By Full Spectrum Sports Intelligence ·
Tennis is played on several surfaces, and that is the first thing to model. The four Grand Slam tournaments use different courts: the Australian Open and US Open are played on hard courts, the French…
Format changes the variance
Men play best-of-five-set matches at the four Grand Slams only, and best-of-three at all other tournaments. Women play best-of-three everywhere. A longer match tends to give the stronger player more chances to win, so the same two players are not in the same situation at a Slam as at a smaller event. The page also describes variations such as match tiebreaks, played to ten points instead of a third set in doubles on the ATP and WTA tours.
Tour structure and fatigue
The men's tour has tiers named for ranking points, from the ATP Masters 1000 down through the 500 and 250 series, and the Challenger Tour below that. The women's tour has a similar WTA 1000, 500 and 250 structure, with WTA 125 events below. Grand Slam singles draws are limited to 128 players for each gender, and Slams run for two weeks. With many events at different levels, workload and scheduling vary a lot between players, so cumulative fatigue is a reasonable thing to track.
What this draft does not cover
Retirement rules, which decide how a match is treated when a player stops mid-match, differ between tournaments and operators, and they are not covered by the source used here. Do not rely on this article for those rules; check the official ATP and WTA rulebooks.
What an analyst can take from this
- Keep ratings separate by surface.
- Separate best-of-three and best-of-five data.
- Track schedule and tour level as part of workload.