The WTA does not make it easy for you to find stats about women’s tennis. Which is obviously problematic.
On their site, their top menu proudly lists “Scores and Stats” as an option, but you’ll only find match results there. Thankfully, Adrin kindly forwarded me an interesting PDF that the WTA does have available on their site, titled “2013 Matchfacts.” Where does this mysterious PDF live? In the Press Center! Where is that? Well, you won’t find it in the top menu. In fact, you’ll have to scroll to the bottom of the WTA site to find the link:
Anyway, there are other interesting things in that Press Center, so I encourage you to check it out. But back to the “2013 Matchfacts” PDF. In it, you will find ten statistical categories (it includes numbers up to Tokyo, I think), which can be divided into two groups: Serve Stats and Return Stats.
Serve Stats include:
– Aces
– First Serve Percentage
– Percentage of First Serve Points Won
– Percentage of Second Serve Points Won
– Percentage of Service Games Won
– Percentage of Break Points Saved
Return Stats include:
– Percentage of Points Won Returning First Serves
– Percentage of Points Won Returning Second Serves
– Percentage of Break Points Converted
– Percentage of Return Games Won
Now, onto the point of the post, which will become evident if you already checked out the PDF: Serena Williams is amazing. Why? Well, the 17-time Major champion leads the WTA in five of those ten statistical categories.
Think about that for a moment.
You’ll notice that the five categories Serena leads the WTA in are Serve categories. No surprise there: it’s widely accepted that Serena owns the greatest serve in women’s tennis history. But what makes Serena even more amazing is that she shows up in the Top-4 of all Return categories: she’s second in Percentage of Points won on opponent’s First Serve and Percentage of Return Games won. Serena is third in Percentage of Points won on opponent’s Second Serve, and fourth in Percentage of Break Points converted (in this last category she trails Mirjana Lucic-Baroni for the third spot. Lucic-Baroni has played 50 fewer matches than Serena).
Isn’t that astonishing? The only statistical category where Serena doesn’t show up in the top 10 is Percentage of First Serves, which would be somewhat problematic if her actual number (62%) weren’t incredibly good anyway. Plus, if your First Serve percentage is too high, it simply means you’re not going for big first serves (notice who leads that particular category. In fact, look at the entire top ten in 1st serve percentage – nobody in it has a particularly great serve).
As a comparison, Serena’s World Number 1 ATP counterpart, Novak Djokovic, appears in the top 10 of only five of those same statistical categories, and leads the ATP in only one of them (somewhat surprisingly, it’s in Percentage of Second Serve Points Won). Impending World Number 1 Rafael Nadal does better: the Spaniard shows up in the top ten of 8 categories (no worse than No. 5 in any of them), and leads the tour in two (Percentage of Points Won Returning First Serves and Return Games Won).
Yet all of that pales in comparison to Serena’s feat of leading the entire WTA in half of the “official” statistical categories, and doing no worse than No. 4 in four of the other five.
That’s simply staggering.
Now, for a fun exercise: I gave whoever leads one of the ten categories listed in the PDF 10 points. 9 go to No. 2, and so on and so forth. I added up the points for the women in the Top-10 rankings as of this week, and included the number of categories that added points for them:
1. Serena Williams: 83 points from 9 categories.
2. Victoria Azarenka: 27 points from 4 categories.
3. Maria Sharapova: 31 points from 6 categories.
4. Agnieszka Radwanska: 13 points from 3 categories.
5. Li Na: 20 points from 5 categories.
6. Sara Errani: 27 points from 4 categories.
7. Petra Kvitova: 16 points from 2 categories.
8. Caroline Wozniacki: 9 points from 2 categories.
9. Angelique Kerber: 1 point from 1 category.
10. Marion Bartoli: 0 points.
Hilariously, 30 year-old World Number 51 Yvonne Meusburger tallies 28 points from 5 categories, which is more than everyone except Serena and Sharapova. Naturally, while Yvonne has had a pretty great year, she’s only played 24 matches (and most of them in very small events). Still, that is one fewer match than the Highlander of tennis, Kimiko Date-Krumm. The ageless wonder does show up in two categories, and totals 10 points.
Which is more than 30% of the WTA Top-10.
Still, look at the difference between Serena and everyone else. It’s quite a gulf, no?
First of all, nice find: you could be a sleuth.
Secondly, no surprise in many ways that Serena leads the pack in so many categories.
What I find interesting though is whether a player’s serve and return of serve statistics correlate with their ranking. For Serena, I think we can answer yes. But how about for the top 30, top 50, top 100? It is a great pity that the WTA does not publish this data in the same way as the ATP.
Not that the ATP does much with its data nor locate it in a useful place. However, for my top 30, top 50 etc question above, it is this analysis that I have done for the ATP tour with their Top 200 “match facts” data:
http://cleaningthelines.wordpress.com/2013/09/29/5-only-as-good-as-your-second-serve-unless-you-want-to-be-very-very-good/
In the event that the WTA might have and release the same data, I would love to run the same analysis. WOuld make for great comparison with the men’s tour.
JJ, I’m a little surprised that a statistically oriented tennis fan like yourself had never come across the WTA Press Center, which is the storage depot for WTA statistics such as they are. Career records for the top players past and present on each surface, are just some of the numerous other tables available.
Actually though, the current week’s statistics don’t display Serena’s statistical dominance quite as well as those from some earlier weeks.
On 8-12, Serena led in 6 of the 10 categories, with a 2nd, 3rd, and a 4th in three others.
On 8-26 she led in 6 of the 10, with a 2nd (return games won(, a tie for 2nd (Pts won returning 2nd service), and a third (Break points converted).
Actually, as impressive as her serving statistics are, they are not as good as they were last year,
Here are her serving numbers from year end last year (10/29/2012) and this year (YTD):
Aces 2012 484 (in 58 matches) 2013 419 ( in 69 matches)
1st serve pts won 2012 77.8% 2013 74.8%
2nd serve pts won 2012 54.0% 2013 51.9%
Service Games won 2012 87.5% 2013 84.3%
Break Pts Saved 2012 67.8% 2013 63.5%
On the other hand her return statistics are considerably better this year than last. At year end last year (10/29) she was only 5th in pts won returning 1st service, 5th in pts won returning 2nd service, 6th in return games won, and she was outside the top 10 in break pts converted.
A Few Pharmaceutical Reasons Why Serena Williams is Amazing…she is on steroids. Oh wait, that’s only one reason, but it’s one that no one wants to talk about. She could be a poster child for steroid usage:
-more muscular than any MAN on tour;
-developed her musculature extremely fast;
-maintains it without regular and intense gym time;
-serves a good 40 mph faster than the average woman on tour;
-has frequent outbursts of uncontrollable anger;
-has health problems common in roid users (pulmonary embolism);
-refuses and flees from drug tests;
-regularly cycles in and out of the tournament with various illness and injuries are similar to roid users cycling on and off the drug;
-etc. etc. etc.
The WTA is both cowardly and greedy for not intervening. It is wrong that Serena–who most likely would be a tough competitor without steroids-has stolen so many matches and titles from deserving players who simply couldn’t beat a doped up beast. And it’s exceptionally wrong for her family and friends to sit by idly while she destroys her health.
LMAO MAry you are such a hating bitch. Get a life.
[…] week, Juan José Vallejo, a blogger for The Changeover website, reported on the statistical dominance of Serena Williams on the WTA Tour, the women’s professional tennis […]