First Strike Tennis:
All Levels
Craig O'Shannessy
In the last article (Click Here) we saw that at the pro level the player who wins the four hit battles wins the match. Could that be true at all levels?
How about in high school tennis for example? High school is a window into point length below the pro level, including, possibly, club tennis.
Aren't winning high school players known for playing long, torturous points? At a national coaching conference I met a high school coach who has the answer.
That answer is no. The duration of high school points falls into the same general category as points at the top of the game.
Styrling Strother is a highly successful coach at Cary Academy in North Carolina. His players typically are USTA tournament players, state or sectionally ranked, with aspirations to play college tennis
His teams have won numerous conference championships and gone deep in state championships as well. In 2014, his girls' team made the finals of the State Championships, won 4 trophies, and shattered every record in the 16-year school history.
Long before we ever met, Styrling's independent research had established that the four hit battle was critical in high school matches, and the winner of the 4 hit (and shorter) points invariably won the match as well.
How did Styrling establish this fact? He spent over 3 years charting rally length on both his boys and girls teams, from the number singles 1 players through the number 6 singles players, and his doubles teams as well.
He charted over 400 matches. That was over 30,000 points. It totaled about 90,000 shots. That is an impressive data base to say the least.
When we met at the coaching convention I was amazed to find that his results from this data were extremely similar to what my own research had found about the pro game.
What did his in depth study show? If anything, that high school points were shorter than points at the pro level.
Pro points average 3 to 4 hits. Styrling found that the average rally length in high school tennis was between 2 and 3 hits. Correct! Between 2 and 3 hits.
He found that for his boys' teams the average rally length was 2 hits to 2.5 hits, varying slightly from the top to the bottom of the lineup.
The data for the girls was almost identical. Average rally length for the girls was from 2.5 hits to 3 hits per point, again varying somewhat with the player's position in the lineup.
So to repeat, rather than being longer as we might imagine, high school points are actually shorter than pro points. But the fundamental similarity was this. In high school tennis the overwhelming percentage of points were finished in 4 hits or less—the same first strike paradigm as the pros.
To get a feel for what that actually means, let's look at a match played by one of Styrling's players in the state championship final. This was the number 5 singles player on his girls' team, a sectional tournament player who hopes to play in college.
She won the match 6-2, 6-2. So that was 16 games. The total number of points played was 98. In those 98 points there were a total of 236 hits. That made the average rally length just shy of 2.5 hits.
At coaching conventions when I present data on the pro tour showing that the average pro rally is between 3 or 4 hits, I often get push back from coaches saying something like "that's fascinating, but I coach kids and the rally lengths in junior tennis are completely different."
But again, what Styrling's data shows is that the number of average hits per point at lower levels is actually less than coaches perceive.
His numbers show that the total number of points that fall within that 1 to 4 hit first strike range is probably higher than pro tennis.
And Styrling discovered that 90% of the time an extended rally going past 3 or 4 balls was immediately followed by a First Strike rally.
Stryling believes that the success of his teams has resulted in part from applying this research about point length to the way his players play matches, and especially to the way they practice.
Practice Like You Play
Styrling may be the only high school coach in the country that has his teams spend the majority of their practices focused on the first 4 shots.
What does Styrling's practice court look like? Tons of serve work. Tons of returns. Lots of Serve +1, and Return +1. And then the kids hit the repeat button. I love that.
One of the things Styrling works on is the difference between return on first and second serve. Which players have more trouble with the first serve, and which have more trouble returning the second? He adjusts the repetitions on returns based on which serve his players need more work returning.
And here is the horse's mouth. Listen to some of Styrling direct insights on what the numbers to his players and how he uses them to organize a practice session:
Enjoying this series? Stay tuned for yet another critical insight from our research data—the relationship between winners and errors.
