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The first two times you hit a ball in a rally matter more to winning a point in tennis than all the shots that follow. Traditional tennis statistics focus on simple metrics such as first serve percentages and unforced errors. We identify how the point starts and ends but fail to acknowledge how many shots were struck. The most important metric in tennis has been hiding in plain sight for generations.
"… all models are wrong; the practical question is how wrong do they have to be to not be useful.” (George Box) Athletic departments at schools with under-enrollment have been caught in a bad-model trap, where the NCAA's accounting conventions lead them to make harmful economic decisions in the false belief they are cutting costs. Andy Schwarz (PCL, OSKR) works through why the accounting gets the economics so wrong, provides detailed examples from schools that have made mistaken cuts in 2020, and outlines a solution to avoid these errors going forward.
How good am I? How good are you? How good are the pros? How do they compare with the pros from previous eras? Simple questions yet impossible to answer objectively in racquet sports - until now... Richard Bickers - founder of SquashLevels - has worked to provide objective answers using a mathematical rating algorithm that takes behavioural factors into account and works globally across space and time. While currently developed for squash, the principles could apply equally well across all racquet sports promising to settle these debates once and for all.
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