A Statistical Look at the Importance of the Hold and Return Game Since 1998

By
at Internationaled.org

Published: October 25, 2011

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The ATP is not exactly famed for being generous with providing statistical data. Now, however, they've provided access to a statistical goldmine for the last 20 years.

The focus on this article is on the hold and return game.

How important are they? Can you be No. 1 with one, but not the other? Naturally, both are important, and you normally don’t get to be world No. 1 without having a fairly good game at both.

But as we shall see, there are exceptions to that general rule. 

Taking a look down memory lane can provide interesting observations. The below provides statistical evidence to the return and hold game of the year end World No. 1-3 from 1998-2011.

If any of the readers want, they are very welcome to supplement the list with statistics from 1991-1997, found here. Pete Sampras was world No. 1 for four of these years, and he roughly had a hold game of 90-92 percent and a return game between 22 and 29 percent.

Before we start, I’ll just give you some general numbers as to what is needed in order to have the best, a good and a medium/bad hold and return game respectively.

If you win 90 percent of your own service games, you are at the top or in the top three on tour, more or less regardless of year. Winning 85 percent places you in or very close to the top 10, whereas 80 percent places you anywhere from No. 20 to No. 40 depending on year.

Players gunning for the world No. 1 shouldn’t fall much short of 85 percent, but there are exceptions as we’ll see below.



As for return game, the list below shows that you can get by with less in certain cases and still be world No. 1 (i.e. Andy Roddick in 2003).

There’s a bit more variation with regards to how much is needed to have the best return game in the world. Some years, winning 32 percent of your return games is enough. Other years, as 2011, the top of the list...
Article Source: Bleacher Report - Tennis

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