In August 2015, the spotlight had not yet discovered 17-year-old American Taylor Fritz. He was No. 685 in the Emirates ATP Rankings and had lost in the first round of US Open qualifying to No. 123 Luca Vanni 6-3, 6-3. Fritz won only three points against the Italian’s first serve, four against his second serve, and was not able to generate a single break point. And then everything changed. The American won 11 straight matches and strung together four impressive results in four months: Oct. 2015: Won $100K Challenger, Sacramento, California Oct. 2015: Won $50K Challenger, Fairfield, California Nov. 2015: Finalist $50K Challenger, Champaign, Illinois Jan. 2016: Won $75K Challenger, Onkaparinga, Australia Fritz’s ranking jumped from No. 685 to No....
Opportunity is multiplied the more you are exposed to it. In the 2015 season, Alexander Zverev played just 5,166 points on tour. That more than doubled to 11,156 this season, creating opportunities from St. Petersburg, Russia, where he won his first ATP World Tour title, to Halle and Nice, where he reached the final. More than double the amount of points played naturally filtered down to more than double the amount of points won, rising from 2,507 in 2015 to 5,683. His season-ending position in the Emirates ATP Rankings skyrocketed from 85 in 2015 to 24 in 2016, with a season-high of 20 in October 2016. Double the points played. Double the points won, and more than double the match...
In 2015, Milos Raonic lost serve only 39 times in 49 matches. Not enough. In 2016, the 6’5” Canadian was broken 86 times in 69 matches. Now we are talking. Raonic ended 2015 ranked 14 in the world in the Emirates ATP Rankings, and just completed the 2016 season with his career best ranking of No. 3. On the surface, getting broken more than twice as much in 2016 than 2015 seems counter-intuitive to such dramatic improvement. It’s not. In fact, basically everything from a serving standpoint slightly declined in 2016 compared to 2015 for Raonic, but to focus only on his service games would be the same as not being able to see the forest for the trees. What’s...
Twenty years ago was the golden age of the big server. Players such as Goran Ivanisevic, Pete Sampras, Richard Krajicek and Boris Becker dominated during an unprecedented period of first-serve dominance, the mid- to late 1990s. Today, it’s superiority behind the second serve that has risen to prominence as players look to climb the Emirates ATP Rankings. An Infosys ATP Beyond The Numbers analysis of first- and second-serve win percentages beginning in 1991, when such statistics were first kept in tennis, to the 2016 season, shows a clear and dramatic transition of where players are excelling to begin the point. Performance categories were created with the following criteria: First-serve points won at 80 per cent or higher; Second-serve points won...
Break points are the kingmakers in a tennis match. They are the moments in time that carry the most weight, the most influential points to the final outcome. Saving break points when serving will once again go a long way in anointing the king of the Barclays ATP World Tour Finals this month. An Infosys ATP Beyond The Numbers analysis of saving break points for the Elite Eight during the 2016 season identifies three critical areas to watch: percentage of break points saved behind a first serve, behind a second serve, and the percentage-point gap between between the two, which highlights just how critical it is for players to make their first serve in this crucible of the 2016 season....