IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/rpanxx/v8y2008i3p70-78.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Importance of Service in Grand Slam Singles Tennis

Author

Listed:
  • G. Peter O’Donoghue
  • Emily Brown

Abstract

It is established that the serving player wins more points in elite tennis than the receiving player. However, it is not certain whether the advantage of serve relates to the number of aces and serve winners that are played, or if the server’s advantage persists as rallies go to 3 or more shots. Data from 214 serving performances of at least 36 points were used from Grand Slam singles tennis matches played in 2007. In men’s singles, the advantage of serve still existed in points of 3 to 4 shots on first serve but not on second serve. On second serve, men lost the advantage of serve once the rally reached a third shot. By contrast in women’s singles, the advantage of serve was lost after the first 2 shots of the rally when the first serve was in and there was no significant serve advantage when a second serve was required. The first serve in men’s singles tennis at Grand Slam tournaments gives the server such an advantage that the 62.4% of points of 3 to 4 shots that are won is significantly greater than the 49.7% of points won if the rally lasts for 5 or more shots.

Suggested Citation

  • G. Peter O’Donoghue & Emily Brown, 2008. "The Importance of Service in Grand Slam Singles Tennis," International Journal of Performance Analysis in Sport, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 8(3), pages 70-78, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:rpanxx:v:8:y:2008:i:3:p:70-78
    DOI: 10.1080/24748668.2008.11868449
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/24748668.2008.11868449
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/24748668.2008.11868449?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.

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Silvia Montagna & Vanessa Orani & Raffaele Argiento, 2021. "Bayesian isotonic logistic regression via constrained splines: an application to estimating the serve advantage in professional tennis," Statistical Methods & Applications, Springer;Società Italiana di Statistica, vol. 30(2), pages 573-604, June.
    2. Alexandru Nicolae Ungureanu & Corrado Lupo & Paolo Riccardo Brustio, 2022. "Padel Match Analysis: Notational and Time-Motion Analysis during Official Italian Sub-Elite Competitions," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(14), pages 1-11, July.
    3. Iván Prieto-Lage & Adrián Paramés-González & Juan Carlos Argibay-González & Xoana Reguera-López-de-la-Osa & Santiago Ordóñez-Álvarez & Alfonso Gutiérrez-Santiago, 2022. "Match Analysis in Women’s Tennis on Clay, Grass and Hard Courts," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(13), pages 1-13, June.
    4. Chacoma, Andrés & Billoni, Orlando V., 2023. "Probabilistic model for Padel games dynamics," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 174(C).
    5. Juan Pedro Fuentes-García & Jesús Díaz-García & Miguel Ángel López-Gajardo & Vicente Javier Clemente-Suarez, 2021. "Effects of Combined HIIT and Stroop on Strength Manifestations, Serve Speed and Accuracy in Recreational Tennis Players," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(14), pages 1-9, July.
    6. Borooah, Vani, 2022. "The Importance of the Serve in Winning Points in Tennis: A Bayesian Analysis Using Data for the Two winners of the 2019 French Open Singles," MPRA Paper 113069, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Alejandro Sánchez-Pay & José Pino-Ortega & David Sanz-Rivas, 2023. "Influence of Successive Wheelchair Tennis Matches on Handgrip Strength in High-Level Male Players," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 20(6), pages 1-10, March.
    8. Alejandro Sánchez-Pay & Rafael Martínez-Gallego & Miguel Crespo & David Sanz-Rivas, 2021. "Key Physical Factors in the Serve Velocity of Male Professional Wheelchair Tennis Players," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(4), pages 1-10, February.
    9. Zhou, Yunjing & Zong, Shouxin & Cao, Run & Gómez, Miguel-Ángel & Chen, Chuqi & Cui, Yixiong, 2023. "Using network science to analyze tennis stroke patterns," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 170(C).

    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:taf:rpanxx:v:8:y:2008:i:3:p:70-78. 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: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RPAN20 .

    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.