Ground Strokes Success Rates

 Of course I might also call them failure rates.  

I watched three games and kept track of how many ground strokes (GS) were hit and how many were missed.  I started with the service return as the first GS, and then the 3rd shot would be the second GS.  So there were at least two per point.  How many others depended on a couple of things.  In many points the third shot was a drop and all subsequent shots were either dinks or volleys.  It was rare that anyone got pushed off the net to a situation where a GS would be used again.  It probably required someone lobbing the ball to do that.  No one in the games I watched lobbed.

Two of the three games were fairly close in score.  I think the other was 11-5 or so.  I'm not sure that matters, much.  Here are the numbers:

• Attempts - failures - Percentages
• 127            17            13%
• 84                8             9.5%
• 42              10            23.8%

I'm sorry, but I can't provide much wisdom from these numbers.  The bigger the number of attempts would be indicative of a lot of points played.  Which means a tight game, lots of side outs and scoring a point was not easy to do.  On the other hand the game where only 42 GSs were seen would suggest that points were easy to come by and the game ended fairly quickly.

I'd be hesitant to call it a skill level difference, though as skills improve defence against the serving side gets better --better volley and play from the net and defense to 3rd shot drives, for example.

It's not clear to me what a good failure rate is.  I would guess that it's closer to 10% than 20%.  If you, as a player, are missing 25% of your service returns, then it might something to work on.  However as skill improves, the serves tend to get faster.  When everyone's skills are the same and fairly high, then the speed and "cleverness" of the serve means little, as all the serves are going to be returned.  At that point missing a serve is more of an error then the occasional outright winner.  You can see this at the highest ranks of the professional game, yes there are those who try to win points from their serves, but there are more that just hit with moderate pace to the middle of the service court.  This is true for both the men and women pros.

One final note.  I've mentioned in prior blogs about the importance of returning a serve.  Since the serving side has to let it bounce, there is no pressure to flirt with the net, depth is not critical as long as you get to the KL before the 3rd shot.  Just get it back is the take away and get to the KL -- but then, you knew that.  :-)