Miami Open: Are WTA Players Grinding Too Much?

As I sat up excessive however proper in on the midpoint of the courtroom on the 2023 Miami Open watching a number of WTA matches, I might see the sport from a telling angle. A thought occurred to me: Are girls taking part in too many baseline factors?

WTA gamers are unimaginable athletes and fashions of bodily health. However man, do they grind from the baseline– in my thoughts, greater than males on the ATP Tour. How do I do know? Effectively I don’t know for certain, however there are some small information factors which again it up. Extra on that beneath.

I make no apologies for desirous to see girls’s tennis survive as a enterprise and succeed as a significant draw. I consider it’s worthy of followers’ consideration. As such, I don’t wish to see the highest stars injured. Information: Female athletes can be more vulnerable to certain injuries. For instance, many studies have confirmed the sky high prevalence of ACL tears in women’s soccer. In tennis, one study found that women are more apt to suffer Achilles and back injuries than males.

So why grind?

Learn Extra: Rune, Other Net Rushers Set Themselves Apart at Miami Open

A safer option to play the game would contain extra variation of motion. Extra volleys, extra approaches, extra lobs and customarily much less repetition of the identical baseline pictures again and again.

Bianca Andreescu’s scary injury at the Miami Open looks like a freak incidence and positively won’t relate to how the game is performed. Rain stoppages by no means assist. However it’s not good that the world primary Iga Swiatek is beginning to present indicators of harm and Emma Raducanu, one of the promising WTA gamers in years by way of marketability, has been beset with a cascade of bodily issues.

Information to color the total image of the baseline grind is elusive. The WTA doesn’t document statistics with the identical depth that the ATP Tour does at the moment. Infosys does an amazing, and ever-evolving job with data in tennis, however they primarily cowl the boys’s recreation, besides on the Slams.

For analytics geeks, the Grand Slams are treasure troves of as a result of these tournaments are the one place the place the stats recorded are precisely the identical.

Common Rally Size: Males vs. Ladies

I checked with ATP Analyst and Strategist Craig O’Shannessy. His work involving rally size has been eye-opening for the game. Based on O’Shannessy, girls common a couple of half a shot extra in rally size than males. Consider it or not, that provides up over the course of an extended season.

The largest cause doubtless pertains to the serve. Males are inclined to get extra free and quick factors off their serve, which brings that common rally size down. However several top ATP players are starting to employ the volley more.

The reality is, girls might use just a few extra free or simple factors.

Groundstrokes Hit: Males vs. Ladies

Infosys has been delivering a terrific new set of metrics lately referred to as “stroke abstract.” It breaks down the sorts of pictures gamers hit, together with groundstrokes, volleys, lobs, and many others.

I made a decision to conduct an unscientific spot examine. The place information was out there, I checked out among the prime gamers within the “Race to the Finals” rankings on every tour, and I needed to look completely at 2-set matches as a result of these are the most typical sorts of matches to each genders. (Novak Djokovic is at present #1 within the Race however I excluded him as a result of he was unable to play Indian Wells or the Miami Open in 2023).

The gamers I examined had been: Carlos Alcaraz, Stefanos Tsitsipas, Daniil Medvedev, Jannik Sinner, Iga Swiatek, Aryna Sabalenka, Elena Rybakina and Jessica Pegula.

In 2-set matches, in a median of averages, girls had been hitting 181 groundstrokes per match. Utilizing that very same parameter, males had been hitting 169 groundstrokes per match. That’s no small distinction.

Of all of the gamers on this (albeit small sample-sized) research, Pegula had the very best common of groundstrokes per 2-set match at 213. Tsitsipas had the bottom at 129.

Learn Extra: Alcaraz and Tsitsipas: Notes from Miami Open Practice Session

The upshot: Ladies is perhaps grinding from the baseline greater than they should. Including selection with volleys and different sorts of skill-specific pictures would possibly ease up repetition on the physique. An additional benefit? Extra variation is extra attention-grabbing to look at.