ACADEMY
That’s the yardstick. That’s where the conversation starts. So you can imagine my utter disbelief to discover that Roland Garros in 2016 was right in the same ballpark. The way we talk about clay, the way we romanticise about long, grinding, gruelling, lactic-acid- inducing rallies, I thought there was no possible way that it could be anywhere close to hard-court metrics. But. They. Were. This was when I first knew that the clay-court myths did not match the metrics. What makes the length of rallies rise and fall each year? The truth is, there are several variables, but the leading four areas that have the most influence are: 1. The style of the players going deep in the tournament. Typically, players like Rafael Nadal, Andy Murray, Novak Djokovic, Gilles Simon and Gael Monfils have a tendency to play longer points, though not by as much as you would think. 2. The weather. Hotter weather promotes a faster ball, and a little help for the server, therefore potentially helping the zero-to-four-shots rally count rise a touch. Keep in mind, 2016 at Roland Garros was wet and cold and damp and miserable, whereas 2017 was much hotter. 3. The court surface. If the court is playing slower, then longer rallies have the potential to become more abundant as players find it tougher to put the ball away. 4. The balls. There are a few different balls used on tour. How they fluff up and how heavy they can become after a few games is also something that players talk about when analysing match conditions.
record, 66.9 per cent of rallies lasted a maximum of four shots. Or to put it another way, slightly more than two out of every three points at Roland Garros that year ended with either player hitting a maximum of just two balls in the court. Amazing. Right around the same time, the US Open was in the process of slowing its tournament down by making sure the paint with which the courts were resurfaced had a very healthy supply of sand. The amount of sand in the paint definitely has an effect on the ball, making the court surface feel like sandpaper when you rub your hand on it. The tournaments were within a tenth of a percentage point of each other in the 5-8 shot rally range (21.3 per cent to 21.2 per cent), while Roland Garros featured 1.2 per cent more points of nine shots or more (11.9 per cent to 10.7 per cent). This data was a huge wake-up call for me. All was not what it seemed in the world of clay-court tennis.
RALLY LENGTHS AT 2017 ROLAND GARROS AND US OPEN
Rally length
RG 2017
US Open 2017
0-4 shots
70.7 per cent
67.8 per cent
5-8 shots
19.4 per cent
21.1 per cent
9+ shots
10 per cent
11 per cent
This is where the bomb drops on traditional clay- court thinking. This is where match analytics from the biggest clay-court tournament in the world are in direct conflict with the traditional clay-court mantra. There was a significantly higher percentage of rallies of four shots or fewer at Roland Garros in 2017 than at the US Open in 2017. Wow! “First-strike” tennis surged to 70.7 per cent of all points in Paris - an increase of 3.8 percentage points. What caused that? My guess is the hot weather and players such as Kevin Anderson, Marin Cilic, Milos Raonic and Dominic Thiem playing in the second week of the tournament. At Roland Garros in 2017 there were 46 matches where 70 per cent or more of the rallies were four shots or fewer. At the 2017 US Open, there were only 41 such matches. There were 20 matches at Roland Garros in 2017 where 79 per cent or more of the rallies were four shots or fewer, but there were only three of those at the US Open in 2017.
Roland Garros 2016/17/18 and US Open 2016/17/18: how the men’s singles rally lengths compared
RALLY LENGTHS AT 2016 ROLAND GARROS AND US OPEN
Rally length
RG 2016
US Open 2016
0-4 shots
66.9 per cent
68 per cent
5-8 shots
21.2 per cent
21.3 per cent
9+ shots
11.9 per cent
10.7 per cent
These numbers blew me away. At one of the wettest, coldest, heaviest Roland Garros tournaments on
93
Made with FlippingBook Digital Publishing Software