Here’s the trouble with jotting down the details of every single shot in a tennis match: When you’re done, you have details about every single shot in the tennis match.
If you saw my post yesterday presenting serve profiles for Federer and Zemlja, you already have some idea of what I’m talking about. When you can chop up each player’s performance a thousand different ways, it seems like a waste to ignore any possibility.
Here we go again.
I charted tonight’s match between Brian Baker and Lleyton Hewitt, two of the more electric baseliners in today’s game. Hewitt doesn’t have much of a serve, and while Baker can crush his share of aces, he’s rarely consistent enough to shut down his opponent’s return game.
Here’s all the data I could think to generate regarding their return games tonight.
(Seriously, click the link. I’m only writing this post as an excuse to show off what’s on the other side of that link.)
Here are some tidbits of interest I’ve noted from the data:
- Hewitt is remarkably consistent, winning about the same number of return points in the deuce and ad courts, and against all types of serves except for those down the T. (As we saw yesterday, Federer got almost all of his aces down the T, and that is probably true for most players. Thus, returners will look weak in that category.)
- Baker didn’t take much advantage of shallow returns. Hewitt won more than half of the points in which he failed to get the return past Baker’s service line.
- While Baker did a better job of hitting deep returns (80% past the service line), he wasn’t nearly as successful (winning only 29% of points) when his returns fell in the service box. That’s probably a credit to Hewitt more than a knock on Baker.
- Neither player sliced or chipped returns unless they absolutely had to. Baker sliced less than 10% of his returns, and Hewitt barely 5% of his.
- Baker loves his down-the-line backhand. His five down-the-line return winners accounted for half of his total return winners, and they also represent half of his down-the-line returns.
Go look at the tables, let your eyes adjust for a minute, and then tell me if you find anything else interesting.