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Welcome to the Atlanta Tennis Podcast.

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Hey, hey, this is Shaun with the Atlanta Tennis Podcast,

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With that said, let's get started

with 10 minutes of tennis.

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Today is 10 minutes of tennis with world renowned tennis coach,

Justin Yeo, Australian in Puerto Rico,

who I'm pretty sure just got hooked on by a bird.

But today, we're gonna talk about data, data,

whatever you wanna pronounce it,

however you wanna say it, data is king.

What does that mean, Justin?

- Yeah, data is king, but I'm gonna put the shout outs

everybody.

Let's hear some questions.

What do you wanna hear about?

What do you wanna learn more about?

Let's start and get a bit of an audience.

So start sharing with us what you wanna learn more about,

and let us shape some of this 10 minutes

around what you need.

So anyway, that's a little shout out for me.

Yeah, data is king.

I mean, data has been around for the last,

at least the last 30 years,

and it's deep, deep into it now.

I mean, a lot of players are utilizing all sorts of data

against opponents so they know what kind of tactics

they need to play when they need it.

So that's really deep into the game right now.

Most people don't have access to that for their own data.

But what I will tell you is it's not that hard

to have a friend chart your match

and learn how many unforced errors you made,

and where your forced errors are,

where your unforced errors are,

how many back ends you, how many forehand you hit.

But, you know, the one thing that continues to still

shine through all the data is the first serve percentage.

They still, still, number one on the list on the TV

when the players are winning.

The first thing they'll show is the high percentage first serves.

So, high percentage first serve is still one of the kings

when we look into data.

But data for itself, like I said,

for a normal amateur, for a junior,

I would start looking into this stuff.

I would start looking into ball speed

between racket to racket.

It's not that hard to go cross a tennis court

in a junior tournament and measure what it's like

between racket to racket.

So you can start to understand,

wow, that kid's really hitting the ball faster

than that kid.

And there's a lot of factors that you're involved in data

that you can actually start to utilize yourself.

Just things like, you know, I mean Craig Shaunasey

is crushing it right now, fellow Aussie around the world right now.

I mean, Jockovich uses it in my lot to analyze

and understand his opponents and understand what people are playing

so that Jockovich can look into the game and improve things.

You know, Federer in his last few years was learning

that he had to be quicker between Centima to the singles line

and the singles line to Centima.

If he could increase that by a couple of milliseconds,

that's already helping him recover.

Take the advantage on the next shot,

possibly hit another forehand, possibly hit a better backhand cross court.

So there's all these things in data

that we're understanding that's making the sport

more effective, more tactical.

And I just say open your eyes to it because it's there.

There's a lot of stuff that IBM publishes online.

They've said that the average rally is zero to four shots.

So what are we doing?

We should be training kids out of you better at four shots.

Don't wait for four shots.

You know, I grew up like the guy would say,

you need to rally 50 balls in a row.

Well, who the hell are rallies 50 balls in a row?

Nobody anymore.

It's zero to four shots.

Get better at four shots.

Get better at four shots.

Take advantage as quick as you can.

Now, it's saying you can't rally 50 balls

and that you have to practice that sometimes

being ready for the long point, but it's not most of your points.

So the data is proven that we need to start taking advantage

as early as possible between serve return

and trying to manipulate the court as quick as possible.

All right, so I'll push back on zero to four is the way to go right now.

Because in that case, I think we would have five Americans in the top five.

Because our Americans, not the ones that are big serve, big forehand,

the best at winning the zero to four shots.

But how does that play out with the Americans?

Not quite being able to hang out in the top 10 anymore.

Side note.

That's a totally different story.

But maybe the data shows, maybe the data shows

where the errors are.

I commonly talk about, when you talk about tennis, it's all between years.

You can actually recognize patterns in data

by seeing that you hit two good points and then drop a point and then drop a point again.

What they've done lately is they've shown data on heart rate

and correlated that to unpause their it's or correlated that to what we call

mind fog or dream well when you lose attention span on the court.

And then they start also correlating the time of each point

and starting to recognize where it is your attention span is the best

and how much you take advantage of points

and where you're actually getting trouble where the longer points are.

So there's all these factors in data that maybe I don't know

Fritz and all these guys you're talking about.

Maybe there's some kind of data there that they need to start

recognizing the mental parts and all the other things,

all the factors involved in that.

But if I'm correlating data to the American side of things,

maybe it's to do with that.

There's so many factors I have about American tennis right now.

So I'm going to get into that.

We need way more than 10 minutes.

Yeah, that was a bit of a sign.

And I'm good friends with Andy and John Radik and all these guys

and Tom Martin of I have had some big conversations that

there's a lot of factors.

There's a lot of things coming into play development to try to improve

in the American side of tennis.

Women's side is flying though.

It's always been flying for the last 10 years.

But the data itself is one of the key factors that's helping

a lot of players understand how to manipulate these things.

So to the amateur player then, we all know that IBM has their fancy stats

that they run with a professional player.

And the amateur player just says two things in my mind.

Eh, I don't have that kind of data.

And what I also don't have is the knowledge of the next person

I'm about to play because at most of our tennis, especially at Lanna's league

play, I'm going to go play in a neighborhood I may or may not have been

to before against a pair, a doubles pair that I may or may not have played

before.

And usually I'm running up against somebody that I've never played before.

So I don't have that pre-match schedule of strategy that comes in that says

I'm ready to play against this person because it's a professional tennis player

and I know everything about them, which is good because they're not a professional

tennis player.

OK.

I can give a little bit of a hint on that one.

OK.

It's not hard not necessarily to pay a coach, but to pay a friend or to have a teammate

and start taking stats on each team that you play so that when you go to play them

again, you can start to identify where their errors are, where they do and don't like.

But you really have to understand the three dimensions of the court side to side, up and

down, forward and back.

You have to identify beforehand back and errors, net game, and then in the graphing that you're

marking down, you're marking down all those things that then eventually will give you

some stats.

But the next time you play that team, maybe also if the teams mix up and change doubles

partners, you still know specifically data on each person.

It's not that hard to do, but it gives you something else you have to do instead of

sitting around while you're waiting for your match to play.

Junior's the same thing.

To put everybody together.

It's the same thing.

You could create a journal, might play a development journal with the kids.

They would have to go around, look at the draw, possibly the players they would possibly

play because if you get a 128 draw, there's only certain players that you're possibly going

to hit in your area and you would start walking around each match and start making

down notes of what toolbox and your toolbox will hurt that person's toolbox.

So you're analyzing all those matches before you get to that match, you have to play those

plays.

All right, and for the amateur player, whether it's a junior or an adult playing on the weekend,

playing out to USDA T2, go grab if you're interested.

I'll put them in the show notes for this, for the audio and for the video.

I will put in links.

We've got partnerships with some of them affiliates with some of them to say there is swing vision,

there is baseline vision.

I think it's all there's tennis analytics.

There are video analytics tools that are coming out for the amateur player that you hang your

camera up there and it will track your match for you.

Then you have your data on your opponent as well.

They're also coming out soon with line call ability so you can then take away any of those

arguments.

You just say we're going to go with the line call on the camera and that's going to take

away a lot of those fights as well.

Justin, you need to follow up with this.

I'm sure, but right now our 10 minutes are up.

Thank you, sir.

10 minutes of tennis.

We'll see you next Tuesday.

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