Top 20 ATP Serve Accuracy & speed

[jimlosaltos]

Top 20 Comparison of Avg. 1st Serve Speed Avg. 1st Serve Accuracy

5 of the Top 20 made finals last week, see image for a comparison with their tournament averages...

Serve Accuracy is the average landing distance from the side / Centre line. (excluding body serves)

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[stroke]

Very interesting, not at all surprised about Hubie.

[stroke]

https://youtu.be/Xw-l2vCaJ6M?si=3YanM-hMuXNBSlUU

Maybe a guy to watch for. 6'8" lefty.

[jimlosaltos]

https://youtu.be/Xw-l2vCaJ6M?si=3YanM-hMuXNBSlUU

Maybe a guy to watch for. 6'8" lefty.

Playing left-handed should be illegal

But thanks for sharing <g>

[stotty]

Accuracy being the tougher stat to truly know for sure. I mean, how does the computer know where the player is aiming? A player is not always aiming for the lines or close to the lines!

[jimlosaltos]

Jeff Sackman at Heavy Topspin revisits his attempts over the years to quantify speed vs accuracy and their impact on serving. (linked)

From regression analysis:

"Approximately, then, one additional mile per hour is worth the same as two centimeters of accuracy. The height of the graph--110 to 130 mph--represents a variation of nearly 9 percentage points of first-serve points won. The width--70 to 52cm--represents a range of 3.6 percentage points. Broadly speaking, speed remains more important than accuracy, though a particular player might find it easier to improve precision than power.

"Just one example of what the numbers are telling us: De Minaur has won 72.8% of his first-serve points over the last year, compared to the top-ten average of 75.3%. If this model were to hold true--a big if, as we'll discuss shortly--that's a gap he could close by improving precision by about 12 cm, to a tick better than tour average.

And:

"For this group of players over the last 52 weeks, speed is by far the most important factor in first-serve success. Speed alone--ignoring accuracy or anything else--explains 72% of the variation in first-serve points won. Accuracy alone accounts for 43%. (The players who are good at one thing are often good at others, so most of those 72% and 43% overlap.) 43% might sound like a lot, but isn't that far ahead of something as fundamental as height, which explains 33% of the variation.