Nole does it. Rafa does it. Jo- Willy does it too. What am I talking about?

Novak Djokovic does 20 hand bounces before serving on match point back in 2012

I’m talking about the number of hand bounces tennis players do before they serve. All in the 25 seconds they get between points. It seems to be a habit every tennis player has, without even thinking about it. They bounce. It just goes: bounce the ball more or less 3 to 4 times and then serve. Some players do a lot of bouncing, some less.

Novak Djokovic was heavily criticized in the past for bouncing the ball around 20 times, sometimes more. In an interview back in 2007 he explained his bouncing saying:

“On the important points, I try to focus more and with that focus comes the ball bouncing.” “Sometimes 20 times, sometimes even 30 times. I think it happens more on the clay because getting the serve is even more important so I can create the point.”

This of course raises some interesting questions such as: Who bounces the the ball the most? Does it matter how often you bounce the ball? Does the bouncing have effect on getting the first serve in and on my service points? And if it really help you focus, do you have an advantage when bouncing more on break points?

Who in the Top 12 bounces the most?*

The average number of hand bounces per player

Stan Wawrinka is the player who bounces the least. He is followed by the Frenchman Jo-Wilfried Tsonga with 2.71 bounces. Novak Djokovic used to bounce 10–15+ times on average, but now we see that he has dropped to 6.19 bounces.

The champion bouncer is David Ferrer; he consistently goes 6+ bounces. Having said that, it’s interesting to see that that after David Ferrer, the average number of bounces keeps dropping. But the top 6 players don’t seem to follow such a pattern. So let’s see if the bouncing matters?

Does it matter how often the ball is bounced?

To study this I looked at the effect the bouncing of the ball has on getting the first serve in%, service points won% and break points saved%

In the preceding graph, you can see a weak relationship between the number of bounces and getting the first serve in%. Each dot on the graph represents a players average number of bounces corresponding with his career first serve in%.

We see that the number of bounces explains 5.1% of the first serve in percentage. Further the trend line shows that the more you bounce the ball, the higher your first serve should be. If a player averages 3 bounces the equation says he would have a first in% of 60.6% but if he averages 8 bounces the first in% would be 63.3% an increase of 2.7% points.

Now what does the bouncing say about service points won%?:

This time the relationship is even weaker (0.4%), but when we look at the trend line it’s still shocking. The previous graph showed that the more bounces a player does the higher the first serve in% would be, but this effect doesn’t guarantee that the players win more service points. The trend now says, the more you bounce, the “less’’ service points you win.

But Djokovic also talked about bouncing the ball more on important points for more focus. Looking at this you could make a case for this. More bounces could help you get more concentrated and more in a zone.

For example if your break point down, does bouncing the ball more, help you concentrate or maybe let your opponent overthink the situation and choke, making you more likely to win the point?

Let’s see:

As the graph illustrates, bouncing the ball more on break point down doesn’t give you an extra advantage or disadvantage. The trend line is almost a straight line. This shows that many other factors such as a players quality, opponent quality, shot choice are more influential when trying to save break point.

Bouncing the ball more is a rather insignificant action when facing break point. And maybe because Djokovic realized bouncing more didn’t help him, he changed his opinion about bouncing.

Conclusion

We have seen that every players has a different bouncing habit. Some like to keep it short, some go for 6+ bounces before every serve. But bouncing the ball more on average helps you get a higher first serve in%. So bouncing the ball does help you focus before your serve, but bouncing more doesn’t help you win more service points. It could even be a disadvantage. On break points it doesn’t give you an advantage, it really doesn’t matter that you make your opponent wait, he is still going to break you the same percentage of times. All in all, the bouncing of the ball before serving doesn’t have a measurable effect on a players performance.

So the next time your opponent decides to bounce 10+ times before he/she serves, you know that your chance of getting a first serve to return is a little bit higher. If you want to bounce 2,3 or 10+ times before a serve, it’s completely up to you. As long as you don’t get a time violation for doing so. (so keep your habit within the 25 seconds range)

The averages were gathered based on 372 recorded service points played. I looked at 31 service points per player

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