Is there a 'perfect height' for a tennis player?

conjoshruk

conjoshruk

Semi-Pro
An examination of the current era of tennis, reveals that on the men's side, players above 6'2-6-3 are generally not as successful as their shorter counterparts. Hence, it appears that although height may be an advantage in terms of serving and reach/wingspan on the court, it may limit movement and ability to sustain in longer rallies. In recent years, dominant players such as Djokovic, Federer, Nadal and others such as Murray and Wawrinka, are all under 6'3. Similarly, players below 6 foot have also been able to achieve some success, with those such as Hewitt able to rely on retrieval skills and a defensive playing style.
Therefore, it appears the 'perfect' height for an ATP player would be between 6' and 6'3.
Thoughts?
 
6' to 6'3 with an above average wingspan for reach and leverage when hitting and serving is pretty much perfect.

5'10 to 5'11 and 6'4 to 6'5 is a bit less optimal but still very good.

Bellow 5'10 and above 6'5 is the least optimal.

And the less your wingspan is the worst it is, wingspan adds more leverage and power and also reach on the serve, but the shorter it is the worse it gets.
 
FiReFTW said:
6' to 6'3 with an above average wingspan for reach and leverage when hitting and serving is pretty much perfect.

5'10 to 5'11 and 6'4 to 6'5 is a bit less optimal but still very good.

Bellow 5'10 and above 6'5 is the least optimal.

And the less your wingspan is the worst it is, wingspan adds more leverage and power and also reach on the serve, but the shorter it is the worse it gets.
Click to expand...

Highest ranked above 6'5:

4) Del Potro
5) Zverev
6) Anderson
7) Cilic
10) Isner
11) Khachanov
16) Medvedev

Highest ranked below 5'10:

17) Schwartzmann
48) Dzumhur
80) Nishioka
100) Fabbiano
117) Berankis
128) Ferrer
143) Smyczek
 
@Lew Yes, both are not optimal, but higher ones are more optimal because of serve.

Nice stats.

Can you do the same for 5'10-5'11 , 6'- 6'3 and 6'4 - 6'5 ?
 
Traditionally, it's been 6'1-6'2 since the Lendl era at least (Borg, McEnroe (both 5'11) and Connors (5'10) were all a bit shorter).
You have
6'0, Wilander, Stanimal
6'1: Sampras, Fed, Rafa, Courier, Rafter, Bruguera
6'2: Lendl, Edberg, Djoko, Murray,
6'3: Becker, Guga, Kafelnikov

Then you have outliers such as Agassi (5'11) and Hewitt (5'11) and Safin and Goran (both 6'4), but 6'1 to 6'2 seemed to be ideal.
As @Lew's stats and the current WTF average of 6'4 is showing, the ideal might be shifting.

The obvious balance is between being tall enough to have a good serve and not being so tall that it hinders your mobility. Great wingspan is good to have regardless - the commentators said yesterday that Zverev was hitting hit serve just 5 cm (2 inches) below Isner's hitting spot - despite being 4 inches shorter.

Zverev also seems to have great movement for his height, but it's still well below the Big 4 in their hey day.

Overall, I'd say that you need to be at least 5'11 and probably 6'0 for your serve not to be too attackable. And anything above 6'6 seems so far to hinder your movement too much - though Big Kev (6'8) is doing pretty well for himself in the career inflation era.

Also - many threads on this topic already, for instance: https://tt.tennis-warehouse.com/ind...-height-for-male-players.448056/#post-7063323
 
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1.83-1.88 (6'-6' 2").

Federer, Nadal, Djokovic and Sampras are the four greatest tennis players of the XXI century. In modern tennis, the ideal height is 1.83-1.88 (6'-6' 2"), that's the height range of the Big 3 and Sampras.

If players are too tall, they lack agility for clay, where you need to be fast as hell for the baseline game. If they are too tall, they also can't dominate on grass or hard courts, since certain degree of baseline game skills is needed on grass and hard courts as well. But being too short makes it more difficult to serve well and reach the balls in career due to shorter arms and body extension.

P.S.: Note how Sampras and Nadal are listed as 1.85 (6' 1"), but they are slightly shorter than Federer, so they are only a bit over 6' (1.84).
 
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Sport said:
1.83-1.88 (6'-6' 2").

Federer, Nadal, Djokovic and Sampras are the four greatest tennis players of the XXI century. In modern tennis, the ideal height is 1.83-1.88 (6'-6' 2"), that's their height range.

P.S.: Note how Sampras and Nadal are listed as 1.85 (6' 1"), but they are slightly shorter than Federer, so they are only a bit over 6' (1.84).
Click to expand...
5'10-5'11" is good too. Agassi was around that height.
 
Here is the chart showing top 100 player heights:

5'7 (170cm) - 2
5'8 (173cm) - 1
5'9 (175cm) - 1


5'10 (178cm) - 4
5'11 (180cm) - 5

6'0 (183cm) - 18
6'1 (185cm) - 12
6'2 (188cm) - 24

6'3 (191cm) - 9
6'4 (193cm) - 7
6'5 (196cm) - 8
6'6 (198cm) - 7


6'7 (200cm) - 0
6'8 (203cm) - 1
6'9 (206cm - 0
6'10 (208cm) - 1


Seems like 5'7 - 5'9 and 6'7 and 6'10 are by far the smallest concentration.

5'10 - 5'11 is next followed closely by 6'3 - 6'6

6'0 - 6'2 is by far the most concentrated

Lucky for me im 6'0 and my wingspan is long aswell :laughing:
 
conjoshruk said:
players above 6'2-6-3 are generally not as successful as their shorter counterparts.
Click to expand...

We cannot really conclude this.

As a matter of fact, players from 6ft4 and above are statistically way over-represented in the top 100 compared to players of about 6ft. Height follows more or less a normal distribution in the population, meaning that there are very few people standing, say, 6ft5–6ft6 compared to 6ft in the population at large, so if it was really preferable to be 6ft1 rather than 6ft5–6ft6, then you would also expect them to drastically outnumber the taller men in the top 100. Yet that's not the case. There are far more big men near the top than you would expect from how rare they are in the population in general.

So from that alone, we must conclude that being above 6ft3 must carry some real benefit in terms of becoming a top tennis player.

Yet, as of now we haven't seen this trend carry over into creating tall ATGs or dominant players. It's hard to conclude precisely why that is, and we cannot say for sure that being below 6ft–6ft2 is necessarily the ideal for being an ATG compared to being taller. One thing you have to take into consideration is that to become an ATG, you need a very rare talent. Might just be that this level of talent has occurred more often in players standing 6ft1 than 6ft5 simply because there are far more of them – a matter of likelihood and numbers. Statistically, even more people around 5ft9 should have this level of talent, but at that point the lack of height becomes too much of a limiter.

Then again, it's also possible that being ~6ft6 is a big advantage, but only up to a certain point and not beyond that. That it also carries a certain ceiling on how good you can get, so to speak. It's hard to say for certain as of yet. The game has been moving in a taller direction in general in the last decade, and my hunch is that we'll soon see a dominant player above 6ft3. Zverev and Tsitsipas are obviously big boy candidates.
 
I think it is only a question of time till there will be tennis player 6‘4 or higher who has the mobility of the big 3 or even better. Can take 20 years, but will happen
 
If you could take one promising junior player of 6ft1 and one of 6ft6 and have all other things equal, which one would be likelier to make the top 100? The 6ft6 prospect, we know that much.

Which one would be more likely to become an ATG? That one is harder to answer definitely, and it's possible (but far from certain) that it's the 6ft1 kid.
 
Right now it definitely seems to be 6'1 or 6'2 that is the best, but it can change in the future. Who knows what kind of medical advancements may occur in the future? All that needs to be done is a taller person needs to defend as well as the Big 4.

But that wont solve the potential problem big players face, where they can get jammed a lot and hit errors because of it.
 
1365298664599.gif
 
*** on today's slow courts and with today's racket technology ***

With slower courts and/or different racket technology, shorter (quicker/better movement) is more optimal. Look at clay court specialists of the 1980's/1990's, for example...
 
JasonZ said:
I think it is only a question of time till there will be tennis player 6‘4 or higher who has the mobility of the big 3 or even better. Can take 20 years, but will happen
Click to expand...

Why have we never seen a 7'0" point guard in the NBA?
 
Sysyphus said:
We cannot really conclude this.

As a matter of fact, players from 6ft4 and above are statistically way over-represented in the top 100 compared to players of about 6ft. Height follows more or less a normal distribution in the population, meaning that there are very few people standing, say, 6ft5–6ft6 compared to 6ft in the population at large, so if it was really preferable to be 6ft1 rather than 6ft5–6ft6, then you would also expect them to drastically outnumber the taller men in the top 100. Yet that's not the case. There are far more big men near the top than you would expect from how rare they are in the population in general.

So from that alone, we must conclude that being above 6ft3 must carry some real benefit in terms of becoming a top tennis player.

Yet, as of now we haven't seen this trend carry over into creating tall ATGs or dominant players. It's hard to conclude precisely why that is, and we cannot say for sure that being below 6ft–6ft2 is necessarily the ideal for being an ATG compared to being taller. One thing you have to take into consideration is that to become an ATG, you need a very rare talent. Might just be that this level of talent has occurred more often in players standing 6ft1 than 6ft5 simply because there are far more of them – a matter of likelihood and numbers. Statistically, even more people around 5ft9 should have this level of talent, but at that point the lack of height becomes too much of a limiter.

Then again, it's also possible that being ~6ft6 is a big advantage, but only up to a certain point and not beyond that. That it also carries a certain ceiling on how good you can get, so to speak. It's hard to say for certain as of yet. The game has been moving in a taller direction in general in the last decade, and my hunch is that we'll soon see a dominant player above 6ft3. Zverev and Tsitsipas are obviously big boy candidates.
Click to expand...

You don't factor in that junior tennis (the pipeline for ATP) is loaded with tall players, since height is a huge advantage when you're 14 or 16 and some kids are very short while others are already > 6'0".

But once adult, less of an advantage (otherwise, we wouldn't have all these 6'1" ATG).
 
IowaGuy said:
You don't factor in that junior tennis (the pipeline for ATP) is loaded with tall players, since height is a huge advantage when you're 14 or 16 and some kids are very short while others are already > 6'0".

But once adult, less of an advantage (otherwise, we wouldn't have all these 6'1" ATG).
Click to expand...
This is actually false, tennis abstract looked at this. Taller juniors improve more when entering the pro ranks, comparatively. In contrast, a greater number of good average-height juniors aren't able to make the transition to the pros.
 
Sysyphus said:
This is actually false, tennis abstract looked at this. Taller juniors improve more when entering the pro ranks, comparatively. In contrast, a greater number of good average-height juniors aren't able to make the transition to the pros.
Click to expand...

Interesting. Source?
 
IowaGuy said:
Interesting. Source?
Click to expand...

http://www.tennisabstract.com/blog/2017/02/16/are-taller-players-the-future-of-tennis/

"Height is clearly a competitive advantage, as taller young players rise faster through the rankings than their shorter peers. Among the top 100 juniors each year from 2000 to 2009 [2], the tallest players (6-foot-5 and over for men and 6-foot and over for women) [3] typically sit in the middle of the rankings. But they do better as pros: They were ranked on average approximately 127 spots higher than shorter players their age after four years for men and approximately 113 spots higher after four years for women."

wiley1.png


As you can see, the ranking progression of taller players is clearly better (the purple line), and the worst for shorter players (the orange line).
 
Sysyphus said:
We cannot really conclude this.

As a matter of fact, players from 6ft4 and above are statistically way over-represented in the top 100 compared to players of about 6ft. Height follows more or less a normal distribution in the population, meaning that there are very few people standing, say, 6ft5–6ft6 compared to 6ft in the population at large, so if it was really preferable to be 6ft1 rather than 6ft5–6ft6, then you would also expect them to drastically outnumber the taller men in the top 100. Yet that's not the case. There are far more big men near the top than you would expect from how rare they are in the population in general.

So from that alone, we must conclude that being above 6ft3 must carry some real benefit in terms of becoming a top tennis player.

Yet, as of now we haven't seen this trend carry over into creating tall ATGs or dominant players. It's hard to conclude precisely why that is, and we cannot say for sure that being below 6ft–6ft2 is necessarily the ideal for being an ATG compared to being taller. One thing you have to take into consideration is that to become an ATG, you need a very rare talent. Might just be that this level of talent has occurred more often in players standing 6ft1 than 6ft5 simply because there are far more of them – a matter of likelihood and numbers. Statistically, even more people around 5ft9 should have this level of talent, but at that point the lack of height becomes too much of a limiter.

Then again, it's also possible that being ~6ft6 is a big advantage, but only up to a certain point and not beyond that. That it also carries a certain ceiling on how good you can get, so to speak. It's hard to say for certain as of yet. The game has been moving in a taller direction in general in the last decade, and my hunch is that we'll soon see a dominant player above 6ft3. Zverev and Tsitsipas are obviously big boy candidates.
Click to expand...
But dont you think it has to do with the serve vs return game "balance"? We know height has no limits on the serve ( for example Karlovic). I havent checked the stats, but i would think the return stats drops drastically above 6ft2/6ft3. Maybe the explanation for juniors is that it takes longer to develop a strong return game?

I would guess that at a certain height the disadvantages on return are greater than the advantages on serve.
 
Jonas78 said:
But dont you think it has to do with the serve vs return game "balance"? We know height has no limits on the serve ( for example Karlovic). I havent checked the stats, but i would think the return stats drops drastically above 6ft2/6ft3. Maybe the explanation for juniors is that it takes longer to develop a strong return game?

I would guess that at a certain height the disadvantages on return are greater than the advantages on serve.
Click to expand...

Well, if we just look at top 100 tennis in general and not just limit our scope to a few outliers who are all-time greats (a very small sample, so hard to conclude much), then the taller players in general do a bit better than the guys around 6ft1 on average. Their gains on serve outweigh the losses on return.

Here's the correlation between win % and listed height on the pro tour:

height-winperc.png


As for juniors, the reality is rather that they take longer to develop dominant service games than return games. The break % are far higher on the junior tour than on the pro tour. Plenty of players like Stefan Kozlov, an average height player with good returning and little serve game, do very well in the junior ranks but do not transition well to the pros because they lack the power and serve on that level. In contrast, plenty of tall players take longer to develop in the juniors, like a Fritz or Opelka, but transition comparatively better to the pro ranks because they have the needed power/serve and learn to reign in the errors and start beating the shorter pushers that dominated them in the juniors. The stats bear out this trend – tall players don't dominate juniors but have the advantage over their shorter counterparts when going pro.

I won't go through all the nuances of it, but these two articles make some interesting points on the subject.

http://www.tennisabstract.com/blog/2017/09/04/how-much-does-height-matter-in-mens-tennis/

http://www.tennisabstract.com/blog/2017/02/16/are-taller-players-the-future-of-tennis/
 
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Mainad said:
That's very flattering although I (modestly) describe myself as more of a 'stats nerd'. There are certainly more players on here better fitting that description than me (stats goat that is).
Click to expand...

So humble of you
What would you say about tennis goat then??
Is anyone else there who can claim on it besides murygoat??
 
@Sysyphus - you make some great points that I - for whatever reason - have never considered despite being in a fair few threads about tennis height over the years. Cheers!
 
We should look at height distribution of the Tour vs height distribution of the populations of people in the same age.

I'm pretty sure the ideal height is over 195, but that the players we see at those heights aren't extroadinary talents for their height (in terms of # standard deviations from the mean)

Ergo.

Ideal height?

And what height do you expect to win the most titles?

Are actually very different questions.
 
Sysyphus said:
This is actually false, tennis abstract looked at this. Taller juniors improve more when entering the pro ranks, comparatively. In contrast, a greater number of good average-height juniors aren't able to make the transition to the pros.
Click to expand...
I think this is quite logical, as the pro Tour is much more serve based than the junior level.

Thanks for the good sauces by the way.
 
Red Rick said:
We should look at height distribution of the Tour vs height distribution of the populations of people in the same age.

I'm pretty sure the ideal height is over 195, but that the players we see at those heights aren't extroadinary talents for their height (in terms of # standard deviations from the mean)

Ergo.

Ideal height?

And what height do you expect to win the most titles?

Are actually very different questions.
Click to expand...
Meanwhile

I'm 195.

I must suck even worse at ze tennis than I thought:cry::cry:
 
Red Rick said:
I think this is quite logical, as the pro Tour is much more serve based than the junior level.

Thanks for the good sauces by the way.
Click to expand...

No worries. Always love a good Cholula, especially the one with chipotle. j/k

Good poast the one above btw. Pretty much how I see it as well.

"Ideal height? And what height do you expect to win the most titles? Are actually very different questions," sums it up. People standing ~195cm are just so rare in most of the world, so it's a bit unreasonable to expect someone to both have that height and an ATG talent at the same time. But they are nevertheless over-represented in pro tennis compared to the population at large.

Chanwan said:
@Sysyphus - you make some great points that I - for whatever reason - have never considered despite being in a fair few threads about tennis height over the years. Cheers!
Click to expand...

Cheers.

I got most of that line of thinking from those TennisAbstract pieces, so I can't take much credit, but happy to start some discussion about it in any case.
 
184-188 cm is the ideal range. The vast majority of multi-slam champs and no 1 players since the 80s are in that range.

This average might go up with the NextGen because they are taller. But in all likelihood it will again be a 6-foot-1 guy who will rake up slams, not a clumsy 7-foot giant ace-machine robot.
 
What I'm really wondering is

- How much do things really come down to height, and how much to other variation in physical make up

- Do we notice any technical differences in stroke mechanics and movement between shorter and taller players?
- What effect would we expect height to have on stroke mechanics?

Obviously, longer limbs means backswings take longer, and it means they'll be slower movers, especially on the first few meters, however, they'll also have more reach, so they have an advantage in situations with extremely little reaction time.

The Big 4 have basically given the perfect blueprint of an elite 184-188 player.

- Best movers in the world.
- Above average power
- World class shotmaking.

This is all relative to their height category. I don't think we've seen any really tall players who are good at every thing relative to their height.
 
The best physical capacities would appear to be 185cm - 187cm but with reach advantages and extremity advantages more aligned with someone taller.

Generational athletes like Federer and Nadal have the best of both both worlds.

Both Federer and Nadal both have hands, feet, and wingspans that extend a fair way beyond a normal 185cm person, even other tennis athletes at that size. Federer has extraordinary reach and limbs, and very, very wide-set feet. Nadal also has irregular characteristics for a person this height, along with extremely large hands, way bigger proportionally than his height. Maybe more akin to someone 193cm or taller.

They have the advantages of taller people while retaining the lower centre of gravity that aided in their development and stroke mechanics / consistency / agility etc. etc.

IowaGuy said:
Why have we never seen a 7'0" point guard in the NBA?
Click to expand...

I'm not sure it's a correct analogy to compare an individual sport to a team sport, but even in the NBA there has been a complete revolution of what is expected of tall players and breaking down the barriers of size. You can be 206cm tall and a pure shooter with great handles in today's NBA. And have a look at a guy like Ben Simmons and what he is doing running the point at 208cm.
 
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Lew said:
Highest ranked above 6'5:

4) Del Potro
5) Zverev
6) Anderson
7) Cilic
10) Isner
11) Khachanov
16) Medvedev

Highest ranked below 5'10:

17) Schwartzmann
48) Dzumhur
80) Nishioka
100) Fabbiano
117) Berankis
128) Ferrer
143) Smyczek
Click to expand...
Many shorter guys have taller listing then they actually are. Fognini & Nishi are not 5'10" and I doubt Agassi was 5'11".

Nevertheless, I think 6" to 6"3 are ideal heights. Of course some taller guys have excellent lateral movement and that's what suffers a bit as you look at some of the super tall guys in tennis with some notable exceptions.
 
heninfan99 said:
I was just a few feet from Fognini and he's definitely not 5'10". I was also fairly close to Nishi and the same.

Whereas The Stanimal is def. at least 6' confirmed.
Click to expand...

In pics I don't see them more than 2 inches shorter than Wawrinka, especially Nishikori (Fognini may be 0.5 inch shorter).
 
Lew said:
In pics I don't see them more than 2 inches shorter than Wawrinka, especially Nishikori (Fognini may be 0.5 inch shorter).
Click to expand...

I know you mentioned pics but you are wrong. The pics don't always show reality just like tennis on tv the ball speed rarely looks accurate compared to when you are court side. Lots of players are shorter than listed in reality. The shorter ones exaggerate for some reason.
 
heninfan99 said:
I know you mentioned pics but you are wrong. The pics don't always show reality just like tennis on tv the ball speed rarely looks accurate compared to when you are court side. Lots of players are shorter than listed in reality. The shorter ones exaggerate for some reason.
Click to expand...

Sorry I have to work with what I have. ATP says they're 5'10, I have to believe them to make a stat.
 
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