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Australian Open serves up big data as new stats for fans

The Australian Open, once the clear laggard among the four Grand Slam tennis tournaments, has regained its luster by expanding relentlessly and taking chances.

It was the first major tournament to build a stadium with a retractable roof and is now the first with three such stadiums. This year, it will become the first Grand Slam event to sell a small block of on-court tickets that will allow spectators to sit opposite the chair umpire, less than 8 metres from the sideline on the Open's main show court, Rod Laver Arena.

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But the tournament director, Craig Tiley, is interested in more than facilities and revenue. Tiley has long been interested in improving the information available to both tennis insiders and fans. In his role as chief executive of Tennis Australia, he pushed to create an entity at the federation called the Game Insight Group, or GIG.

One of the benefits to the public is a new flow of compelling and creative player statistics that have been published ahead of this year's Open and will be updated and released during the tournament itself.

"We are in an intensely competitive marketplace, and we owe it to these wonderful athletes, to our sport and to fans to constantly strive for more insight into the unique prowess of these remarkable players," Tiley said earlier this month. "We want our sport to keep attracting the next generation, interacting with them in the manner they want with information that appeals."

Among GIG's findings, based on data collected from the seven primary courts at the last three Australian Opens:

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  • Based on a metric created by GIG, Andy Murray had the highest work rate per shot in the men's game and Gilles Simon the highest work rate per point. Barbora Strycova had the highest work rate per shot in the women's game; Yulia Putintseva the highest work rate per point.
  • Nick Kyrgios ranks No.1 and Roger Federer No.2 in reaction time on service returns in the men's game, ahead of Novak Djokovic, widely viewed as the game's best returner, who ranks seventh by this measure.
  • Serena Williams, known for her aggressive style of play, ranks near the bottom among women in shots that land close to the line.

GIG also calculated average forehand and backhand speeds on impact: a significant statistical step forward in a sport where service speeds are typically the only speed data made widely available (and can vary depending on the brand of speed gun used).

GIG provided data on players who had been in at least 10 matches on the seven show courts from 2012 to 2016. The young American star Madison Keys' average forehand speed ranked first among the women, but also ahead of all men except Tomas Berdych. Keys' average backhand speed was also higher than any of the men's, ranking just behind the now-retired women's star Li Na.

In another surprise, GIG also provided foot speed data showing that Milos Raonic, a big server not known as a particularly quick mover, had the highest recorded maximum speed over the five-year span and that even his average foot speed of 16.3kph was slightly above Murray's.

Stephanie Kovalchik, the data scientist at GIG responsible for much of the new research, said a player's height (Raonic is 196cm) could be a factor.

"We know from sprinting that the benefits and costs with height are complex," she said. "The complexity in tennis is likely greater since movement is more sporadic and in all directions." She also said the movement research did not account for "how a player was moving."

She added, "If some players cover more distance forward versus laterally, for example, it could impact how their speed characteristics compare to each other."

Tennis data

Data analytics have become de rigueur in major sports. Tennis has been slow to embrace the trend and, when it has, the information has often been restricted for commercial reasons and has too seldom been released to the public, frustrating many statistics-minded fans.

Full disclosure is not part of Tennis Australia's plan, either. "We've got to try and conserve a competitive advantage for our Australian players and coaches," said Machar Reid, the group's "innovation catalyst," who oversees GIG. "With that in mind, we've got to be astute about what we do and don't release and the extent to which we interpret perhaps what we do and don't release."

The landscape is changing, though. Tennis Abstract, a database founded by Jeff Sackmann, has been a leader in taking a more quantitative approach to the sport. The ATP and WTA tours are starting to feed the appetite with more sophisticated fare than the long-standard unforced error and service-percentage numbers. Dave Haggerty, president of the International Tennis Federation, has also expressed interest.

Last year, the ATP and its information partner Infosys created a new metric called "Under Pressure," calculated by adding the percentage of break points converted and saved, the percentage of tiebreakers won and the percentage of deciding sets won in the last 52 weeks.

The top three men on the "under pressure" leader board for now are Djokovic, Murray and Kei Nishikori. Stan Wawrinka, despite being fourth in the world rankings, is just 16th by this metric. Rafael Nadal is 35th; Federer 37th.

Kovalchik said Tennis Australia also wanted to do more composite leader boards like the measure of work in which Murray and Strycova rank first.

"It tries to encapsulate both distance covered, the speed of that movement and changes of direction to try to come up with a more comprehensive study of the amount of exertion a player is using during the course of a rally," she said.

The New York Times

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