7%).
Interesting, is that there was a similar but inverse pattern on 2nd Serve numbers. Pros served 3% fewer double faults, but won 3% more points on 2nd Serve than College men.
Are serve numbers any different on the Women’s side? Next week we will look at the serve stats for WTA and NCAA-W players.
Serve strength dictates a player’s development pathway. Generally, the better you serve, the bigger a fish you are in your pond. And the more likely it will be that you will end up in a bigger pond.
The Return though is the spoiler.
Return numbers work inversely to serve numbers – the better you return, the “worse” your opponent serves. If I win 50% of all 2nd Returns, the Server wins the remaining 50%. But if I will just 1% more on return, the gap is actually 2%. I now win 51%, while my opponent drops to 49%.
1% makes a big difference in our sport.
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