I used R to perform some analysis of Roger Federer’s break points and how the data changes through the toughness of his opponent, the surface he plays on, and whether or not he wins or loses a match. A break point occurs when a tennis player is a point away from winning a game in which he is not serving. Because it is generally easier to win a game of tennis when you are serving, “breaking” an opponent’s serve can affect the outcome of the match entirely.

I decided to initially analyze break points in Roger Federer’s wins. As such, most of my graphs pertain to data only found in matches Roger Federer has won. However, my last two graphs study the difference in the amount of break points Federer succeeds on in both match wins and losses.

My initial graph was a boxplot of the percentage of break points Federer wins in every single match that he has won. Generally, Federer wins around 46 percent of the break points that he faces in matches that he wins.

I decided to take a subset of my original data for my next graph by only looking at Federer’s wins against opponents ranked amongst the top ten men’s tennis players in the ATP. Federer’s median break point conversion percentage decreases slightly by a couple of percentage points. While he has managed to beat top ten opponents without breaking them whatsoever (in essence, taking full advantage of tiebreaks) multiple times, he has managed (in an outlier scenario) to defeat a top ten opponent by winning every single break point he faced.