ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Sports Act. Living
Sec. Elite Sports and Performance Enhancement
Volume 7 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fspor.2025.1634573
This article is part of the Research TopicMultidisciplinary Aspects and Performance in Racket Sports-Volume IIIView all 10 articles
Quantifying the technical-tactical diversity of elite tennis players during match-play
Provisionally accepted
- 1Beijing Sport University, Beijing, China
- 2Universidad Politecnica de Madrid, Madrid, Spain
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Aims: The study aimed to model the diversity in technical-tactical performance among elite tennis players during matches in relation to match outcome and gender. Methods: Match performance data of 236 singles matches from the 2023 Australian Open and US Open were collected. Standard entropies were calculated for five technical-tactical performance indicators (shot type, forehand/backhand groundstroke direction, first/second serve distribution) to reflect each player's technical-tactical diversity. The linear mixed model (LMM)was used to examine the effects of match outcome and gender on each performance category. Results: The results showed that there was no statistically significant interaction effect between match outcome and gender on the diversity of five performance indicators (p>0.05). However, both match outcome and gender independently had significant main effects on shot type, forehand/backhand groundstroke direction, and first-serve distribution (p<0.05, conditional R-squared=0.17-0.70). Losing players showed higher diversity in shot type (Effect Size (ES) =0.33, small) compared to winning players. Male players generally showed greater diversity in shot type, and forehand groundstroke direction (ES=0.63-0.97, moderate) than female players, but less diversity in backhand groundstroke direction and first-serve distribution (ES=0.62-0.70, moderate). Conclusions: These findings suggest that (i) the technical-tactical diversity may help describe match styles of tennis players, instead of serving as a reliable indicator for assessing match outcome; (ii) the stability of technique usage is more crucial than the diversity of techniques used for elite players; and (iii) male players should focus on improving the attacking ability of the backhand to achieve higher rankings, while female players with exceptional serving abilities should prioritize the stability of first serve.
Keywords: technical-tactical diversity, uncertainty, entropy, Racket sports, performance analysis
Received: 24 May 2025; Accepted: 04 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Zhao, CUI, Gomez-Ruano, Zong and Qi. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: YIXIONG CUI, Beijing Sport University, Beijing, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.