The United States Tennis Association is using data to educate and inform players and coaches alike.
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This particular maxim may indeed be true more often than not, but two of the world’s top players — reigning US Open champ Carlos Alcaraz and his finals opponent, Casper Ruud — are actually covering a lot more distance, according to data analysis from USTA’s player development team.
“They’re running significantly more because they’re covering more ground to hit the forehand and be more aggressive,” said Geoff Russell, USTA’s Senior Manager for Professional Players. “So maybe, them covering more distance is, relative to the tactical game style that they’re trying to play, that might not be a bad thing. That might be an efficient thing.”
The running habits of the Nos. 1 and 3 ranked players are but one insight gleaned from the Hawk-Eye player and shot tracking data available at every Grand Slam event, including the Australian Open, which took place in January. What the USTA has prioritized in recent years is in-depth assessment of match data in order to inform training. Practice sessions and workouts are tracked by wearable technologies to ensure that players are preparing appropriately to compete and contend at major tournaments.
A key figure in this initiative is Paul Robbins, Kinexon’s EVP of Sports Performance and a member of the USTA Sport Science Committee. Robbins pioneered this type of physical performance monitoring for NBA players as the Director of Elite Performance at STATS, which owned the first tracking system implemented in basketball, SportVU. He continues to consult extensively within the NBA.
Robbins jokes about how impressive the USTA Sports Science Committee is, noting that he’s just about the only one without an MD or PhD. (“I always say I’m the dumbest guy in the room,” he quipped with a laugh.) Now, in conjunction with Russell, Performance Manager David Ramos, medical advisory group member Mark Kovacs and others, Robbins is helping spearhead innovative analysis and training programs in tennis.
“How do these guys actually play? How do we actually then train somebody to play at this level? Their accelerations or decelerations, the loads, the work capacity you need over a two-week period of time in the tournament — things like that,” Robbins said. “It’s basically bringing everything I’ve done for the NBA for 12 years, now, we’re actually at that level for the USTA to be able to do that in our development of our US players.”
During the US Open, the USTA player and coach development staffs introduced the Physicality Index and published a series of web stories using this new metric to describe the intensity and toll of matches. One such piece, discussing the play of the men’s semifinalists, shared the aforementioned insight about Alcarez and Ruud, whose respective 6.9 and 6.6 Physicality Index scores dwarfed Karen Khachanov (5.2) and American Frances Tiafoe (4.8), as did their high-speed distance covered and number of explosive movements.
That public-facing metric was designed to engage and interest fans and, at times, included some sample workouts that competitive players could undertake to prepare for such demands. But the player development work runs much deeper.
Russell and Robbins drove from the greater Phoenix area out to Indian Wells for the BNP Paribas Open in October 2021, and over the course of the roughly eight-hour roundtrip drive, they designed most of the new tech-infused, player development program.
The first order of business was to assess the current practice routines among highly rated junior players at the USTA campus in Lake Nona. Performance Analytics Coordinator Katherine Gonzalez tagged every drill in the data management platform to help develop these baselines.
Early questions raised by Robbins, whose specialty is in metabolics, were about training the necessary energy systems: “Do we need a 15-minute drill? if you’re trying to mimic what’s happening in a match, that’s two minutes. You want to go at a much higher intensity to do that.”
One revelation of this work: several coaches were using mini-tennis — a rally-driven exercise using only the service boxes — early in training session to get their players loose.
“They were calling it their warmup,” Robbins said, “and that turned out to be the highest intensity drill. It’s like, ‘I don’t know if we want to start with the highest-intensity drill.’”
Providing education to the coaches is the important first step, and they’ve been largely receptive to the explanations they’re hearing.
“Coaches have the right intention,” Russell said. “They’re trying to do the right things, but they just need to understand the why — the effects of what they’re doing.”
USTA leadership has been supportive, he added, because every stakeholder in development stands to gain from the infusion of data and video to track not only physical load but stroke volume and heart rate, too. RPEs, the common shorthand for rate of perceived exertion scores, are also valuable data points from the athletes themselves even if they are inherently more subjective.
These sources appeal to tennis coaches, strength coaches, athletes, the medical team and also the mental skills coaches, with Russell noting the applicability of heart rate data as a proxy for pressure management. After all, physical, technical and tactical performance are inherently intertwined. The USTA performance team’s preview of the women’s semifinal, for example, used the data to show how Ons Jabeur and Caroline Garcia minimized their exertion by controlling court position, rarely standing far behind the baseline, by using their strength to return shots from closer in and rallying with powerful forehands.
Every player has his or her own style of play and requisite physical thresholds, but as the data gets collected and analyzed, the USTA can create clusters, or buckets, of player profiles who would all benefit from similar training. That serves as a base for further personalization.
“Going back to Alcaraz, I mean, those accelerations and decelerations that he had — and not only just one or two, he just kept doing it — you’ve got to train for that,” Robbins said. “And that’s what we’re trying to do is understand what the matches are. And then how do we how do we adjust our drills to do that?”
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