Match Tracking Statistical Deep-Dive Into Andree v Kane

I think we all found the tiebreaker of the International Racquetball Tour 2022 Suivant Consulting Grand Slam final between Kane Waselenchuk and Andree Parrilla pretty compelling racquetball. So, i spent a bit of time doing detailed match tracking to get some statistics of interest. The match itself is at this facebook video link:
https://www.facebook.com/24705156736/videos/247158204232394 and the tiebreaker starts at 51:51 in the video.

I’ve uploaded the match tracker data for just the Tiebreaker here for your perusal: https://docs.google.com/…/1CIWVYxCzCMWRRTtEZTwY1kRGMA…/edit…

Here’s some interesting statistics from the tiebreaker;

Game time: 28minutes, which included 1 tiebreaker and one appeal
Average clock time per rally: 34 seconds (We’ll comeback to this later when we talk about rally scoring what-if scenario)

Total Rallies: 49
– AP Rallies won: 23 of 49
– KW Rallies won: 22 of 49
– Replays: 4 of 49
– Points: 21 of 49
– Side-Outs: 24 of 49

So, no surprise here in an 11-10 game; the number of rallies won was one more for Andree than Kane.

Serving Details:
– AP service attempts: 23
– KW service attempts: 26. Kane had more service attempts b/c of replays more often occurring on his serve.

First Serve Percentage:
– AP: 14 of 23 60.87%
– KW: 13 of 26 50.00%

Neither player really served well, but a 50% first serve percentage by Kane is really bad at the pro level. By way of comparison, when I tracked this data in the one-serve era for Cliff, he made more than 90% of his first serves, all of which were drives.

First Serve direction (Forehand or Backhand)
– AP hit 19/23 first serves to Kane’s forehand, and 9/9 second serves.
– KW Evenly split his first serves; 13 drives to AP’s forehand, 13 to his backhand. All 13 of Kane’s 2nd serves were lobs to AP’s backhand.

Its pretty amazing how much AP picked on Kane’s forehand in this match.

First Serve selection:
– AP hit 10/23 first serves: Hard Z-Serve to Forehand
– AP hit 8/23 first serves: Drive to Forehand
– KW hit exactly 13 Drive to Backhand first serves and 13 Drive to Forehand first serves.

Second serve selection:
– AP hit the exact same 2nd serve the entire match: Nick-Lob to Forehand. 9/9 times
– KW hit the exact same 2nd serve 12 of 13 times: Nick-Lob to Backhand. The one time he didn’t, he tried a lob Z that Andree cut off and killed easily.

Winners and Errors: here’s some fun stuff:
– AP Rally Winners: 12. 6 on the forehand, 6 on the backhand. 5 were passes, 7 were pinches. Pretty even distribution.
– KW Rally Winners: 16. 13 on the forehand, 3 on the backhand. 10 were passes, 6 were pinches.

So, this may just tell us what we already knew from the serving stats, but Kane spent most of his match hitting forehands.

– AP Rally ending Errors: just 3 the entire breaker. all three on the backhand
– KW Rally Ending Errors; 10. 10 skips! 8 on the forehand, 2 on the backhand.

Now I do not have career stats on how many skips Kane averages per game. But i’m pretty sure it isn’t 10.

AP 12/3 ratio of Winners/Errors
KW 16/10 ratio of Winners/Errors

Pretty interesting ratios here. Given these stats, its kind of amazing the game was 11-10.

Average # of shots per rally data (none of these figures include the serve):

Average # of shots per rally , entire game 2.249
Average # shots in AP-won rallys 1.91
Average # of shots in KW-won rallys: 2.89
Average # of shots in replay rallies 3.25
longest Rally of game 7 shots (three times; all three AP serves and KW side-outs)

Miscellaneous Stats
# of Aces in game 4 total: 3 for KW, 1 for AP
# of Dives in game 6 total: 2 for KW, 4 for AP
# of Rollouts in game 12 total: 8 for KW, 4 for AP

Note: my “rollout” stat is an opinion based stat; was the shot a complete rollout/kill shot that would have been a point even if the opponent was standing right there? This is less important in singles than it is in doubles, where oftentimes yes there is an opponent standing there and you really have to roll balls out to get winners. This game featured a ton of “winners” and you could probably argue that many/most were “rollouts” … so maybe in the future I avoid this stat.

Game start in Video 51:51:00
Game end 1:19:00
Game duration 28 mins
Avg time per rally (including Tos) 34 secs

IRF Rally scoring scenario:
Game end if rally 1:03:44
Game duration if rally 12mins 45secs

Lastly, since the IRF is going to Rally scoring, I have a column that tracks the score as if we were using rally scoring. Kane wins this game 15-10 if using rally scoring at a point in the game where the actual score was 6-3. The game would have
been over in 12mins 45seconds.

I’m pretty clearly on record disagreeing with the rally scoring decision by the IRF, and this match is a great example. Why do we need to change the scoring method that’s been in place for more than 50 years so as to neuter a fantastic game and force it into a premature end at 12minutes? What value does that serve?

Anyway, hope you enjoy this analysis.