| Category | 1st Set | 2nd Set | 3rd Set |
| 1st Serve win % | 71 % | 67 % | 79 % |
| 2nd Serve win % | 27 % | 45% | 36 % |
| Aces | 2 | 3 | 6 |
| FH Winners | 2 | 3 | 1 |
| BH Winners | 4 | 0 | 2 |
| FH Errors | 6 | 12 | 17 |
| BH Errors | 8 | 9 | 7 |
| Return Errors | 1 | 8 | 5 |
| Unreturned Serves | 2 | 13 | 8 |
| SP+1 FH % | 61% | 94% | 86% |
| SP+1 Error % | 17% | 33% | 29% |
| RP+1 FH % | 45% | 60% | 87% |
| RP+1 Error % | 15% | 40% | 6.6% |
Definitions
SP+1 is the 2nd shot hit by the server or the 3rd shot in a rally.
RP+1 is the 2nd shot hit by the returner or the 4th shot in a rally.
Serving Patterns:
Key for any Tennis players to win matches are is serves. Lets analyse Prajnesh serve patterns.
Prajnesh is very aggressive on his first serve. Won 82% of the points on 1st serves from the Deuce Court and while it dipped to 50% from the AD Court in the first two sets, it rose to 85% in the third.
The reasoning for the same is mentioned later. He Won 40% of the points on second serves from the Deuce Court
Won 100% of the points on first serves from the Deuce Court and 85% from the AD Court, proving to be the most successful serve on either side of the court.
Won 50% of points on second serves out wide, but that was just on two instances.
Won 50% of the points on 1st serves from the Deuce Court and 60% from the AD Court.
Won 20% of the points on 2nd serves from the Deuce Court in the 1st set but won 83% of the points in sets 2 and 3. The 2nd serves on the AD court were the most ineffective ones, winning just 30% of the points.
Serves when facing Break Point
On the 5 occasions Prajnesh faced Break Point, he hit it down the T all 5 times. He landed the 1st serve on 4 occasions and tried to be the aggressor in those rallies.
Serve Point +1
He won only 47.8% of the rallies where he got his FH on SP+1. Of the 24 points lost, 11 were errors on SP+1, despite hitting 1st serves on 7 of them.
A breakdown of the errors reveals all of them coming on returns to the centre of the court, with 54% coming on short returns.
As compared to the FH, the BH SP+1 rallies went in Gunneswaran’s favour, winning 54% of them. The errors here were evenly split from either wing at 2 apiece. While there were fewer errors, they were still accounting for a higher % in BHs at 36% (4/11), as compared to FHs at 24% (11/46).
Going back a bit, the discrepancy in the first serve win % between the 3rd set and the rest, for 1st serves down the T from the AD Court can be explained with SP+1’s. Twice, Gunneswaran made unforced errors from the FH wing on short returns, showing there’s no particular issue with that serve, but more of an issue with the FH on SP+1s as stated above.
A point to note here also is that of the 15 errors on SP+1, 60% of them came on the back of 1st serves. This does not necessarily mean that the FH is a weaker shot to start the rallies, as 64% of the 28 points won here were on the back of FHs on SP+1.
Returns
Prajnesh won just 31% of the points in which his return was short, as compared to 57% when he managed to hit a deep return.
A look at where he managed to get those deep returns in shows that he was most effective on returning Serves down the T from the AD Court and Body Serves from the Deuce Court, with 10 apiece.
Return Errors
As far as the Return errors go, we see a clear pattern of errors when returning from the BH wing, with 10 of the 14 errors coming from that side.
Return Point +1
Gunneswaran won just 40% of the rallies where he managed to get his FH on RP+1s, as compared to 42% of the rallies when it was the BH. The disparity here is again shown by the FH errors, with 7 to just 2 from the BH.
Of the 9 errors in total from the RP+1s, 8 of them were as a result of Deep shots from Fanselow.
Rally Length
Studies by Craig O’shannessy (Founder of Braingametennis) shows that 80 % of the points are won within first 4 rallies (0-4)
Gunneswaran prevailed in this encounter despite a small deficit in the rallies under 4 shots. He made too many errors on returns (14) and SP+1s (15) in particular as compared of 13 and 8 respectively for Fanselow. He managed to make up for it to an extent with 6 winners to 3 from Fanselow in such short exchanges.
They were dead even when it came to rallies over 4 shots, with 6 winners and 27 errors for Gunneswaran while Fanselow had 3 winners and 24 errors. Prajnesh being the aggressor meant that he ended up having more winners in the shorter and longer rallies, but the errors meant that he just about ended up in a negative for Points won.
Game Analysis
Gunneswaran gets the win thanks to some opportunistic play on the return game. Only 14 Points were won on the return of serve in the last two sets, for a break in each. There wasn’t much of a change in the return position for 2nd serves either, opting to maybe move half a step ahead. He did try some aggressive shots on 2nd serves off his forehand but that’s where some errors crept in.
From a serve standpoint, the first serve was successful in general, especially the one out wide, but it wasn’t executed often. The issues with the first serve generally came as seen above when it was the body serve, which didn’t work in this one.
First serves were also hit on every break point faced bar one, but errors on SP+1s in the first two sets led to two of the breaks of serve. Prajnesh being the aggressor in the match meant there were a large number of errors, especially from the FH wing as he tried to get across and hit that inside out FH quite often. He went after the Fanselow BH with his FH often and won a lot of those rallies. He also did well on some of his approaches to the net to finish off points earlier in the game.
Analysis by our Tennis Analyst – Gautam Varier
