IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/pal/jorsoc/v63y2012i12p1765-1772.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Optimal challenges in tennis

Author

Listed:
  • S R Clarke

    (Swinburne University of Technology, Victoria, Australia)

  • J M Norman

    (Sheffield University Management School, Sheffield, UK)

Abstract

The use of technology in sport to assist umpires has been gradually introduced into several sports. This has now been extended to allow players to call upon technology to arbitrate when they disagree with the umpire's decision. Both tennis and cricket now allow the players to challenge a doubtful decision, which is reversed if the evidence shows it to be incorrect. However, the number of challenges is limited, and players must balance any possible immediate gain with the loss of a future right to challenge. With similar challenge rules expected to be introduced in other sports, this situation has been a motivation to consider challenges more widely. We use Dynamic Programming to investigate the optimal challenge strategy and obtain some general rules. In a traditional set of tennis, players should be more aggressive in challenging in the latter stages of the games and sets, and when their opponent is ahead. Optimal challenge strategy can increase a player's chance of winning an otherwise even five-set match to 59%.

Suggested Citation

  • S R Clarke & J M Norman, 2012. "Optimal challenges in tennis," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 63(12), pages 1765-1772, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:jorsoc:v:63:y:2012:i:12:p:1765-1772
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.palgrave-journals.com/jors/journal/v63/n12/pdf/jors2011147a.pdf
    File Function: Link to full text PDF
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: http://www.palgrave-journals.com/jors/journal/v63/n12/full/jors2011147a.html
    File Function: Link to full text HTML
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

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

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Kendall, Graham & Lenten, Liam J.A., 2017. "When sports rules go awry," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 257(2), pages 377-394.
    2. Nadimpalli Vamsi K. & Hasenbein John J., 2013. "When to challenge a call in tennis: A Markov decision process approach," Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports, De Gruyter, vol. 9(3), pages 229-238, September.
    3. repec:taf:rpanxx:v:17:y:2017:i:6:p:961-969 is not listed on IDEAS

    More about this item

    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:pal:jorsoc:v:63:y:2012:i:12:p:1765-1772. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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.palgrave-journals.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.