IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/jproda/v43y2015i2p119-131.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Game, set and match: evaluating the efficiency of male professional tennis players

Author

Listed:
  • Anthony Glass
  • Karligash Kenjegalieva
  • Jason Taylor

Abstract

We exploit the natural distinction between the attacking and defensive aspects of tennis to get a better understanding of the origins of relative inefficiency. Attacking is simply when a player is serving and defending is when a player is returning serve. We use data envelopment analysis to compute the attacking, defensive and overall efficiencies of the top 100 male professional players for the 2009 season. An analysis of the efficiency scores using non-parametric kernel smoothing suggests that there are four groups of players in the sample—those that are relatively efficient in attack and defence; those that are relatively inefficient in attack and defence; and those that are relatively efficient in attack or defence. Truncated regression equations for the technical and super attacking, defensive and overall efficiencies as a function of off-court variables (e.g. height, age, etc.) suggest that being a left-handed player has a significant positive effect on the overall efficiencies. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media New York 2015

Suggested Citation

  • Anthony Glass & Karligash Kenjegalieva & Jason Taylor, 2015. "Game, set and match: evaluating the efficiency of male professional tennis players," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 43(2), pages 119-131, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:jproda:v:43:y:2015:i:2:p:119-131
    DOI: 10.1007/s11123-014-0401-3
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11123-014-0401-3
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11123-014-0401-3?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Fried, Harold O. & Lambrinos, James & Tyner, James, 2004. "Evaluating the performance of professional golfers on the PGA, LPGA and SPGA tours," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 154(2), pages 548-561, April.
    2. Klaassen, Franc J.G.M. & Magnus, Jan R., 2009. "The efficiency of top agents: An analysis through service strategy in tennis," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 148(1), pages 72-85, January.
    3. Tone, Kaoru, 2002. "A slacks-based measure of super-efficiency in data envelopment analysis," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 143(1), pages 32-41, November.
    4. S Lozano & G Villa & F Guerrero & P Cortés, 2002. "Measuring the performance of nations at the Summer Olympics using data envelopment analysis," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 53(5), pages 501-511, May.
    5. Klaassen, Franc J. G. M. & Magnus, Jan R., 2003. "Forecasting the winner of a tennis match," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 148(2), pages 257-267, July.
    6. Adler, Nicole & Friedman, Lea & Sinuany-Stern, Zilla, 2002. "Review of ranking methods in the data envelopment analysis context," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 140(2), pages 249-265, July.
    7. Charnes, A. & Cooper, W. W. & Golany, B. & Seiford, L. & Stutz, J., 1985. "Foundations of data envelopment analysis for Pareto-Koopmans efficient empirical production functions," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 30(1-2), pages 91-107.
    8. Emili Tortosa-Ausina, 2002. "Bank Cost Efficiency and Output Specification," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 18(3), pages 199-222, November.
    9. Thomas Sexton & Herbert Lewis, 2003. "Two-Stage DEA: An Application to Major League Baseball," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 19(2), pages 227-249, April.
    10. R. D. Banker & A. Charnes & W. W. Cooper, 1984. "Some Models for Estimating Technical and Scale Inefficiencies in Data Envelopment Analysis," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 30(9), pages 1078-1092, September.
    11. Dieter J. Haas, 2003. "Productive efficiency of English football teams-a data envelopment analysis approach," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 24(5), pages 403-410.
    12. Klaassen F. J G M & Magnus J. R., 2001. "Are Points in Tennis Independent and Identically Distributed? Evidence From a Dynamic Binary Panel Data Model," Journal of the American Statistical Association, American Statistical Association, vol. 96, pages 500-509, June.
    13. Charnes, A. & Cooper, W. W. & Rhodes, E., 1978. "Measuring the efficiency of decision making units," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 2(6), pages 429-444, November.
    14. Mark Walker & John Wooders, 2001. "Minimax Play at Wimbledon," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(5), pages 1521-1538, December.
    15. Timothy Anderson & Gunter Sharp, 1997. "A new measure of baseball batters using DEA," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 73(0), pages 141-155, October.
    16. Sueyoshi, Toshiyuki & Ohnishi, Kenji & Kinase, Youichi, 1999. "A benchmark approach for baseball evaluation," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 115(3), pages 429-448, June.
    17. Simar, Leopold & Wilson, Paul W., 2007. "Estimation and inference in two-stage, semi-parametric models of production processes," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 136(1), pages 31-64, January.
    18. Tone, Kaoru, 2001. "A slacks-based measure of efficiency in data envelopment analysis," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 130(3), pages 498-509, May.
    19. Carlos Pestana Barros & Stephanie Leach, 2006. "Performance evaluation of the English Premier Football League with data envelopment analysis," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 38(12), pages 1449-1458.
    20. Cooper, W.W. & Ruiz, José L. & Sirvent, Inmaculada, 2009. "Selecting non-zero weights to evaluate effectiveness of basketball players with DEA," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 195(2), pages 563-574, June.
    21. Karl W. Einolf, 2004. "Is Winning Everything?," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 5(2), pages 127-151, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Oleg Badunenko & Harald Tauchmann, 2019. "Simar and Wilson two-stage efficiency analysis for Stata," Stata Journal, StataCorp LP, vol. 19(4), pages 950-988, December.
    2. Isidoro Guzmán-Raja & Manuela Guzmán-Raja, 2021. "Measuring the Efficiency of Football Clubs Using Data Envelopment Analysis: Empirical Evidence From Spanish Professional Football," SAGE Open, , vol. 11(1), pages 21582440219, February.
    3. Yi-Chieh Chen & Lin-Huan Hu & Wan Chen Lu & Jei-Zheng Wu & Jiun-Jen Yang, 2021. "Multiple Criteria Decision-Making for Developing an International Game Participation Strategy: A Novel Application of the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) Two-Stage Efficiency Process," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 9(14), pages 1-16, July.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Plácido Moreno & Sebastián Lozano, 2014. "A network DEA assessment of team efficiency in the NBA," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 214(1), pages 99-124, March.
    2. José L. Ruiz & Diego Pastor & Jesús T. Pastor, 2013. "Assessing Professional Tennis Players Using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA)," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 14(3), pages 276-302, June.
    3. Pelloneová Natalie, 2023. "Evaluating Hockey Players Using Andersen and Petersen's Super-Efficiency Model: Who is the Best Czech Hockey Player in the NHL?," Polish Journal of Sport and Tourism, Sciendo, vol. 30(3), pages 23-28, September.
    4. Lewis, Herbert F. & Lock, Kathleen A. & Sexton, Thomas R., 2009. "Organizational capability, efficiency, and effectiveness in Major League Baseball: 1901-2002," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 197(2), pages 731-740, September.
    5. Mai, Nhat Chi, 2015. "Efficiency of the banking system in Vietnam under financial liberalization," OSF Preprints qsf6d, Center for Open Science.
    6. Villa, G. & Lozano, S., 2016. "Assessing the scoring efficiency of a football match," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 255(2), pages 559-569.
    7. Ester Gutiérrez & Sebastián Lozano, 2014. "A DEA Approach to Performance-Based Budgeting of Formula One Constructors," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 15(2), pages 180-200, April.
    8. I. García-Sánchez, 2007. "Efficiency and effectiveness of Spanish football teams: a three-stage-DEA approach," Central European Journal of Operations Research, Springer;Slovak Society for Operations Research;Hungarian Operational Research Society;Czech Society for Operations Research;Österr. Gesellschaft für Operations Research (ÖGOR);Slovenian Society Informatika - Section for Operational Research;Croatian Operational Research Society, vol. 15(1), pages 21-45, March.
    9. Torben Tiedemann & Tammo Francksen & Uwe Latacz-Lohmann, 2011. "Assessing the performance of German Bundesliga football players: a non-parametric metafrontier approach," Central European Journal of Operations Research, Springer;Slovak Society for Operations Research;Hungarian Operational Research Society;Czech Society for Operations Research;Österr. Gesellschaft für Operations Research (ÖGOR);Slovenian Society Informatika - Section for Operational Research;Croatian Operational Research Society, vol. 19(4), pages 571-587, December.
    10. An‐Pang Wang & Che‐Wei Chang & Juin‐Ming Tsai & Shiu‐Wan Hung, 2021. "A performance evaluation of Major League Baseball teams: An integrated social network and data envelopment analysis," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 42(6), pages 1421-1434, September.
    11. Halkos, George & Tzeremes, Nickolaos, 2012. "Evaluating professional tennis players’ career performance: A Data Envelopment Analysis approach," MPRA Paper 41516, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. Chih-Hai Yang & Hsuan-Yu Lin & Chiang-Ping Chen, 2014. "Measuring the efficiency of NBA teams: additive efficiency decomposition in two-stage DEA," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 217(1), pages 565-589, June.
    13. Liu, John S. & Lu, Louis Y.Y. & Lu, Wen-Min, 2016. "Research fronts in data envelopment analysis," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 33-45.
    14. Rafael Benítez & Vicente Coll-Serrano & Vicente J. Bolós, 2021. "deaR-Shiny: An Interactive Web App for Data Envelopment Analysis," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(12), pages 1-19, June.
    15. Mushtaq Taleb & Ruzelan Khalid & Ali Emrouznejad & Razamin Ramli, 2023. "Environmental efficiency under weak disposability: an improved super efficiency data envelopment analysis model with application for assessment of port operations considering NetZero," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 25(7), pages 6627-6656, July.
    16. Thomas Sexton & Herbert Lewis, 2012. "Measuring efficiency in the presence of head-to-head competition," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 38(2), pages 183-197, October.
    17. Lampe, Hannes W. & Hilgers, Dennis, 2015. "Trajectories of efficiency measurement: A bibliometric analysis of DEA and SFA," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 240(1), pages 1-21.
    18. Dina A. M. Miragaia & João J. M. Ferreira & Cédric T. Vieira, 2024. "Efficiency of Non-profit Organisations: a DEA Analysis in Support of Strategic Decision-Making," Journal of the Knowledge Economy, Springer;Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET), vol. 15(1), pages 3239-3265, March.
    19. Muliaman Hadad & Maximilian Hall & Karligash Kenjegalieva & Wimboh Santoso & Richard Simper, 2011. "Banking efficiency and stock market performance: an analysis of listed Indonesian banks," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 37(1), pages 1-20, July.
    20. Nikos Chatzistamoulou & Kounetas Kostas & Antonakis Theodor, 2022. "Salary Cap, Organizational Gap, and Catch-up in the Performance of NBA Teams: A Two-Stage DEA Model Under Heterogeneity," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 23(2), pages 123-155, February.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Tennis; Data envelopment analysis; Super efficiency; Truncated regression; C69; L83;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C69 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Mathematical Methods; Programming Models; Mathematical and Simulation Modeling - - - Other
    • L83 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - Sports; Gambling; Restaurants; Recreation; Tourism

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:jproda:v:43:y:2015:i:2:p:119-131. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.