The Relationships between the Normative Performance Profiles and the Winning of Sets in Women's Singles Matches of Professional Tennis

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships between the normative performance profiles proposed by O'Donoghue (2005) and the winning of sets in actual women's singles matches of professional tennis. Twenty-four matches from 2010 and 2011 US Open tournaments were analyzed with 13 performance indicators. The normative performance percentiles were calculated and the total sums of percentile values were compared between winners and losers. As a result, the normative performance percentiles are obtained from actual match data. The normative performance percentiles in current study show similar tendencies compared with O'Donoghue's (2005) data. The normative performance profiles in each match show difference of performance between winners and losers of sets visually. The difference of the total sum of percentile values between winner and loser significantly depends on types of set scores. That is, large difference in set scores show large difference of the total sum of percentile values. It suggests that the total sum of percentile values have large difference between winners and losers, resulting in an overwhelming victory. It is concluded that the difference of the total sum of percentile values have positive correlation with difference of set scores between winners and losers.