(Inspired by the podcast episode #71: “Navigating, Interpreting & Implementing Data in tennis” w. Mike James on The Adam Blicher Show — Dissecting High Performance in tennis)

One thing that gets misconstrued at the moment and I want to clear this up is that now coaches are going:

“The matches are 0–4 strokes. I’m not going to train volume.”

I don’t believe in training volume when I see academies and players training with rallies that have got a tempo of 30–40 balls before they have a break. However, I don’t believe in just training the serve and the first ball and feeling like we’re going to get that done.

Let’s take Stan Wawrinka against Novak Djokovic. When they play their 0–4 zone falls to around 55 %. So it drops down 15 % from the 70% average 0–4 zone. So they are playing more medium rallies (5–8 strokes), which you’re considering a secondary pattern in rallies, because the first pattern is the 0–4 zone.

Additionally, I haven’t got the actual numbers to back it up yet, but when we get to a key point, and we can argue now what is a key point, when there’s more pressure or pressure point, for me, the rally zone goes up a lot more. So maybe because there’s more at stake serve + 1 does not happen so much.

Instead we’re getting into these medium to long rally zones on the big points. I haven’t got numbers to back it up. That’s a feeling I’m going to find out over the next 12 months.