Friday, December 19, 2014

Speed Isn't Everything: Tennis Serve

In sports such as baseball and tennis, athletes tend to improve on pitch speed and serve speed. And it is important to have enough speed, however, it may not be everything you need to have when it comes to professional sports. We analyzed more than 200 match stats from this year's Grand Slam (Australian, French, Wimbledon, and US opens). We have found that the winners' average 1st serve speed was about 183km/hr and also that the losers served about 183km/hr on average. The 2nd serve speed was 149km/hr for the winners and 148km/hr for the losers. What was different between winners and losers were that the winners won about 77% of their 1st serve and the losers won only 65%. Also the winners won 56% of their 2nd sere points and the losers won only 45% of them. This tells us that serve speed was not everything in those Grand Slam matches. There has to be something else that matters other than the speed. Ball location, serving strategy, and ground stroke, etc etc. This just tells us that serve speed isn't everything in tennis and probably the same for sports such as baseball at least in a professional level.

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