Is Agassi's 1st serve return overrated?

[Andres]

A well hit, skidding low return is tricky even for the best volleyers.

That's the trick part: A WELL HIT, skidding low return is NOT a defensive return.

 

[helloworld]

I would pick Hewitt over Agassi, though.

Agassi is better than Hewitt at hitting passing shots, but Hewitt is faster and can chase down more balls.

 

[Andres]

Agassi is better than Hewitt at hitting passing shots, but Hewitt is faster and can chase down more balls.

I'm not sure if I agree with that.

Edit: (The passing shot part, not the speed part )

 

[dropshot winner]

That's the trick part: A WELL HIT, skidding low return is NOT a defensive return.

The transition from a weak slice return to a perfect skidding return is continuous.

In any case you have a lot more reach if you're willing to use slice to return, which means that you're way harder to ace.

 

[helloworld]

I'm not sure if I agree with that.

Edit: (The passing shot part, not the speed part )

Agassi is the best ball striker in tennis history. Hewitt is not even in the top 100 when it comes to ball striking ability.

 

[dropshot winner]

Agassi is the best ball striker in tennis history. Hewitt is not even in the top 100 when it comes to ball striking ability.

True, but Hewitt's (or was) one of the best movers in tennis history, Agassi isn't close either in this regard.

 

[helloworld]

True, but Hewitt's (or was) one of the best movers in tennis history, Agassi isn't close either in this regard.

Agassi is better than Hewitt at hitting passing shots, but Hewitt is faster and can chase down more balls.

Ten chars.

 

[pc1]

I just don't think Agassi had the best return ever. I have to give the title to Connors, who faced many more serve and volley players, put a ton of balls back on the court, rarely got aced, and was also very aggressive on his returns.

Agassi was more aggressive, but also wasn't as consistent.

I would say that Connors had the best return off first serves, Agassi had the best return off second serves, and Connors was top over-all. If someone places Agassi best of all time, I would say that's overrating it. If he's left at 2, I'd say it's right where it belongs.

You may be right. I think the Agassi has the greatest return of all time stuff is before of John McEnroe constantly saying that on television. Agassi's returns look great but he was aced a lot and he failed to return serve quite often as opposed to a Connors, Federer or a Borg. Michael Chang has very comparable or perhaps even better service return stats in the 1990's to Agassi but no one called Chang's return the best of all time because it didn't look as spectacular.

Lleyton Hewitt led the ATP often in return games won percentage a few times I believe. At worst he was usually around the leaders in that category.

 

[dropshot winner]

Ten chars.

Didn't see that post.

And speed isn't the same as movement, btw.
F.e. Blake has amazing speed but he doesn't move as well as prime Hewitt did.

 

[drakulie]

And yet, Sampras leads Agassi in H2H and trails against Hewitt.

And yet, Sampras still says Agassi was the best returner he faced. I'll take Sampras' word, who actually played against both, than someone like you, who has no clue.

 

[pmerk34]

And yet, Sampras still says Agassi was the best returner he faced. I'll take Sampras' word, who actually played against both, than someone like you, who has no clue.

And McEnroe who played against both.

 

[drakulie]

^^^hehehehe. yes, of course, McEnroe as well.

 

[abmk]

And yet, Sampras still says Agassi was the best returner he faced. I'll take Sampras' word, who actually played against both, than someone like you, who has no clue.

Actually after the 2001 USO final, sampras said hewitt has the best return in the game ...

http://web.archive.org/web/20020127154049/www.usopen.org/news/articles/2001090921391389d43ebbde653e3f00256ac30009012f.html

Don't know his recent views though

 

[drakulie]

^^^at the end of his career, he stated AA was the best returner he faced. Yeah, Hewitt might have been best returner in a year or two, but not better returner throughout his career than AA.

Putting it this way, there was 1 or 2 years where Hewitt was the number one player on tour. That doesn't mean he was the best player of all time on the ATP.

 

[li0scc0]

Gah. This giant thread, and NOBODY has actually looked at the statistics that everyone's arguing about, Agassi's win percentage when returning first serves?

Sheesh, people, the data's right there. You want to know how good Agassi's first serve return is? LOOK AT THE PERCENTAGES HE WINS WHEN RETURNING FIRST SERVES. ATP has great data on this.

This isn't a thread about whether Agassi is a good returner or not. He is. It's about, specifically, whether his FIRST SERVE RETURN is as good as indicated by the occasional flashy winner he hits off of it - is the tradeoff between hitting some great returns at the cost of getting aced a lot worth it. It's not about whether he can beat all those big servers - he can. It's whether he beats them by crushing their second serve return and being ok on their first, or by both. Quotes that say "AGASSI IS A GREAT RETURNER" or stats that say that aren't relevant, because the question is which PART of his return is great - first serve return, or second serve return, or both.

Compare Agassi to, say, Goran Ivanisevic. Look at Ivanisevic's win percentage on first serves and win percentage on second serves.

Next, compare someone else to Goran Ivanisevic. Say, pick someone else elite - Pete Sampras, who is not as good a returner as Agassi, but is certainly as deadly of a player overall. Compare Sampras to Ivanisevic, look at win percentage on first serves and win percentage on second serves.

Now, I certainly expect that Andre would have a better win percentage on returning second serves. But the relevant question is
1) Does he have a better win percentage on returning first serves
2) And, if so, how much better is it?

Here's the data. Agassi and Ivanisevic have played six full matches against each other (not counting the 3-0 RET match). In those matches, Goran Ivanisevic won 86, 86, 87, 86, 88, and 78 percent of his first serve points, respectively. He won 39, 58, 30, 42, 57, 45 percent of his second serve points, respectively.

Sampras and Ivanisevic played a total of 18 matches against each other. Of those, the ATP had statistics for 12 of them. It those, Ivanisevic won 76, 87, 94, 89, 77, 82, 87, 81, 77, 80, 83, and 84 percent of his first serve points. He also won 51, 34, 51, 47, 52, 55, 52, 25, 40, 44, 56, and 33 percent of his second serve points, respectively.

I think this data supports the idea for Agassi being a great second serve returner, but not as great of a first serve returner against the big servers. You can pretty much read off Agassi's wins off of the second serve win percent - the three matches of that list that Agassi won off Ivanisevic were ones where he absolutely CRUSHED the second serve return - Ivanisevic could manage win percentages of a measly 39, 30, 42 on his second serve in those matches! Whereas, in nearly all of the matches between the two (except the very first one, back in 1991), Ivanisevic consistently would win between 86 and 88 percent of his first serve points, regardless of whether he would win or lose the match.

Sampras, not known as a "great" returner (though I'm sure he was, he had to be good at all parts of the game, just not as exceptional at it as Agassi was), got a better win percentage off of Ivanisevic's first serve (plenty of below-86 matches.)

This isn't quite a fair comparison, though, because Sampras had a better overall record against Ivanisevic - 12-6, of which one was a walkover so it's more like 12-5, and only one of those wins coming post-1993. If you look at the second serve win points, Agassi also did a tad bit worse on second serve return than Sampras did, on average! That's a bit weird to me.

Matches against Boris Becker are inconclusive, In the AA vs BB matches that ATPtennis.com had statistics for, AA went 7-1, letting BB win an average[1] of 72 percent of his first serve points and 41 percent of his second serve points. Pete Sampras, who went 11-7 against BB in the matches ATPtennis had statistic for, let BB win 78% of his first serve points overall and 47% of his second serve points.

Agassi was a more effective returner [2] - he was 6% more effective on both first and second serves, which would indicate that he's equally good at returning first and second serves compared to others in his field.

Against Richard Krajicek, another big server of the 90s:

Agassi: overall record 3-3 [3]. Percent of first serves won by RK: 81. Percent of second serves won by RK: 54.

Sampras: overall record 5-4 (of those with stats). Percent of first serves won by RK: 82. Percent of second serves won by RK: 51.

In this matchup, Sampras was a better 2nd serve returner and a slightly worse first serve returner, even though he had a worse record against RK overall? WTH?

OK, I'm not doing any more, I think I've come to my conclusion. Andre Agassi was as good at returning first serves as he was at returning second serves - the appearance that he got aced a lot was probably made up for by his aggressiveness on the returns which he DID get a racquet on. When comparing him to another player of his generation, I don't see a marked gap between 1st and 2nd serve return statistics that would indicate that his return prowess came ONLY from his second serve return stats. This effect may still be there for individual players, depending on individual matchups, but it's not looking like it's an "Agassi vs any big servers" effect, if it's ever there.

(Of course, these are only three players. Of these, Ivanisevic indicated that the gap is there, and RK and BB indicated that there is no gap. If someone wants to do more players, I'd certainly be curious to hear - Rusedski? Is there a lefty effect? There's far more big servers than these. But I've looked at enough to conclude that the effect that the OP was talking about, if there, is not very big, and certainly not obvious, and I don't want to look at any more, I've got better things to do. Oh! And all this is comparing Agassi to Sampras, but that's also just one comparison - if someone wants to do a comparison to a good return-blocking player of Agassi's generation, that would be informative as well.)

[1] (Note about my averages - I'm taking the averages per match, and then averaging those to get an "overall" average. I realize that's not the right way of doing it and I should be weighting it by total points. If someone else wants to do that work, go ahead, I don't feel like it.)

[2] Yes, I realize it's not a measure of how good he is as a returner, it's how good he is overall on returning first and second serves, so it takes into account his ground game and passing shots as well. It's the best proxy measure I can think of, though.

[3] I am excluding the match where RK was just coming back in a brief comeback attempt after not being on tour for two and a half years. Not even sure RK would count as a big server the way he was playing in that match

Magnificent post.

 

[krosero]

Huh. That's annoying. Thanks for the correction.

Well, I take back what I said about great stats. They're halfway competent stats, I s'pose...

They're still good enough for this question, I think. These errors bias the stats in the other direction - doublecounting aces and doublefaults would lead to a higher apparent percentage of first serves won by the server, and a lower apparent number of second serve points won? So it would overrate the effectiveness of the second serve return, and underrate the effectiveness of the first serve return. So hopefully even though the specific numbers are wrong, the trends are still the same.... I'm not confident in that anymore, though.

Yes indeed, that's how I look at it too -- there's a trend in the ATP numbers that overrates returns of second serves and underrates the first serve returns.

But it's not a uniform trend, because we've found ATP stats in the 90s that looked okay -- they lined up with either our own counts that we've done or with counts in the media.

And we don't know how many of the matches at the ATP have good stats in the 90s. It seems like most matches in that decade -- but not all -- have the aces and df's counted twice.

Here's the data. Agassi and Ivanisevic have played six full matches against each other (not counting the 3-0 RET match). In those matches, Goran Ivanisevic won 86, 86, 87, 86, 88, and 78 percent of his first serve points, respectively. He won 39, 58, 30, 42, 57, 45 percent of his second serve points, respectively.

The ATP has Goran winning 86% of the time on his first serve, in the Wimbledon final he lost to Andre. A boxscore in USA Today put him at only 77%.

And on second serve the ATP has Goran at only 42%. In the boxscore he's at 50%.

Sampras and Ivanisevic played a total of 18 matches against each other. Of those, the ATP had statistics for 12 of them. It those, Ivanisevic won 76, 87, 94, 89, 77, 82, 87, 81, 77, 80, 83, and 84 percent of his first serve points. He also won 51, 34, 51, 47, 52, 55, 52, 25, 40, 44, 56, and 33 percent of his second serve points, respectively.

Same with the 1998 Wimbledon final.

The ATP has Goran winning 87% of the time on his first serve. In a boxscore in Sports Illustrated he drops to 83%.

Pete drops from 82% to 80%.

(There's nothing in the boxscore for second serve).

 

[shakes1975]

And yet, Sampras still says Agassi was the best returner he faced. I'll take Sampras' word, who actually played against both, than someone like you, who has no clue.

And Sampras has no selfish motive for his statements about AA ? Or his disparaging of Hewitt and other players of this gen. ?

Look, Agassi had the better returns against every other player - I already said so - but against Sampras, I would take prime Hewitt any day of the week, any time, even in my sleep. The drubbing that Hewitt gave Sampras in the 2001 USO F was shocking. Sampras had won 87 continuous games on serve until the final. And yet, Hewitt made Sampras' serve look ordinary. He got back every serve into play, made Sampras stretch and lunge for the volley, tired him out. AA would've got aced about 15-20 times in 2 sets, and would've lost too.

AA never ever, ever, ever, ever, beat Sampras in straight sets outside of the FO (talking about slams). Not even close. Not in 1990 and not in 2002, and not anywhere in between. And, like I said, Agassi's swashbuckling, macho attitude with his returns actually helped boost the reputation of Sampras' already great serve.

 

[World Beater]

And Sampras has no selfish motive for his statements about AA ? Or his disparaging of Hewitt and other players of this gen. ?

Look, Agassi had the better returns against every other player - I already said so - but against Sampras, I would take prime Hewitt any day of the week, any time, even in my sleep. The drubbing that Hewitt gave Sampras in the 2001 USO F was shocking. Sampras had won 87 continuous games on serve until the final. And yet, Hewitt made Sampras' serve look ordinary. He got back every serve into play, made Sampras stretch and lunge for the volley, tired him out. AA would've got aced about 15-20 times in 2 sets, and would've lost too.

AA never ever, ever, ever, ever, beat Sampras in straight sets outside of the FO (talking about slams). Not even close. Not in 1990 and not in 2002, and not anywhere in between. And, like I said, Agassi's swashbuckling, macho attitude with his returns actually helped boost the reputation of Sampras' already great serve.

Agree. AA's ROS might have been better overall but i would say it was less threatening to pete than say hewitt's. AA tried to blast every return for a winner, whereas hewitt wanted to dip the ball at the s/v'er feet, force to volley up and use his speed to get to the next ball and hit the pass. Hewitt went for more angle and his trajectory was not as straight-lined as andre's. Andre even on the pass went for brute pace and wanted to line drive every ball. Hewitt went for the percentages.

brute pace didn't nearly bother sampras as much as topspin, and angle bothered him. Pete had very strong wrists and great control on the volleys which allowed him to handle andre's power shots. But if the returner dips the ball with little pace, then the volleyer has to generate the pace or play finesse. I would say pete was better at punching away the volley thus handling pace better rather than finessing it away at angles.

 

[SpaceCadet]

Drakulie's posted stats on Agassi's wins against "Big Servers" is indeed compelling. My questions are:

• 
  What was 1st serve percentage of the Big Server in each match?
  What was percentage of 1st serve points won by the Big Server in each match?
  Is there a pattern on the above 2 questions and Agassi's wins and losses against the big server?

Ugh! Never mind! Too much analysis and math! :razz:

So..."Is Agassi's 1st serve return overrated?" Overrated by whom?