Marc Sophoulis
Thanks for joining us again here on Crunching The Numbers. You have Marc Sophoulis and Shane Liyanage. Welcome once again.
Shane Liyanage
Hi, guys. Hopefully you've had a good week. Marc and I are actually doing this podcast 40 kilometres apart. It's kind of the new norm now, where social distancing has come into play and it's really important that we all do our part to try and flatten the curve in this new world.
Marc Sophoulis
It is the world we're living in and hopefully everybody is keeping safe at home at the moment as we are trying to do also. But thanks again for joining us, Shane. Obviously today we've got a bit of a different topic based around the data on gender differences and similarities in the game of tennis. So do you wanna give us a bit of a rundown of what you're thinking about? And obviously some of the data that you've produced based on how we've got to coach each of the genders very differently.
Shane Liyanage
Yeah, absolutely. And what triggered me it sort of look into this was a couple of things. I'd worked a lot with male athletes in the past and over the last six months, I've started working more on teams of female athletes. And I found that the difference is quite challenging and a steep learning curve. So I've been fortunate enough to have you sort of guide me through some of the work that we've done together. I think later in this podcast, I'm going to throw some some data and statistics in front of you on the differences and similarities in the men's and women's games. It would be great for you to explain to our listeners or give them some context on why you think the numbers fall that way. But first, what are your thoughts on high level differences on coaching a male and female athlete?
Marc Sophoulis
So Shane, yeh obviously with coaching on tour for the last 20 years and both on probably the ATP and WTA Tour, I found a lot of the time coaching male and female is very different, not only on the court but also off the court. So I'm hoping that, you know, with your numbers as well, we can probably give the audience a little bit of an idea as to how to coach the genders differently. Why we need to coach them differently? And obviously what the game is asking us at that level. So if you want to start first with maybe some of your data and we can then elaborate as to how that sort of hopefully resonates with the audience.
Shane Liyanage
Yeah, absolutely. Look, the data we're using is based on four years of data that I've collected from the ATP and WTA in various work. And I might start with the serve and return. So there's a very interesting graphic and we'll share it online on The Tennis Menu a bit later. But it shows that the majority of the top hundred women, they are winning over 30 percent of return games, whereas there's only a handful of men that actually win 30 percent of return games. And then when you flip it, the majority of male players win over 75 percent of service games. But there's only a handful of women that win 75 percent or more of service game. So let's start there.
Marc Sophoulis
Yeah, that's a huge stat. I think the real difference in the games is obviously from the serve. And it's interesting being on tour. I've actually had WTA players practice with ATP players. They'll be on the court and there is no difference when you're getting into the hitting off the ground side of things. So they can hit with each other, you know, baseline of baseline, crosscourt, all that sort of stuff. As soon as you throw the serve in, that's where the differences do lie. And I guess your numbers are telling us that, with what you're saying about the women winning no more than 30 percent of return games and then men probably not. I think that's a really huge stat. Is there any difference between top 100 men and top 10 men that you might also some data on?
Shane Liyanage
Yeah, the guys at the top 10, they're at the very top in terms of return games won for the men's side. When you compare to players outside there's very few that are outside the top 10 that are in that sort of echelon of return games won for the men's side. So I'm going to throw some names out there as well. Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer, Daniil Medvedev on the men's side and Serena Williams, Ash Barty, Karolina Pliskova, Petra Kvitová, and Naomi Osaka on the women's. These players not only serve well, win a high percentage of service games, but also win a high percentage of return games. And they sort of buck the trend compared to the others in the top hundred on their respective tours.
Marc Sophoulis
That's interesting because obviously they're all in the top 10, right?
Shane Liyanage
Yeah, exactly.
Marc Sophoulis
So I guess the difference between you know, what we're seeing in the top 10 and the rest, and it's about the consistency. All those players you did mentioned, have been at the top of the game for a period of time. And that's just probably evidence as to why the serve and return is so critical to winning matches.
Shane Liyanage
So let's move on to the next set of data and its serve directions - first serve and we're assuming that the serve is going to a right hander. What I noticed here was the tee serve was heavily used by both the WTA and the ATP tour and it's around forty two percent, irrespective of whether it's on the deuce side or the ad side. The biggest difference seems to lie between the two tours, was the WTA there's a bigger use of the body serve. So about a quarter of first serves, irrespective of the deuce or the ad side are body serves. Whereas less than 20 percent on the ATP for a first serve. Then obviously the flip side to that is that on the ATP there's more wide serves being used as a first serve option. Can you explain that Marc?
Marc Sophoulis
That's a good question. The wide serve on the ATP is interesting. For me, that would be a ploy for players to be able to take the the opponent to their strength first and then open up the backhand side. That's how I see it from a from a generic perspective. It could be completely different. It might just be slightly tactical. It might be the forehand return has more of a rounded, kind of westernish kind of grip, and they can probably expose that a little bit with the faster serve and spread them out wide. But, you know, there's probably no one answer for that, but I'm guessing it's to open up the space to the backhand corner and then be able to utilize the run around forehand after that. So, it's interesting you say that because I feel like I've always coached my women players, female players, to expose the forehand return on their counterparts because the forehand of the female is generally the the weakest side in terms of error count. So it's quite an interesting stat. I don't know if there's anything else to back that up from your perspective, but I would have thought it would've been the other way round.
Shane Liyanage
It's interesting. Yeah. Just to add in there - that was serves to a right-hander. And the other question that I had on it as well was the body serve's used more in the WTA tour. Do you think that's using a flatter, faster body serve as opposed to the men using a lot more kick on that body serve?
Marc Sophoulis
I think the women are trying to expose the movement capabilities of each other. So basically when you have bigger kind of girls who struggle to get out of the way of the body serve and won't be able to have a big swing on those returns. I feel like if you can jam a female player up a little bit into the body and actually get a shorter reply, you can spread them a lot easier on the second ball. Whereas if you sort of give them the ball out wider, which is like a tee or wide serve you give them an opportunity to swing. Therefore if they've got a chance to swing, the ball may come back a little bit bigger and they'll be able to pressure you instead of you having the first strike in the rally.
Shane Liyanage
Now, on the second serve (and I wont read out everything), but the biggest difference is the women on both the deuce and the ad side are using about 50% of body serves, whereas the men spread it a bit more across tee, body and wide. Any reason for that?
Marc Sophoulis
I think maybe a little bit of the reasoning in the men's is that men are trying to run around and utilize the forehand weapon a little bit more. So therefore, the server tries to keep you honest a little bit, they'll slide out wide. Hopefully not let you run around or jam you into the body so you can't have time. They'll kick a couple, obviously, to try and get the ball up on the backhand. But female side is probably a little different. They're not looking to run around as many times as the men. They're happier to use the backhand side as a weapon as well. So I guess that's probably why the females are a little bit different than the males. But, you know, males like to mix it up a lot. They've got a bigger repertoire of serve. The females are built a little differently where they're stronger through the hips. So if you give a girl a chance to strike at the ball, they're going to really crack it. The men want to make sure they keep you guessing, they keep you honest. They mix it up a lot of the time. Males like to just dominate with pure power and strength and they'll utilize their forehand as much as possible. So, yeah, it's an interesting kind of statistic. Is there any statistics based on winning percentage on second serve compared to first?
Shane Liyanage
I've got a high level one. And it just shows the women are winning close to 50% off second serve returns and the men are winning about 44%. I'll take it on notice and for our listeners next week, I'll get a bit of a breakdown by direction as well. Yeah, it seems that the women are winning more second serve return points as well.
Marc Sophoulis
So they're winning more on the return rather than the serve?
Shane Liyanage
Yes.
Marc Sophoulis
Yeah. That to me that doesn't surprise me. I feel like it's a little bit genetic here. This is why it's a great topic I think Shane is because the females have a much better slice serve than they do kicks serve. Genetically through the hips they obviously like to rotate more, so they rotate around as opposed to leaning back as the males do and hit that big kick serve. So the ball itself doesn't have many chances to be buried from a female perspective. So therefore, it sits in the true zone of the returner. Whereas the males can actually slide the ball, kick the ball and jam it up pretty hard. So I guess that's where the differences lies is in the genetic build up of a male versus a female serve.
Shane Liyanage
Well I might move on to return positions and this one was incredibly interesting to me. I've got three categories: First is greater than 1.5 meters inside the baseline. Then I've got: On the baseline and then: Greater than 1.5 meters behind the baseline. The women, there's about 5% that are returning a first serve more than 1.5 meters inside the baseline. The men, it's about 0.7. Then right on the baseline, about 70% of the WTA are returning very close to the baseline, whereas only 48% on the men's. And then the majority of the men are actually more than 1.5 meters behind the baseline, whereas it's about 25% for women.
Marc Sophoulis
That's an interesting stat. I really like court position based stats because it shows what the game is actually telling you it is. Basically the men's game obviously is a big serving game. If you're standing on or in baseline, you are reducing your time to be able to swing and be able to penetrate the court off the return. Females love the ball speed. So girls don't have the speed of serve the men do. So they generally like to stand up in the court. They've got flatter based grips. They try and take the ball speed off the serve and try to counterpunch that and utilize the ball speed. Whereas the men sit back and hope that they're going to look at a second serve to be able to step in. But if not, they try and utilize standing back to give themselves more time to be able to then penetrate the court. And probably on the flip side of that. What a return is, is trying to return well enough to have the ability to get a first strike in the rally. I think that's the key to anything in this game at the moment, is serve to get the first strike, return to get the first strike. Don't just serve the ball and don't just return the ball. We've got to return to or serve to positions where we can look to strike on the first shot. Whoever gets first strike at the highest level of the game is basically winning points.
Shane Liyanage
I won't go into all the stats, but on the second serve nearly 20 percent of the WTA are returning more than 1.5 meters inside the baseline. A very aggressive return position, whereas less than 5% of the men are. That probably goes back to some of the things that Marc was saying. Next one I thought we'd look at is the use of the slice. Double handed men and women slice about the same. But a single handed female athlete's slicing about 20.5% of the time off their backhands and male athletes nearly 39%. Can you explain some of those differences?
Marc Sophoulis
Good question. And a good comment you do make as well, because there are not many female single handers anymore. I think we're down to two or three in the top 100. So obviously there are going to be reduced numbers. The males, I'm thinking there's about 15 or so in the top 100 at the moment. When you look at numbers like that, it's a good question. The men obviously like to vary the game a bit more than the females.The best thing about the female game at the moment is Ash Barty. She's bringing that variation to the game and having the ability to slice the ball and also mix up what she's trying to do. Females don't see that often. So therefore, it's a great tactic for her. She probably has a great success rate when using the slice as well, which is obviously something we could tap into at another point. But she would have a great success rate.
I think if you think of the men side of the game, someone like Roger Federer with his single hand backhand, varies the game extremely well. So I guess the single handed backhand, you need to have variation. The double headed backhand players are generally a bit weaker through the right arm, which means that they wont slice as much, especially in defense. Defensively, they'll try and probably bunt the backhand or counterpunch the backhand a little bit more. So that answers your question.
Shane Liyanage
Now, I thought we'd look at some directional data and first I look at the backhand. So on the women's tour, about 17.5% go down the line, 36.1% hit down the middle and 46.6% hit crosscourt. If you look at the men, about the same on down the line, down the middle is a bit less than that at 29% and then crosscourt is significantly more at 53.4%. Any reason why the backhand directions would be like that?
Marc Sophoulis
That's a very good question. My theory straight away is that male players will try and get the ball backhand cross to backhand cross to then be able to run around the forehand. That to me is where they want to play. The female players really like changing direction with the backhand side. They'll play maybe one cross and then change direction straight away, whereas the men will probably go two or three looking to really try to run around that forehand. So that's where I see the big difference in the male and female game. Although the women are really utilize the forehand to generate and obviously create some big winners and using their weapon as well. But the men want to use the forehand to be in offence. Girls are quite happy to sit there and drive a backhand down the line. Males will be more inclined to go backhand cross and utilize the forehand to change direction. And that's the old sword versus shield. The sword is the forehand, the shield the backhand. Backhand won't miss, forehand creates. Whereas females can generally create offense in both shots.
Shane Liyanage
And interestingly, you touched on the forehand being a bit more similar and the data actually shows that where the directional use is actually a lot more similar with the forehand than with the backhand. Still, the cross court's probably the only one where there's a slight difference, but it's not as stark as it is with the backhand side.
Marc Sophoulis
Yeah, absolutely. The forehand's definitely the one that we as male players look to a lot more.
Shane Liyanage
I thought we might end on behavior under pressure and really comparing the ATP and WTA tours on the data that we've got in terms of how a player responds and plays under pressure. Just to remind our listeners how we define the pressure - it's points that are 30-30 or deuce, facing a break point in a tie break. When we talk about behavior, we're really talking about three different states. You're either more aggressive than your baseline or you're more conservative than your baseline, or you play about the same. In terms of the calculation and the analytics behind it, we do have an algorithm which takes into account a number of factors, including proximity to the line, changes in direction, shot creativity, court position, and movement forward. But the underlying theme of the calculation is: you are more aggressive if you're the one in control of the point, it's on your racquet. So when we looked at the results, more than 31% of the WTA are more aggressive under pressure than throughout the rest of the match. About 40% stayed the same. This is sort of flipped around on the ATP. About 37.9% stayed the same under pressure. So the same as their baseline, but nearly 40% were more conservative. So why do you think that is Marc and did you really expect that to be the case?
Marc Sophoulis
No, it doesn't surprise me. The female game is definitely a first strike game as well now. But they have the ability because of their court position to penetrate and win points quicker. They stand up the court. They're a bit flatter through the ball, whereas the men like to hit heavier and sit back a little bit and have more rounded grips. So it does it doesn't surprise me much. But at the end of the day, they're two very different ball games. And I challenge our listeners to go away and watch a male match versus a female match and watch court position and watch what players do on serve and what they do on return and see the differences in between those. It's a very interesting topic for me, is the male was female and obviously it stems into coaching a little bit as well. We would love to be able to spend hours on this podcast, but we're going to continually break them up into smaller parts and share with you our thoughts and share with you our data and the reason behind why the data is. So Shane once again, thanks for your work. What you put into the research of all these podcasts is incredible.
Data Driven Sports Analytics is where you're at and people can find you there on all social media platforms. And obviously through The Tennis Menu, we'll be doing our own podcast and our own data breakdown of the matches and what we expect of our players and how we need to coach them from there. So I do appreciate your time Shane as always, and thanks for being involved again.
Shane Liyanage
Thanks everyone. Thanks Marc.
Marc Sophoulis
My pleasure. Thanks very much for joining us again here on Crunching the Numbers. And we'll be back next week to preview some more stats and obviously with no tennis around we'd love to keep you up to date with what's happening in the world of tennis. So thanks for joining us.
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