Speed and Spin in the Current Women's Game

Jim Fawcette

Compared with last month's piece on men's groundstrokes, (Click Here) average speeds for the top pro women don't seem to have changed much over the years. But spin rates may have–although it is difficult to say for certain due to the lack of data compared with what we found for the men.

While the ATP provides average speeds and spins for groundstrokes, the WTA does not. So to get women's data I had to resort to getting speed and spin in a limited way from the majors, which have widely varying reporting systems. The speed data shown here comes from the French Open in 2023.

Speed Averages at Roland Garros 2023

Forehands by the top ranked womens' players averaged 69.7MPH, about 7 MPH lower than the men's forehands. But one reason for the difference may be the greater variety of playing styles among the top women. World number 2 Aryna Sabalenka averages 75 MPH on her forehand, identical to that of the men's number 2, Novak Djokovic.

But slice-and-dice artist Ons Jabeur was at 65 MPH. At a tier below the top 8, a good singles player and often the top-ranked doubles player, Elise Mertens, forehand averages 59.6 mph, her backhand 62 mph. But none of the women approach the average forehand speeds of Caspar Ruud or even the backhand speeds of Grigor Dimitrov.

Indirect?

An indirect indicator of velocity may be 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.) In the women's matches at Wimbledon this year, 29.5% of 18,532 points were decided by "winners" vs 70.5% by errors. That gender difference is entirely composed of the men's larger number of aces.

But subtract aces and the number of winners men and women hit is nearly identical: 26.7% vs 26.5%.These numbers are highly consistent year after year indicating that average velocity has not changed radically – even if there might be more extremely high velocity or spin shots on certain shots.

The most complete source of groundstroke data at the majors that I've found is the InfoSys reports for Roland Garros. These reports provide average speeds for individual players buried in the labyrinth of its match data. Comprehensive spin data is nowhere to be found. But if you have a source I haven't found, please share it in the Forum!

What we can find for the women is spin for individual shots, listed as "winners" in the InfoSys CourtVision graphics. Digging this out is extremely time consuming and tedious requiring searching for images of individual shot flight paths, selecting "winners." then clicking on dots that represent individual shot landing points and the speed and spin for that solitary shot. Do this a few hundred times and you'll want a few shots yourself–or at least a good single malt.

So what did all this effort find?

On the ATP, many players are reaching 3,000 RPM figures on their forehands. Young Rafael Nadal was an outlier in terms of his heavy topspin forehand, but now he's got more company. However, on the WTA, what sparse data we have on spin shows that while the vast majority of women pros hit flatter groundstrokes, a few players are beginning to reach 3,000 RPMs—at least on the shots I was able to track.

Selected Forehand RPMs at Roland Garros 2023

We first saw this in 2021, when world number one Ash Barty reached 3,400 RPMs on some forehands. Iga Swiatek reached 3,100 RPMs. Maria Sakkhari hit 3,068 RPMs on at least one forehand.

But Swiatek is the only top WTA player I can find that seems to be consistently approaching Barty's spin. Iga had multiple winners in the3,100RPM range at the French this year.

For historical perspective, Madison Keys had the highest average forehand speed at the 2017 Australian Open, along with Tomas Berdych both at 79 MPH. I recall Keys saying after she hired former ATP pro Jessie Levine as a hitting partner: "I told Jessie to stop hitting those spinny things. Women don't hit spinny shots."

I suspect one historic exception was Aussie Samantha Stosur, who beat Serena Williams in the2011 US Open final. Stosur, whose forehand technique was similar to ATP players said, "Serena isn't used to my spin."

But unless someone digs out video archives and analyzes them, we'll probably never know what RPMs Sam reached. One odd coincidence is that among both the men and women, several of the players with the highest spin figures in the past were missing in the data I looked at.

On the men's side ,Matteo Berrettini, Dominic Thiem, and Sasha Zverev had top numbers in our prior report but were out with or recovering from injuries, and Stefanos Tsitsipas, simply seems content to rally more hitting less heavy groundstrokes. On the WTA side,Barty retired early, while Sakkari and Petra Kvitova lost early so their stats weren't reported by Roland Garros.

As for sheer velocity, on the WTA, forehands by the top 8 ranked players averaged 69.7MPH, about 7 MPH lower than the men's forehands. One reason may be the greater variety of playing styles among the top women. World number 2 Aryna Sabalenka averages 75 MPH on her forehand,identical to that of the men's number 2, Novak Djokovic.

But slice-and-dice artist Ons Jabeur was at 65 MPH. At a tier below the top 8, a good singles player and often the top-ranked doubles player, Elise Mertens, forehand averages 59.6 mph, her backhand 62 mph. But none of the women approach the average forehand speeds of Caspar Ruud or even the backhand speeds of Grigor Dimitrov.

Indirect

An indirect indicator of velocity may be 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.) In the women's matches at Wimbledon this year, 29.5% of 18,532 points were decided by "winners" vs 70.5% by errors. That gender difference is entirely composed of the men's larger number of aces.

But subtract aces and the number of winners men and women hit is nearly identical: 26.7% vs 26.5%.These numbers are highly consistent year after year indicating that average velocity has not changed radically–even if there might be more extremely high velocity or spin shots.