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The analysis of serve decisions in tennis using Bayesian hierarchical models

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Abstract

Anticipating an opponent’s serve is a salient skill in tennis: a skill that undoubtedly requires hours of deliberate study to properly hone. Awareness of one’s own serve tendencies is equally as important, and helps maintain unpredictable serve patterns that keep the returner unbalanced. This paper investigates intended serve direction with Bayesian hierarchical models applied on an extensive, and now publicly available data source of professional tennis players at Roland Garros. We find discernible differences between men’s and women’s tennis, and between individual players. General serve tendencies such as the preference of serving towards the Body on second serve and on high pressure points are revealed.

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Notes

  1. Serves that were impeded by the net and have no bounce locations.

  2. An example: https://www.infosys.com/roland-garros/match-centre-3d.html?matchId=SM001&year=2020&tournamentId=520&matchDate=2020-10-11.

  3. Men’s: https://www.atptour.com/en/players/ ; Women’s: https://www.wtatennis.com/players/.

  4. For example, player-specific slow speeds versus fast speeds.

  5. There may be some mixed strategy implications here with Djokovic seemingly more willing to randomise his serve direction options; at least, more so than Federer.

  6. Strategy where players follow their serve immediately towards the net.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science, Simon Fraser University, 8888 University Drive, Burnaby, BC, V5A1S6, Canada

    Peter Tea & Tim B. Swartz

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  1. Peter Tea
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  2. Tim B. Swartz
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Correspondence to Tim B. Swartz.

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Both Tea and Swartz have been partially supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. The Canadian Statistical Sciences Institute (CANSSI) Collaborative Research Team in Sports Analytics has also partially supported the research. The authors thank three anonymous reviewers whose comments have improved the manuscript.

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Tea, P., Swartz, T.B. The analysis of serve decisions in tennis using Bayesian hierarchical models. Ann Oper Res 325, 633–648 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10479-021-04481-7

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