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Shots that make top women rule the courts
We analysed data from The Tennis Abstract, a website providing shot-by-shot descriptions for several matches (upwards of 50 for each player) to find out how each player likes to dominate the court
Naomi Osaka hits a booming forehand that travels at over 100mph. She took Serena Williams—the most powerful player on the women’s circuit—down at last year’s US Open with that fierce shot. But the Japanese top seed, who won the Australian Open this year, also loves hitting crosscourt backhands.
Compare that to Simona Halep, who won Wimbledon this year, who does not have a game imbued with such tremendous power, but nonetheless loves to play forehands down the line much more than Osaka.
Ashleigh Barty, who stunned the tennis world with the French Open title, relies more on an all-round game, and part of that game is a superb slice that she deploys with great success.
As the year’s final Grand Slam is underway, here’s a look at the shots the women who won the other three slams this year love to play. The three are all right-handed players with two-handed backhands, and intriguingly, all three tend to get most of their points playing the inside-out forehand.
We analysed data from The Tennis Abstract, a website providing shot-by-shot descriptions for several matches (upwards of 50 for each player) to find out how each player likes to dominate the court.
Most successful shot: inside-out forehand
Looking at the various shots the three play and how good each shot is at winning them points, the inside-out forehand emerges as the clear winner for all three. All three win over 53% of their total points hitting this one shot—either as a clear winner, or by forcing their opponents into an error.
This is also a shot Barty likes to play more than the other three, roughly 12% of her shots are inside-out forehands; Osaka uses it the least.
Osaka’s crosscourt backhands
Compared to the other two, Osaka hits more of her backhands crosscourt and not as many down the middle. In fact, almost a quarter of all her shots recorded in the Tennis Abstract database are crosscourt backhands.
As for Barty, she uses backhands of any kind infrequently—they comprise only 19% of all her shots, compared to 39–45% for the others.
Barty’s slices
Barty makes up for not playing the backhand by deploying the slice generously. While Halep and Osaka slice only 1-2 per cent of their shots from the left-hand side (ad court), around 24% of Barty’s shots recorded are slices, roughly half of which are hit crosscourt.
Halep’s down-the-line forehands
Halep likes to hit her forehands down the line more than the others (around seven per cent, while the others are under five per cent). She also hits her forehands crosscourt less often. Barty is the opposite of Halep here—she goes down the line least and crosscourt the most, around 25%.
