Hi and welcome to the Essential Tennis Podcast, your place for free expert tennis instruction that can truly help you improve your game. Welcome to episode number 350 of the Essential Tennis Podcast. Today I have a really special guest, his name is Warren Pretorius and he's the founder of tennisanalytics.net and that's a company that provides detailed match analysis, scouting and detailed statistical reports for tennis players.
Current clients that he has includes the USTA, player development team, tennis Canada, over 40 NCAA teams, numerous academies and players on the ATP and WTA tour. And Warren is actually recently teamed up with Craig O'Shanasey. You might recognize that name. He has been with me here on the podcast.
Most of them incredibly knowledgeable and Warren and I sat down at a conference a couple months ago and he showed me some new player data that he collected from 35 and 40 level adult competitors on his tennis court and it really blew my mind. So I knew I had to have him on the show. Warren, thank you so much for joining me today. Thanks Ian, glad to be here.
So give people a little, I just did a really brief overview of what you're up to and what your focus is on and what it has been focused on for many years now. Can you give people a little bit of background? What do you do on a day-to-day basis? Who are you helping with your analytics and analysis and what kind of really excites you recently about the work you're doing in tennis?
Yeah, I think I'll start off and say that for all of us as tennis players, whether you're a 3.0 player, a 3.5 player or a junior or even a pro player, you're pretty serious about improving. And I think that as we all know, there's sometimes a disconnect between the practice court and also with the match court.
And unfortunately, it's not as easy as a soccer game where there's a coach out there and there's one camera and filming 22 players at a time, which is pretty easy to go and review after the fact. It's much more of a challenge in tennis because there's only two players out there. So a large part of our game out development is done on a practice court, but really not knowing what you actually do when you play a match. So I make the analogy to doing all the theory in class at school.
And the only way that you can actually test your knowledge of that theory is to take a test or a quiz. And for us, the quiz is playing a match. So the problem that we've got is that there's nothing's being measured. So often a player will go out based on their practice court and their lessons and think that say they forehand is their best stroke, but actually on a, yeah, technically, but strategically and tactically, it may be their biggest weakness.
So that's why for us, regardless of the level, getting this data is very important. So with what Craig and I have been doing over the years, we're starting to find whether it's universal truths about the sport or find out things that we didn't even think was happening or is happening. But for me, at the moment, we concentrated on first getting all this data from the pros. So we collected pros. We always go to the top tier pros.
Then we started doing a collegiate model, collecting a lot of data there, which we still do, and then going to the top juniors. And as you know, the old triangle model, the pyramid. We are only scraping the very tip of the pyramid because the biggest base of players is not at that elite level. So that's why for me now, the exciting part is to actually go down into the bigger body of the pyramid and start working with finding out what is happening with club level players.
So with that, we did a, I propose to the USDA that we do a pro-channel. And we basically, we invite benchmarked players to come and play. We know what their, what their NTRP level is, their exact NTRP. So as you probably know, but maybe some of the listeners don't know is that the NTRP is broken down into 10th or even hundreds of points. So a 3.1 player would still be shown as a 3.5.
So we would get players that are within the same 10th to almost guarantee that when they played, that they'd be competitive, it just gives us better data to start off with. So we had this project where we invited all these players in and we had them play matches and we did it over a weekend just to see if anything pops out. And we were very encouraged by what we learned. So some of the stuff that I talk about now, we certainly have to do a lot more data gathering.
But we did also, we were able to do a similar project down at the tennis congress, which is where I met you at and gathered some data there on some 4-row players there. And in the next two weeks, I'll be going to Lifetime and doing a pilot project with the A3-5 players. Awesome. This will be in singles and doubles. So I think that the exciting part is that the ball is rolling now. So maybe in the next couple of months, we'd be able to sit down again and look at these numbers.
But what I found out is that there are a couple of universal truths about our game. You probably listened to Craig O'Shanzy and he talked about the rally lengths, the shock tolerance is what we call it, rally lengths in the first four, in the next five to eight, nine to twelve and on. And at every single level, it doesn't matter what the surface or what your age, our sport is dominated by shorter rallies.
So for example, here, at the three five level, what we found is that on the shot tolerance for the women, 84% of all points ended within eight shots. For the men, it was actually for the group that we had was 90% end with eight shots. The first four shots for the women was around 50%. And for the men was a little bit higher, was 60%. So what does that mean?
That means that like you heard Craig says, you really need to, if you're practicing, you need to make sure that you spend a proportionate amount on practicing your first four shots. So the first four shots would be your serve, the return, your bonus return, surplus one is the third shot and return plus one is the fourth shot.
So for each player, that's two touches and in the bottom line for every single level, is that if you do want to improve, you need to make sure you take care of the first two touches. You got to get your first serve in. Your first serve is definitely an opportunity to take control of the point early. And it was interesting with the three fives on the serve was for the woman, especially the serve percentage was very high.
So we saw the woman that's in the group that we charted, the first serve percentage was 73%. Wow. And you know, for a lot of players, we're going, wow, that's great because when I take a lesson and I go out and work on my first serve, you want to get as many first serves in as possible. But actually there's a there's a point of diminishing returns. And that is we typically find that a healthy first serve percentage is really between 60 and 65%.
So if you if for any player, any level, if you're up around, you know, above 70%, it means that you probably need to be hitting your first serve a little bit more aggressively. And maybe it's fine to actually serve a few more faults because the important thing is not the percentage of first serves that you're getting in, but rather the percentage of points that you win on that first serve.
So we we we saw that you know, with the women, even though the percentage was high, they were winning about 57%. Whereas with the men, they were getting 60% of the first serves in, but winning 60% of those. And that's a you typically see that even with with the pro levels, you know, when we're doing oppositional scouting with the pros, we'll watch that the first serve percentage is definitely not too low, but is also definitely not too high.
We target that 62% you know, first serve percentage of first serves made. Interesting. Um, as you may have heard also is that, you know, if I go back to the, um, let's just stick with it with the first serve, I think that on the first serve, one of the, one of the differences and it's kind of understandable is the placement of the first and second serve. Um, typically at the higher levels of play, um, the more elite levels, even even in the juniors, um, the server has, um, better placement.
When I say better placement, um, tends to aim wide or down the tee a lot more than down the middle to open the cord up or to serve to turn opponents back. Um, at, at the three fives that we, that we tested, we actually found that particularly with, um, with the women, but even with the men, most of the serves were going down the middle of the court. And you can understand that you know, because obviously, you, uh, for a lot of three five players, um, may not have been playing for very long.
And the main, um, focus is just to get their first serve in. Sure. And on their second serve, obviously, I don't want to double fault. So, so with that being said, is that the, the, the, the easiest way looking at stats to improve your first serve is one to be more aggressive is not always hitting with more spin or more pace, but is actually to look at placing the ball better, particularly with being able to serve out wide on the first serve.
So, so tip for for any player out there would be, Hey, this, this is something you can go do by yourself, you know, go out there and just set up cones and whether you're serving in singles or doubles is try and open up the court more by either serving more wide or down the tee, um, because the, the numbers are showing that most serves are going down the middle of the court. Interesting. Well, when you say the middle of the court, I assume you mean the, the middle of the service box. Exactly.
It, uh, to the body. Um, with the returning, if we look at the other side because the return is, is probably the, the arguably the most important, um, shot in tennis and, um, and is often the, the easiest, the lowest hanging fruit for a player to, to improve on. We know that the more aggressive the, your opponent's service, the more you're going to be reactive on, on the, um, on the return.
So your main job, the better the service, the higher the level on the, on the first return is to get the ball back and play. And the best place to get the ball back and play is down the middle of the court, not to risk any, you know, side dance. And if you can, you go to the, the opponent's backhand side, but down the middle of the court. You can, you, you can, you can hear them limiting angles on their shot, on their second shot.
On the second serve at all levels, you, you, you typically more proactive on the return. So this is usually it's an opportunity. In fact, an interesting step is that on the women's side at almost all levels except for the very elite players that the top, you know, top 10 players, um, the second serve is to the server. So especially as you go down the ranks, down the tiers of you know to club players and juniors and collegiate, the second serve is really a good, a very good opportunity
for a player to take control of the point when they're returning. And obviously this is where you want to be be more aggressive. A way to be aggressive is to look to come into the net because what we found is that net appearances at almost every level a player is going to win more points by coming to the net and standing back. The other good thing about looking to attack and get into the net, not only on the return of second serve,
but on any rally is that you get better at the net by coming into the net. And I think that for most players, they'll go in the only time that they'll hit any values will be when they're warming up. And also, if you take a lesson and somebody's just feeding you, you're standing up at the net and you're just hitting with perfect technique, the reality is that that's not going to happen when you play a match because your opponent is trying
to pass you, is trying to love you, is trying to hit it at your head. But you don't have those perfect values. So a lot of them are stabbing and diving and just like reacting. So that happens when you play matches. So one of my other like, you know, coming from the data and also just on the playing side is to encourage players to go to the net. And yes, you're going to get passed. But the stats show that you're probably going to
win more even now than you lose. And that percentage is going to go up with both the serve and the return percentage and you're coming into the net. And that you have to, if you do the things that a three five does, then you're going to be a three five. So you need to start experimenting with it serving wide or being more aggressive on your second serve or being being more aggressive on your return of second serve or coming into the
net. You're doing things that are not a characteristic of your level. And that's the, you know, it's like what you talked about in your part in one of the articles that you wrote about was, you know, it's very difficult to make a change. But these are some of the easiest changes that you can make in your game. And I have a lot of fun while you're
doing it. Love it. I love that mindset. I'm really curious. What is the the win percentage breakdown like Warren when coming to the net out of three five versus, let's say, a college player versus professional level? What is the win percentage like up at the net? Yeah. For the three parts, we, you know, it was marginally better. It was about 53 and 55% for the women and the men respectively. Okay. I sense that that that is, is actually
going to be higher when we get a bigger data set. So that's why when we do this next next project in a couple of weeks, I want to really look at that with the, with the, with the collegiate players and the pro players, I mean, you know, they 65%. You know, you can't say the net. It's very, very high win percentage because, you know, half the time the person coming into the net when we track a net appearance, it doesn't necessarily have to mean hitting
a valley. In fact, a lot of the time, if you approach correctly and, and, and, and, and a little tip over here is, you know, the old mantra for us used to be, if you're playing singles, you approach down the line. So if you get a backend on the backend side, you approach down the line to your opponent's forehand if they, if they're a, a right hander, and if you get a forehand short ball, then you'd approach to their backend. What we actually
found is that that's not true. And that the best place to hit an approach to is to always hit your opponent's backend. Interesting. Yes, you've got to cover more court space. You know, if you're going back and you're going cross-court your opponent's back ends, you do have to cover a little bit more court. And usually that's about two extra steps. But the fact is, is that players at all levels hit more forehand winners than they do backhand
winners? So you just make sense from the, you know, even on the data side, it's saying, well, yeah, we can see why you want to go to your backend, the backend side is simply because it generally it's the weaker side. I love to, oh, real quick, if you don't mind,
I'd love to go back to that. You said 53, 55% of points one at three five level. Just to, can you please give some context to my listeners who maybe haven't listened to a lot of my episodes and they don't understand how big of a deal three, four or five percent additional points on your side of the matches. How big of a deal are those couple percentage points? Well, I think that's on the percentages. I mean, you know, all of them translating
to at the end of the day to percentage of points one. Okay. And that a good way of looking at this is to say that you don't, you start off at 50, 50 when we walk out on the court. And when, if you win one point, it means I win one less. So really what you're battling for is that on points one, each point has a, really is a spread of two because you're
one more I'm one less. So on the percentages, it works like that also on the percentages of points one that we know and you probably I'm not sure what what Craig told you know everyone, but you know that the top players in the world are winning 55% of all the points that they play. Yeah, which is mind blowing for most people. And the top 20 player in the world is losing more points than they winning. That's crazy.
So and obviously they're in different pools, but we equate this like, you know, well, I have a 12 year old or 16 year old and again, well, how does that relate to me because I'm not pro. And you say no, the percentage is pretty much, you know, hold true in your own pool. If you're in a competitive pool, you're really, this is another perfect game. You're going to lose a lot of points. And if you go out there and you lose 45% of all
the points that you play, you're very rarely going to lose a match. You're going to be, in fact, you're going to move up your into a different pool. So so percent one percent makes a huge difference. And I'm going to the net, you know, is actually even though it's, you know, 53 55, it is a big deal. Anytime you can get you can get a margin like that. You want to you want to take it. Love it. Yeah, I think so few amateur players are aware
of how huge one percent of points actually is. And when when you and Craig share those kind of stats from the pro game of the top player in the world winning, you know, 55 56% of their total points, I think it's easy to for us to assume that oh, well, sure, that's against elites, you know, athletes, like the best players to ever play the game. But I love how you just related it to, you know, their competitive pool versus our competitive
pool. That's a really good point. Yeah. And and then you another universal truth also is just when we talk about the forend and the back end is, is that it doesn't matter what your level is, you're going to hit more forend winners than back end winners for most players. I know there are exceptions because we had a player out there who said, that's definitely
not not the truth with me. My back end is much better. And but for the most part, your forend is going to be better than your back end, which just means that you need to practice hitting more forends. And what we found is when we when we did this, when we looked at positioning and recovery at the three five level was that players tended to recover right back to the middle of the court. And they were basically drawing that line, that line perpendicular
to the net, you know, dividing the court up. And they were saying, everything on the left of this line is a back end. Everything on the right is a forend. And and actually use two thirds of that court, two thirds of the court on if I took the single scored and I divided up into thirds, the right two thirds with me standing on the baseline should be forends. You should you anytime you can practice running around a back end to hit
a forend, you should do it. I don't think that at least myself as a as a you know, former teaching pro, you know, ran an academy for 13 and a half years. And a lot of the things that I'm learning now in the data, I wish I would have known when I was teaching because there were a lot of things that I would teach completely different. And one of them would be to right away is yes, I know you've got to you've got to have a good back end, you
got to have a solid back end, you've got to have a good forend. But I didn't spend enough time on on a few things. One was, you know, just going sticking with the forend and back end is movement. It was not just movement, you know, two or four and side or two or back inside, but it's moving around and hitting an inside out or an inside in forend. So that's just elect, you know, electing to hit a forend instead of a back end. I would do that more.
And the other thing, the biggest, the biggest problem mistake that players make and coaches make and that I made was not allotting a good proportion of the practice to serves and returns. It was always sort of an afterthought. Hey, let's go rally and keep the ball going. And yes, I agree that you have to have consistency. You need to go out and you need to go hit, you need to be able to hit 20 balls in a row because it's good for your endurance,
your fitness, your movement, your confidence. If you know that you can hit 20 balls in a row, you're probably going to be much better at the first four shots, right? So I think you do have to practice it. But like Craig is sitting in some of his presentations is that you don't want to go out there and practice hitting 20 balls in a row for four times. It's better for you to go practice four ball rallies 20 times. And start whenever you practice, practice the serve,
you know, practice the return. It should be, you know, the half or more of your practice should at least involve one of those shots because every single match starts off with the serve and return. So that's what I would have done that different. I would have one is out of work on players hitting more serves and returns. And then I'd work on them practicing hitting a serve plus one, the third shot and trying whenever possible to hit a four end. And then look, yeah,
if they can, there'd be something to do with the net. Come into the net, come into the net, come into the net because just by doing working on those three, you know, those are the low hanging fruits. And I think every player should be working on those. So I'd love to dive into those,
the shots, tolerance numbers, the rally length numbers, just a little bit more. If I, if I wrote it down correctly, I believe you said at the three five level on the women's side, it was 50% of points ended in four shots or less and 60% on the men's side ended in four shots or less. How does that compare to the WTA and the ATP side of things? So on the men's side first, okay, the, I said in this group that was 60% ended within one to four.
We are just avoid confusion. The ATP, when they do their rally links, they're counting zero to four. So zero would be, they're counting the bounces. So zero would be, if I served a double fault. Okay. Okay, it would be no bounces, it's a zero. A one would be an ace. If the rally length was one, it just means that I hit an ace or the return didn't come back. So sometimes if, in the counts that you'll see, when Craig is doing a zero to four, the numbers may be a little bit
higher than what mine are. But again, when we do the comparison, we make note of that that we doing stroke count. So opposed to rally length, we're doing stroke count. So this, this means that if a person hits an ace, or if they hit a double fault, they've hit one stroke. So it's the,
we're actually counting the time the ball hits the strings, not the bounces. So in one to four, what we find is that at the at the men's three five level, and you can also, you can understand the differences between the men and the women, because the men were a little bit more aggressive on their serves and typically more aggressive in the in in they play in the first one. They were 60 percent. And the ATP top 10, you know, was pushing 65 percent, the the ATP generally top 10,
top and top ATP players were about 65 percent. Okay. The lower levels were, they go, they get lower as we get down to say the 12s. So the under 12s were 53 percent. Oh wow. And then it goes up. If you look, you know, 12s, 12s through the 18s, pretty much 12s to the 16s, pretty much the same. Then the rally lengths in the one to four go up in the 18s. They got a 56 percent. And then in the challenger goes up to, you know, 63 and then 65. Doesn't matter what your what the surface is.
And it doesn't matter what your length is in the men, your the dominant rally length is the is the one to four. The next dominant is the five through eight. And that generally accounts to 30 percent across the board. So 90 percent of your 80 85 to 90 percent regardless of your level is going to be done within eight shots. And we have between 11 and 15 percent will be everything else. Okay. For the ladies, for the woman, we said that the that the ladies, the three five ended up at
47 percent of all rallies ended in the into one to four. So it was a little bit lower. But the five to eights were 37. So overall, it's 84 percent. If I was to break this down further, which we're looking at, I actually think that instead of doing the five to eight range, we would do a five to six. So one to four and then, you know, five and six shot rallies. Instead of five to eight, I think that a lot more rallies are happening in five to six than seven to eight. Again, just, you know,
showing that the rallies are shorter. Sure. The the ATP, the WTA, they're around about 60 percent on the one to four on the stroke count. And then they about same thing, 28 to 30 percent on the on the five to eight. So regardless, you know, when you're looking at it, there's, you know, definitely have dominated in the in the one to four range men and women. But outside of the one to four, I think that the five to six shot rallies would be next. Bottom line is that you you're playing
as sportive, you know, short rallies. The intent is to finish the ball, finish the point as quickly as possible. You and I are not going out and saying, Hey, why don't we see if we can keep the ball going for 10 for 10 shots before any of us can win a point? We don't do that. If we can get a get out there and serve an ace, that's first, that's the best. So that's fascinating to me. And and when you and I sat down and and Tucson, that that was the most surprising thing for me was the the house
small. The gap was between the one to four for the three five level guys and the the same for for ATP was only a five percent difference. Really kind of blew my mind. If you would have asked me, you know, to bet a thousand dollars on what the difference was between professional and amateur, I would have guessed it was much much longer rallies on the amateur side of things just because they don't have the weapons that the professional players do. How do you what is your what are your thoughts on
that? So for just an average club or recreational player without all the the weapons that professional players do without having those weapons, why do you think it's still so close and the the one to four range? Well, I think it's a game of errors. We we know that that that that people made the the highest percentage of errors come on the return of return of first serve. So so that's across
all levels. I think for us, I you know, I don't I don't know what the different what the I how do I want to say this it for the differences, you know, with four or five percent within the different levels, you know, we really have to look at the you know, delve down deeper into the data. But one of the things that that that we know is that we always remember the long rallies. Yes. Even when we watch TV, even when we when we when we come off the court, we go like, oh my gosh,
man, I'm so tired. It's like we had such long rallies. I go out and I go I cannot believe that that in that match that I just played my rally that the rallylings could not have been dominated by the one to four range. Yes. And then I've gone I've taken my own match and see exactly that is it? No, it's a universal truth is it you you think that the that the rally is a longer but they're but they're not. Okay. And I think at the at the at all levels, the errors are definitely going to
override the the winners. But you have and you have to be very very aware of where most of your errors are going to come. It's going to come in the first four shots, right. So you're usually going to come on the return or or one of the other shots. So that's why I said that a lower a good tip for
anyone is to is to really practice being good at their first two touches. And yeah. No, then I was going to say and then well, how what we would do is we do look at the the best way to practice is you know, the service with with placements placement out wide and also variety. And the best thing to do for your for for ground strokes is to work on depth.
And because as soon as you hit the ball deep like we all know again, this is all the work done with you know, Vic Braden, you know, a lot of those a lot of the stuff that he was talking about is, you know, is in fact not a lot of it. Almost all of it is spot on. So you work with depth and consistency obviously is important. You don't want to miss because it'll be an error, but you work on getting a deep and then you work on placements and you can work on pace. You can
work on spin. But the first the first thing to do is get it in and then get it deep. And if you can place it on the return, the first the best place to hit it to is down the middle onto the back inside the backhand body. Love it. I'd love to take a step back a little bit to something you just mentioned. And last couple questions here. I don't want to take up too much of your time. You've already you've already given us so much information and insight here and very, you know, actionable
data and insights that we can really use. But I'd love to go back to your your description of the kind of the highlight real mentality and and having a strong memory for those long kind of dramatic points. And you've made a mention right at the beginning of our conversation about how players don't actually know what happens during their matches. Why do you think that is that there's
such a disconnect between what we perceive to have happened out there in our own match. I think it's really easy for us to as you pointed out with with yourself for and your your own match thing. Oh, it's got to be it's got to be longer than more than you know 60 percent or I'm sorry less than 60 percent of my points in the in the one to four range. Why are we so bad at at knowing what's actually happening out there. Well, I mean, it's just a it's a it's a an issue in our
industry and you know, I don't know if I can solve that. It goes back to the you know, for for most tennis coaches or out on the court teaching private lessons and the emphasis is is working on technique. Now technique and strategy are intimately linked because good technique enables you to execute strategy better. But all of us have had you know, have have played against that player out there and they've got horrible technique. Just planting the ball back. But they've got good
strategy. Yeah. And we come out and we go like, Hey, I've taken a thousand dollars in lessons on my foreign and backhand technique and serve and I look like ten times the player that they are. And then I get my butt kicked. Okay, so so I think that there's a balance between the two and I think where where the disconnect happens is that most most coaches would love to go and watch their players play matches. But they don't have that luxury. They are the way that the industry set up is that
they paid to teach private lessons or group lessons beyond the court. So players got play matches and there's no feedback given to the coaches. And we even saw this at the very highest levels. Okay, which is why how tennis analytics got got started. You know, sort of we could trim the coaches or the team could collect this information on their own. But it takes time. Sure. So the solution is you know, there are options out there. One is that you don't have to chart your
entire match. You can go in and you can just go chart a segment of your match. Like have somebody you know, sit on the side and count your percentage of points, your serve percentage. That's it. Just your first serves in your percentage of points one on your first serve and then percentage of points one on your second serve. Just that alone is pretty easy to calculate. And then you can maybe another time just have somebody count your your back ends, your efficiency in your back ends.
So more and more players and parents, you know, or doing that, I doubt whether many of your three five players will have their parents come and watch their matches. But if it could be a spouse even. Okay. Sure. The other option, you know, we do have a service that's that's we have, you know, hundreds of players now who are submitting their own match video. And just for a professional analysis, we actually do an analysis for the four players that are it's the exact same procedure
that we use with the top pros. And do you need to take every single match? No. Okay, you just do it as a test. It's like, you know, every now and again, do a check in the best data to the best data integrity would come from a competitive match. So, you know, a lot of people will go out and play a match and beat somebody who want to know and say, yeah, you know, I want to go one home with those stats. But they actually don't mean a whole lot. Sometimes if you lose heavily,
you can learn something from it. But generally, you want a competitive match that you can look at. And that's typically we look at a six three six two or better. So we say, where you're where the loser of the match wins five or more more games in a two in in in in over two sets. Then it gets competitive. But I would encourage you know, it's a players to to start looking at it's just individual stats. A very important stats to an easy to calculate is just percentage of points one on a second
serve. Because that's an important one. What percentage should players be looking for? Well, a percentage of point you you we want to be winning the majority of them at least. Okay. Or you want to be high. I mean, I don't have that that that number right in front of me, but it is it is an important stat is that one what percentage of points of returns made on a on a on an opponent's first serve. Okay. We we do know that the number one predict or one of the top three
predictors of winning a match at all levels is one is winning that one to four battle. Okay. It's very rare that we find that that player wins the wins the match and does not win the one to four. It does happen, but it's but it's rare. And then the other thing is the the percentage of points one on first serve. And that you know, you want to make sure that that we were with that. I think
you know, you're looking at you know, 60% or more of on the win percentage. With the first serve percentage as we said right in the beginning, you want to watch that you're not I'm going to obviously you're serving 75% first serves in and you're winning 70% of those then you're great. Then it's awesome. But typically what what happens is that as that percentage of first serves goes up. So too does the quality of the serve and it becomes closer to a second serve. So so just monitoring
all of that. And and obviously if you can every now and again, I think it's worthwhile to have a coach watch a match because sometimes a coach's perception of what you're doing well or badly is based more on technique and what they do in a very controlled environment. They're not seeing all the junk balls coming at you. They're not seeing the games that are played on the you know, on the side because even at the three five level, there's a lot of gamesmanship. There's a lot of
you know, bad bounces. It's not the same quality of ball that you're getting with the ball machine or or a pro heading to you. So anytime you can measure you can measure something, you know, takes out the guesswork and when you do that, then it can drive the practice court so that for us, the what is happening on a match court, the test that you take from playing a match, that's what you'd be used to go back to either the practice or the lesson court. Not the other way around.
Love it. One more question for you Warren. And then I want to make sure that we let people know where they can find out about your analysis service and the great content you're publishing as well. But really quickly before that, maybe a little bit different question for you than what you're used to, it's I think the amount of insight that you're able to provide with the services that you've developed
and the expertise that you've developed in the sport of tennis is incredible. But I'm kind of jealous of you because you obviously only work with people that have already seen themselves on video. Otherwise, like you wouldn't have anything to analyze in the first place, although I'm sure you go and travel in person and in chart matches. But I think I know a lot of what you do is with video.
So for my audience where only a minority of people have ever seen themselves on video. And I'm, you know, I'm preaching every episode about how important it is to see yourself on video and find out the reality of what your strokes actually look like and what your patterns actually look like. What would your message be to that chunk of my audience who has not yet seen themselves
on video? How important is it that they make that step? That is so important. You know, in all my years, you know, I started off, I think you know, the scene is that you know, I developed the tennis market for dartfish. And with with dartfish software, the the focus in the beginning was on technique. And we we know that that really what you're doing is you bridging visual and kinesthetic learning. For everyone, it's almost always that there's four learning processes. There's a visual kinesthetic
auditory and then a lesson on one is digital logical. But the dominant two are usually visual and kinesthetic. So anytime you can watch yourself play and you can you can watch yourself hit a stroke with it to serve and then immediately review it and go back to the practice court, you bridge that that visual and kinesthetic learning. And in fact, I'll just mention one interesting
thing that that your listeners can go take a look at is the carpentry effect. The carpentry effect is, you know, it's it's basically that for after I perform a movement for 10 to 20 seconds, there's a residual effect. Your neurons keep firing that and all of us have experiences. You hit an a serve and you walk back to the line. You walk back to pick up another ball. You can sort of feel the serve that you just had. How sweet it felt on the strings and all that. You
you've got that sensation that lingering effect like alkycelser in a glass of water. It's physically strong. But then it goes away. Okay. Well, during that period that you can still feel what you've just done, if we were to show you that same video, that is the greatest opportunity to make technical changes. So whenever you can, if you take a lesson, a technical lesson, whenever you can use video, you're going to enhance the learning process on the technique side.
On the match side, it's similar. Most players, it's amazing how many players have not watched themselves play a match. Why they do not watch themselves play a match, even if they record it, is because it's boring. Right. I mean, if you think about it, and if you go play a match, you know, your own match and it takes an hour and a half, there's no way you're going to want to sit and watch an hour and a half. Sure. Your coach doesn't even want to watch it. It's boring.
So by the tagging, what why college coaches and even pro coaches like the service of having a match tag is that there's keywords. And then you can go quickly create highlight reels. Like I can say, let me go take a look at all my second serves that are hits on the doose side and the rally link is one to four. And I just want to look at those. Then I can sort those in the watch and then it's easier to identify tendencies. Like for instance, I want to take a
look at all my second serves hit on break point. And then go say, go look at those three or four and go every single one are serving the net. I serve a miss my first serve in the net. That's a tendency. And then when you can start like arranging your dissecting your match and looking at different areas, then you can really figure out what is important for you to go practice. And we also, anytime that there's a report, we do a 12 page statistical report.
And that is that's very valuable because even if you get your match tagged, you share it with your coach. Your coach then is going to be more likely to go and watch it because he can dissect the match in 10 minutes rather than watching it for one and a half hours. Sure. Let's just go ahead and shift yours right into that. Tell us where can we find out about the tagging and analytics and what services you offer and tell us about the content that
you're publishing as well. Yeah, so on our site on the website, tennisanalytics.net, the first thing I do is go look at the blog because there's some articles there for some people that find it very interesting, other people who have funded boring. But it's just case studies that we're writing on this data. So we're doing more and more of that. We will also be launching in the next
couple of months, we'll be launching a data product. And that is basically just, it's in a simplistic explanation that would be for any level of player that can go in and say, look, I'm interested in looking at the 12s and 14s data. And I just want to go take a look at everything to do with the serve. And it gives them some of what we call data discovery. So they can go in and say, well, I only want to take a look at the first serves on 40, 15 points. And they can look at the stats.
So there's a certain amount of interactivity between you and the stats on our database. We're going to be launching that. We can chat more about that. I'll send you some information about that. But the other thing is just in the other service, obviously, is in an area there that if you do want to film your own match, then you can upload it. And then we'll do the analysis for you. We are at some events. We're looking to expand some of the events that we go to for
the three fives. And as I said, you know, it is to everyone's benefit because really what we do is we anonymize the data. So we're never going to allow people to scout you. We don't put, we take names out and all that. This data goes into this to helping all of us, you know, understand what is happening in our in our sport. And our focus is now to grow that the, and we never, we will never,
ever say recreational player. Okay, that's the first thing I took out of any of our virgin that is say, you know, you can say competitive club players, but I've yet to meet any recreational players that have come out. A lot of the ladies that we've been working with are more serious about tennis than I've ever been. Love it. Well, honestly, I'm, I'm, I love the value that you provide here. I'm sure people listening might assume that it's, it's a huge cost to have an hour and a half long
match charted and and tagged and and cut up. But frankly, it's not much more than the cost of a lesson. And I feel like the, the amount of insight and actionable information that you can gleam from that is, is tremendous. So it's, it's amazing what you're offering for players. And I I'm excited to hear about the, the analytics product as well. That sounds exciting.
Yeah, that'll be out soon. Awesome. So tennis analytics that nets is the place to go. Any, any final thoughts for in or anything else you want our listeners to be aware of before we sign off? No, I think it's been been great. I'm honored that you had me, had me on, you know, I'm an admirer of your work also. And thank you. Some of the, you know, some of the writings and all that. It's really good. So if anything, you know, I'm just, just honored to be included.
That's really nice to be warned. I've been a big fan of yours and Craig's for a long time. I love the, the transparency and the objectivity and the kind of the reality that you guys are bringing to the, the sport of tennis. There's so much as you kind of alluded to tactfully several times. There's, there's so much being taught and pushed around the world of tennis that just doesn't match up with what's really happening out there. And that's a big reason why I love talking to
the, the two of you. So thank you so much for your time today. It's been really enlightening for me. I know it will be for my, my listeners as well. We, we all appreciate your, um, what you provide to the game. So thank you so much for that and for sharing your knowledge with my listeners. And welcome. Thanks, Ian. For more free, game improving instruction, be sure to check out essentialtennis.com
where you'll find hundreds of video, audio and written lessons. Also be sure to subscribe to essential tennis on iTunes and YouTube, where we are the number one resource in the world, providing passionate instruction for passionate tennis players. Thank you so much for listening today. Take care and good luck with your tennis.