Speed and Spin in Men's Pro Tennis 2023

Jim Fawcette

Crowning of new Wimbledon champs provides a good, if brief, pausing point in pro tennis before the hard-court swing into the US Open, a good time to check some metrics. Tennisplayer.net has been a pioneer in measuring speed and spin of pro shots, so let's look at those for groundstrokes for the current top players. Then I'll add some match statistics from Wimbledon at the end for context.

Because of the inconsistency with which the headless beast called pro tennis shares stats with its fans, I've had to dig around the web. First, I pulled average speed of shots from matches at Roland Garros this year because it has that metric for the top 10 players from the ATP. Wimbledon does not share that.

I combined those speed numbers with shot spin averages for the first quarter of the year from the ATP site. Gathering each separate number required searching for stats for each player, squirreled away in the score archives for different matches at the various web sites. We'll address WTA players' numbers in an upcoming article.

Variations

What did the numbers show? Forehands first and a far greater variation in spin than in speed.

The top 10 men, headed by Carlos Alcaraz, averaged 75.6 MPH on their forehands, almost identical to the top men at the French in 2021. The range of forehand speeds from the slowest surprisingly, to me anyway, by Holger Rune was the lowest at 72 MPH. Caspar Ruud was the highest at 80 MPH

As for spin? Ruud's groundstrokes are the leader there as well. His 3,243 RPM forehand is 242 RPMs faster than the second place Alcaraz's and 760 RPMS faster than Rune's. But that's minor compared to his edge in shot weight on the backhand side.

The ATP top 10's backhands, averaged from a low of 65 mph – not surprisingly by the unorthodox Daniil Medvedev – to a high of 74 by Frances Tiafoe. As for spin, Ruud's two-handed backhand averages 2,797 RPMs. That's not only the highest among the backhands – it is over twice the spin of Medvedev's flat two-handers. Ruud's backhand spin is higher than the spin that 5 of the top 10 ATP players put on their forehands.

History

If there is any major trend in velocity over time, I can't see it. In 1997 John Yandell did the first ever study of forehand ball speed by focusing on Pete Sampras. His average forehand speed was 76mph. Interestingly, this is in the same range as the current men. Sampras's backhand speed was 68mph, again in the same range as current men. (Click Here.)

Yandell also did a separate study of ball spin at the 1997 U.S. Open, again something that had never been done. But comparing the data to the current players, we see a big difference in the range of forehand spin levels. Sampras's forehand averaged about 1800rpm and Agassi 1700rpm, although players such as Sergi Bruguera were similar or higher than modern players at about 3300rpm. Tomas Muster wasn't far behind at about 2900rpm. Click Here

But the backhands from 1997 were very similar to the current players. Sampras averaged about 2200 rpm and Agassi about 1800rpm. Bruguera was at almost 2400rpm. So this is interesting and let's remember this was before the days of poly string.

Technique and String

So why the differences in the forehands? Besides the string, one thought is the evolution of forehand technique with more extreme grips and heavy windshield wiper finishes. Backhand technique has remained much more similar to the players from the 1990s.

I also dug out a seminal article in the New York Times, which shared extensive velocity data compiled by GIG, the analytic arm of Tennis Australia, compiled from all shots at the 2017 Australian Open. Tomas Berdych and Madison Keys shared the highest, average speed forehand at 78 MPH, only 2 MPH below Ruud's benchmark for the French. Djokovic's forehand averaged about 76 or 77 MPH at the Australian Open in 2017, vs 75 MPH at the French this year, a statistically meaningless difference but on a different surface in a different continent, with a different ball.

Let's try to put these averages in a current context. The highest average groundstroke speeds sustained for months appears to be 80 MPH by Nikoloz Basilashvili in 2021 for both his forehand and backhand. As Tennis Channel analyst Jim Courier put it at the time, "This is the highest by a small margin on the forehand and by a large one on the backhand." That was during the BNP Paribas Open, so it was for the first 3 months of 2021. I've be unable to confirm whether "Bash" sustained that to year end.

I've also seen Jannik Sinner, Francisco Cerúndolo (during a breakout performance at this year's French) and Carlos Alcaraz average 82-83 MPH for a sustained period during a match. Matteo Berrettini averaged a startling 90 MPH on his forehand at the French two years ago in a performance that led his opponent, Djokovic to, memorably, scream at the empty, late-night stands, smash a racket, a bench, and chairs.

Another indirect measure of velocity is the number of winners. At this year's Wimbledon, out of 29,630 total points in 127 men's matches, 33.1% were decided by "winners", and 66.9% by "errors" (forced and unforced errors combined).

These numbers are highly consistent year after year indicating that sheer velocity has not changed radically. But it's a different story for spin.