"Aggregation of Marginal Gains"
 

The "aggregation of marginal gains" is a bit of a buzz-phrase in British sport at the moment due to the immense success of British Cycling and the approach of their PD Sir Dave Brailsford to maximise improvement by making as many improvements, no matter how minor, as possible.

We have adopted "aggregation of marginal gains within our programme as a kind of mantra (as have many performance sports in the UK), but it has got me thinking...

Aggregation of marginal gains is an excellent philosophy when you have already achieved your major gains - in other words, when you have world class basics you can look for the marginal gains on top.

So, what are the World Class Basics a tennis player should have before they seek marginal gains?!?!?

To keep it interesting (and manageable!) I will give you 5 slots for your World Class Basics! Please also indicate whether you are a tennis player, coach, educator, whatever as I will be interested to see if different sub groups have a different opinion!

Over to you...

Cheers

Oops - forgot my five...

1) Effective first serve (high percentage 65+)
2) Ability to remain at least neutral off the second serve
3) 80% trading ball (rally ball) of both sides
4) Movement efficient enough to protect contact point
5) Ability to take time away from opponent (i.e hit early mid-court ball)

*I reserve the right to edit this list as I see fit and change my mind/have my mind changed :D

Strongly agree with the way you have framed the topic.
more later

Some of efforts very useful
 

Some of efforts very useful of "Marginal Gains" especially keeping a body warm

Ash what kind of stuff do you expect to put in the 5 slots?

e.g. analyzing ATP 2012 data, you get correlation of each stat to the top 100 ranking -

1st Srv 1st Srv w 2nd srv w srv gm w bp won bp sv pts rtn 1 pts rtn 2 rtn gm wn
0.06429448 0.522678196 0.614081536 0.650474016 0.248547356 0.536628334 0.349750106 0.288385001 0.38757496


some of these are game based stats, some are points based.... just on points based alone, the sequences are

2nd srv w
1st srv w
pts return 1st
pts return 2nd

so the marginal advantage should be gained in proportion to the correlation.

or are you looking for something else.

I am an rec trying to coaching own kids in tennis/golf.

I am a player who helps with clinics at my club, also a certified personal trainer and previous collegiate athlete.

1. Footwork
2. Serve Mechanics
3. Grooved return
4. Rally balls on both sides
5. Approach shots on both sides.

World Class basics? That's a good question.

I'm not sure how I should limit this, but I'll give a rough first pass:
1) Continental-grip serve with decent racket drop.
2) Unit turn on both sides.
3) Topspin drives both sides.
4) Continental grip volley.
5) Split-step footwork.

Those seem too general, but I have an idea in my mind about what I'm looking for. I mostly focus on visual patterns at this point. I'm looking for a certain general form (I use video) and then try to develop drills for the student to adapt to that form.

I've coached high school tennis in the past and given lessons to friends and family. I've been a professional educator and am sort of a tennis fanatic.

just realised I forgot to add mine! Original post edited accordingly!

Whatever you think should be a world class basic skill!?!? There are no right answers (at least I don't think there are!!!). So from your stats analysis what 5 things does a player have to have/be able to do?

Good stuff! For footwork - what specifically about the footwork should be world class?

Cheers

That's why I put a limit to 5 items/areas - my list would be miles long otherwise! I'm sure everybody will have a list of 5 things every player should be able to do, I'm wondering if it's possible to synthesise them into a sort of "Super 5"!

big first serve
big 2nd serve

all the other stuff are toss ups

^^^define big :D

LOL!, I thought you were just arguing that the serve return (make that 2nd serve return) was the most important shot in the game (make that professional game)?

1st serve top 10

13 Milos Raonic
26 Jerzy Janowicz
68 Gilles Muller
22 Sam Querrey
97 Ivo Karlovic
2 Roger Federer
14 John Isner
27 Mardy Fish
6 Tomas Berdych

82%
82%
81%
80%
79%
78%
78%
78%
77%
(top 100 average 71%)

2nd serve top 10

2 Roger Federer
26 Jerzy Janowicz
14 John Isner
4 Rafael Nadal
5 David Ferrer
13 Milos Raonic
1 Novak Djokovic
20 Philipp Kohlschreiber
10 Richard Gasquet
96 Evgeny Donskoy

60%
57%
57%
57%
57%
56%
56%
56%
56%
56%
(top 100 average 51%)

that was for the top 4... well, 3 out of the 4 rather.

fed suffered in this department.

The 'tweener, above all. The player has to be able to pull a 'tweener at will, even off a drop shot!

:)

Okay, so you don't mean big you mean high %?

Or is that points won % ? If so, why are the players with the highest points won % on their first serve relatively lowly ranked (with the exception of Rog and Berdych)??? :D

points won... interestingly, 1st serve %, almost have zero correlation to ranking.

so the correlation values are -

2nd srv w
0.614081536

1st Srv w
0.522678196

pts rtn 1
0.349750106

pts rtn 2
0.288385001

the low ranked guys topping the 1st srv won board probably are people like Dr. Ivo who suffer in other departments.

I think the most surprising stat here is the severe asymmetry between 2nd srv and rtn 2..... you'd think that quite often the 2nd srv points start neutral (on average the server and the returner win 51% and 49% of them), so the 2 correlation values should be about the same.... but 0.614 vs. 0.288 is quite a big difference.

the other thought is - this should be do-able at the amateur levels, you run some app and let parents or the bench guys collect stats, you can come up with customized training plan for each player pretty fast.

Forgive me but are the percentages of getting serves IN or WON?

won.........