Dissecting the Data

podcasts Jul 11, 2020

Marc Sophoulis

Thanks for joining us with Crunching the Numbers, Shane Liyanage and myself, Marc Sophoulis are here to talk a little bit about where the game is at currently in the game of tennis. Being a coach out there in the field I totally understand where we're all going and parents and players are out there trying to have a crack at this game and it is quite challenging. But when you dissect it and you actually look at the facts of the game, there are some things that really stand out. So Shane, thanks for being part of this. Obviously, we've got a bit to go through in this first little episode of Crunching the Numbers. So, what have we got for today?

 

Shane Liyanage

Thanks guys. Yeah great to be here with Marc on this segment. I thought I'd start by actually setting the scene. There's actually not a massive difference between winning points for a top 10 player and a player outside the top hundred. If you dissect the numbers, a top 10 player is winning just under 53%, whereas a player outside the top hundred is averaging about 48.2%. So that's not a lot. There's not a lot of points in a set. So these little things actually make a massive difference. I thought we'd start with that - An interesting point. Rafael Nadal on clay. You ask most people how dominant he's been. How many points do you think he wins on average on clay?

 

Marc Sophoulis

Interesting, because he's been very dominant on the clay court. He is the clay court king. And where is he at at the moment in terms of points won on clay?

 

Shane Liyanage

He's only winning 56.3%. I say "only", that's actually quite exceptional. But it just shows that winning the key points are quite critical. And what we're going to get into in this segment,we'll start diving into different elements of data that can just add a little bit to increase that points won in a match.

 

Marc Sophoulis

I think the biggest thing with data and Shane, obviously we've been working together for a while now. But the thing with data is that for me, it's factual. One thing as a coach, I've always been based on opinion and trying to rely on my eyes to give me what I think is actually happening. But when you point out to me things like Nadal has only won 56% of the points he plays on clay, but yet he's been so dominant, I think for me what stands out is the fact that we as coaches and players need to be able to let go of the points we're losing. We're almost losing 50% of the points more often than not when we're playing. So I guess the mental side of the game really comes into those sort of stats and facts that you're bringing up right now. So obviously, 56% of the points, why is it though that he's been so dominant? Where do you see the dominance coming from?

 

Shane Liyanage

It's his ability to win the key points. So for me, Nadal is quite exceptional at winning the 30-30 points, the deuce points. Under pressure, he wins those points. So he might lose 48% of other points. But when it comes to that critical moment, he's dialed in and he'll play that a bit better. And he does that by being quite aggressive with his forehand. So he's got that heavy forehand. He's got nice clearance. He has the margins, but he can be quite aggressive and he'll take court position away on those big points.

 

Marc Sophoulis

I think that's a really good point, because what I feel like Nadal does really well is he plays to his strengths. And it's something that I talk to my athletes a little bit about. I know a lot of coaches out there will be saying the same to their players - is it's important to play to your strengths. And Nadal does it really well. And I think he uses two things for mine that go really well. It's the serve out wide, the slice serve being a left hander out the backhand corner and then he really opens up the court and utilizes that forehand as much as he possibly can. We probably don't have the stats on how many forehands he hits to backhand, but I would say that the ratio would be quite high in that respect. So is there anything else? The critical moments you talk about, is there certain moments that you feel are more important than others? Is there a certain score that you have in mind that you talk about? What's your critical moment points?

 

Shane Liyanage

So for me, I chart something called "Under Pressure Points". It's a deciding set tiebreak, it's deuce points, break points and points when you're trailing in a set, serving to stay in the match. Behaviour in those points is something I chart. I've actually got statistics on this, but Novak Djokovic is the best performer in those points. He wins close to fifty eight per cent of those points and that's through being more aggressive. So taking his game to a more aggressive level than he would play on normal points. And that's done him great wonders. If you look at the Wimbledon final last year facing match points, he took it to Federer. It wasn't that Federer gave him unforced errors. Djokovic took it to him. And there's a great video if you want, watch his US Open, I think it's a 2010 or 2011 semifinal. Again, facing match points against Federer, Novak Djokovic hits a ridiculous winner. That to me shows that he'll take the game on under pressure.

 

Marc Sophoulis

Yeah, I think that's a really good point you make, because I think the best players back themselves in the big moments, and that's why they are the best players, because they take a little bit of risk. But the risk for them is "well, if I don't go, my opponent is going to go instead". Federer, Djokovic, Nadal are probably the three that obviously stand out as being the dominant players over the last decade. When we talk about taking the game on, they actually all take the game on very differently. You've got the baseline and the heaviness of Nadal. You've got the incredible defense of Novak Djokovic. And you've got the ability that Roger Federer has to be able to change the game and vary it up. Three totally different game styles. What do you find watching those three players from a data perspective and analysis perspective? What do you find that they all do really well and very similar, even though they're very different?

 

Shane Liyanage

I find they all kill you quite early on in the rally. So the 0-4 rally is a category that they actually dominate. And you're right, they do it in very different ways. Nadal takes court position away from you, particularly on clay. You end up going further and further behind the baseline. And he is just setting you up and he'll come in as well now. He's not afraid to volley. Djokovic, I think I've never seen anyone from a defensive position be so attacking. But again, he does very well early in the rally and that's something over the last four, five years he's really stepped up as well. And Roger, he can hit any shot and he's got the creativity to do a lot of things. But again, he doesn't want to be playing nine plus rallies with you. He wants to get you quite early on and get into a very attacking position on the court.

 

Marc Sophoulis

You talked a little bit there in your conversation Shane, around the 0-4. There's three kinds of categories now that we're all talking about in the coaching field. And obviously watching matches, there's a 0-4 category. So zero shots to four shots. There's the 5-8 shots and then there's 9+ rallies. Why are they becoming so significant? What are you taking from that data? What's your understanding and what's your explanation for why the 0-4 has become so much more important? And why should we, as coaches and players and obviously parents be focusing a little bit more on that 0-4 ratio?

 

Shane Liyanage

One of the key stats is an average rally in a match of tennis (and ranges on the surface and on the ATP and WTA tour as well). But it's around 4.2 - 4.4 shots. So 0-4 rally categories isncredibly important because a lot of points fall within that range. If you break it up into the 0-4 or 5-8 and 9+, it is the majority of points played in a match. Sometimes your memory kind of makes you remember the longer points, but they are fewer and far between. So you want to concentrate on where you can get the majority of points in your match and we go back to that early stat about winning 53% of points gets you in the top 10. If you can focus on winning the most points, that's where your attention should be.

 

Marc Sophoulis

You've hit the nail on the head there. As a coach now, I've changed my philosophy in the way I go about it. But the 0-4 has become so much more important because isn't the stat that 70% of points on average finish within four shots? So if we're thinking of that as a coach, obviously we've got to change the way that we structure our training sessions more based around the serve and return.

 

Shane Liyanage

Absolutely. The +1, the +2 shots after the serve and return are incredibly important. The coaches should be encouraging their players to take that ball on and be aggressive with it.

 

Marc Sophoulis

I guess it comes down to obviously where the player is both serving and returning to be able to set that up. I think we can't really get a player to dictate on the +1 or +2 shot if they haven't really set the point up. So I guess the patterns of play, and you probably see this more often than not with the top players, they have really similar and very basic patterns of play from the serve and the return to be able to set that up. And being able to hit your spot is critical.

 

Shane Liyanage

If you look at Nadal for instance on clay, but on every surface, he'll go at a right hander's backhand almost as the first play, and then he'll look for a forehand and then he'll go either way. Whether he goes back to your backhand or goes to the open court. His patterns will be centered around hitting a forehand on that second shot.

 

Marc Sophoulis

Question without notice Shane. I was really interested and we did a little bit of a blog on this on our website, The Tennis Menu regarding Rafael Nadal's new service action and the increased amount of speed that he was getting at that time. You can correct me if I'm wrong. And it's obviously a question without notice here. But we look at Nadal was roughly 90% of balls on the +1 as a forehand prior to him changing the service action. Now he's only hitting roughly between 70 to 80 percent. Is it because of the increased ball speed? And is there any data based on that?

 

Shane Liyanage

Look, I haven't dived into it in too much detail and just on the service motion itself, Nadal has tinkered with his serve a number of times. So not this year's Australian Open last year. That's when he made the adjustment and he gained a noticeable increase particularly on the second serve. And you're right, he wasn't getting as many forehands on the +1 ball. Part of that for me was I think there was more ball speed. So the opponent's return did come a bit quicker. But he was actually more aggressive on the backhand, on that +1 ball as well, which is something he's changed since the start of his career. I think once it got to the clay court season, he did revert back to that old service motion and that was around hitting a chain of 3 forehand. If Nadal can hit a chain of 3 forehands on clay, he wins close to 90% of points. It's absurd.

 

Marc Sophoulis

That's a good stat. I think you've spoken to me about this before - the chain and sequence of points. If you use your strength two or three times in a rally, you're going to have more of a chance of winning the point, so these guys build their game based on those sort of data and numbers. Nadal, you said to me before we came onto this podcast, we spoke a little bit about how Nadal is notorious for winning all these points when he uses his forehand. Is that something that you imprint into coaches and to players to say to them: "hey this is a chain or sequence of shots you've got to use to be able to win more points".

 

Shane Liyanage

Yeah, absolutely. In scouting as well. Some of the work I do, I look at your best pattern, your player's best pattern and your opponent's best pattern. One, how can we make sure you get to play the pattern that you want to play? And two, if your opponent is playing a particular pattern, how do you break it? We go back to that Nadal example and some of the success that Novak's had. He breaks that pattern with Nadal by going hard into his forehand first and then going to Nadal's backhand. Part of that is because of that pattern.

 

Marc Sophoulis

The biggest thing we're going to take out of today hopefully for those who are listening out there is that the most important part of tennis is understanding that we're not going to win every point. That it's a very, very close percentage between the players that are in the top 10 and the top 100 and outside the top 100. And that we've got to understand that we are going to lose points. It's the mindset side of things for me is the most critical part of that. The second point that I think we can take from it is the 0-4 rally ratio that I think we need to focus a lot more on as players and coaches. So if we're out there and we're practicing to make sure that we're actually practicing our serve+1 or our return +1 and being able to set up the points in those 0-4 kind of ratios. With the work that you do, can you explain to the listeners out there what you do, where you do it from, the company that you work with? Obviously, you're a bit of a freelancer. We work together a lot. But give us a little bit background of where you're at.

 

Shane Liyanage

Yes. So the company which I founded and work at is Data Driven Sports Analytics, we collect data in a couple of different ways. So some of the players that we work with, they pay for Hawkeye data and we use that for analysis. Most of the players that I work with, they have their match video and we tag it using a couple of different softwares. And with the data from that tagging, we produce various reports and dashboards and tailored reports. In terms of the use of stats I think it's it's actually become quite significant. A lot of the top 20 players either get some sort of data analysis or an analysis support from outside companies or their federations. So I think it's certainly the next four or five years it's going to be an area where most players will have someone with data capability within their team. So I think it's it's an important part as well for grassroots tennis to start incorporating using some data, using some sensors, using some video vision to improve your game.

 

Marc Sophoulis

Thanks Shane for that. It's a  really important part of what I do. What you have done for me as a coach and what we continue to do together. And you use the word team. I consider you part of my team. And I think we all need to put teams around our athletes to ensure that they're getting the best information and the best support, because it is a lonely sport out there tennis. We're putting hopefully some really good building blocks around our players at the moment. Thanks for joining me today. Obviously we're we've been working together a little while now and we'll continue to push this out there because I think it's important for coaches, players and parents to understand. And tennis lovers to understand what is going on behind the scenes of every athlete and some great data, some great knowledge you've imprinted. So I do appreciate your time.

 

Shane Liyanage

Thanks guys. Thanks for listening. Thanks Marc.

 

Marc Sophoulis

No worries. Pleasure. And brought you by The Tennis Menu, which is a company that I've co-founded over the last few years, which will be bringing to you some development tools as well as some data from Shane to help develop your athletes and take you to the next level. Thanks for joining us here on Crunching the Numbers with Shane and Marc and I look forward to speaking to you guys shortly again and bringing you some of the next phase of our data.

 

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