The Top 20 players in the world average a losing record holding serve from the precarious scoreline of 0/30.

The game is potentially half over, and for the majority at this elite level, their chances of holding serve have already dropped below 50 per cent. An Infosys ATP Beyond The Numbers analysis of the Top 20 from the 2016 season at 0/30, and the two nearby scorelines of 15/30 and 0/40, provide a fresh perspective of just how tough it is to hold serve once you fall behind by two points on the scoreboard.

The Top 20 average holding serve 49 per cent of the time from 0/30. American John Isner leads the field, holding a mind-blowing 70 per cent of the time. Others ahead of the pack include Ivo Karlovic (66 per cent), Stan Wawrinka (61 per cent) and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga (56 per cent).

The volatility of 0/30 sees a massive 46 percentage-point gap between Isner’s leading 70 per cent, and David Goffin, who managed to win only 34 per cent of his service games when falling behind 0/30.

The Best Among The Top 20 In 2016

If the Top 20 won the 0/30 point, their chances of holding serve jumped sharply from 49 per cent to 64 per cent – a significant 15 percentage-point leap that now has every player in the Top 20 statistically favored to hold serve.

World No. 1 Andy Murray was slightly above the Top 20 average from 15/30, holding 65 per cent of the time, as was No. 2 Novak Djokovic (66 per cent), No. 3 Milos Raonic (70 per cent) and No. 4 Stan Wawrinka (68 per cent).

If the Top 20 lost the 0/30 point to drop to 0/40, their win percentage of holding serve plummeted down to 22 per cent. No Top 20 players won more games than they lost from this deep hole.

The best performer of the Top 20 holding serve from 0/40 in 2016 was Gael Monfils, who held 12 of 28 times for a commanding 43 per cent average. Kei Nishikori was another stand-out from 0/40, holding 28 per cent of the time, as was Nick Kyrgios at 25 per cent.

It is interesting to see the sizable fluctuations in players’ fortunes of holding serve from either 15/30 or 0/40. Both Murray and Karlovic had a sizable 55 percentage-point difference of holding between the two scorelines, with Tomas Berdych close at 51 percentage points. The smallest gap by far was Monfils, at only 13 percentage points – 56 per cent at 15/30 to 43 per cent at 0/40.

Tennis is a game of feel and touch, but it’s also a game of patterns and percentages, and the more we know about these crucial scorelines, the easier it will be to successfully navigate them in the future.

Andy Murray looked in fine form and fully recovered from his short bout with shingles during his Dubai opener on Tuesday. The top seed coasted past Tunisia’s Malek Jaziri 6-4, 6-1 in 79 minutes at the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships to win their first FedEx ATP Head2Head meeting.

“I have never hit with him or played against him before. It took a little bit of time to get used to his game. But I played better as the match went on,” Murray said.

The Scot landed only 40 per cent of his first serves but overcame the low percentage by defending his second serve well, taking nearly 70 per cent of those points (19/29). Murray was broken once but converted four of his eight break-point opportunities against the 33-year-old Jaziri, who reached the Dubai quarter-finals in 2014.

“The only thing I didn’t do well was the first serve… I’m not sure exactly why. Maybe first match under the lights, haven’t practised in those conditions since I have been here,” Murray said.

The World No. 1 will next meet Spaniard Guillermo Garcia-Lopez. The Brit leads their FedEx ATP Head2Head series 2-1, but they haven’t played since the 2012 BNP Paribas Open.

Win or lose, Murray is thankful to be healthy. He discovered that he had shingles, or adult chickenpox, upon returning from the Australian Open last month. He shared how he learned of the illness on Tuesday with reporters in Dubai.

“I had a little bit of a rash basically like on my bum ’round to kind of my stomach, and it wasn’t terrible. But then normally if you have a little bit of a rash and you scratch it, it feels better. But with that, it was really, really painful.

“I didn’t think much of it at the beginning, and then it was actually my wife’s mum, we were having dinner, and I was, like, ‘This is really irritating’. She was, like, ‘Pull your pants down. Show me. It might be shingles,’” Murray said to laughs.

“I was, like, ‘OK’. Then the next day, got a doctor, and she was right.”

Murray continued, saying his wife’s mum probably guessed shingles because her son Scott had experienced the illness in the past. “It’s quite strange,” Murray said of the illness, “because it comes in like an arc and it doesn’t go past the centre of your body. It stays on one side.”

Murray fans shouldn’t worry, though. He said he took some anti-viral medicine and applied a cream, and that he’s all better.

“The rash is completely gone now, and I felt fine when I was training. I don’t think I’d be able to do what I was doing out there this evening if [I still had it],” he said. “A lot of people said that afterwards, once the rash is gone, that you can feel very tired for quite a few weeks, a number of weeks afterwards. I was maybe a little bit more tired than usual at the beginning, but I really feel fine now.”

Damir Dzumhur recorded the biggest match win of his career on Tuesday when he knocked out World No. 3 and defending champion Stan Wawrinka at the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships.

The 24-year-old Dzumhur, who is currently No. 77 in the Emirates ATP Rankings and making his debut at the ATP World Tour 500 tournament, recovered from a 0-3 deficit in the first set en route to beating Wawrinka 7-6(4), 6-3 in 72 minutes. He will next play Marcel Granollers in the second round.

“[I was] not good enough,” said Wawrinka, who was playing his first match since the Australian Open semi-finals (l. to Federer). “I think I started well, but it was a tough match, missing a little bit something to push a little bit more to be a little bit more active. I think after coming back after one month out, I had to recover from the injury.”

“The first three games were in, like, six, seven minutes. He was playing outstanding there,” said Dzumhur. “Was just hitting every ball. I couldn’t even touch the ball. I didn’t have a chance to do something. So I knew that it’s not too much about my game. It’s about his day. If he’s going to play like that, he’s going to win, I couldn’t do anything.

“But I was hoping that he was going to go down with his level of game, and that’s what happened. I started to fight, to grind, and I found some way to play, to stay in the game. Playing longer points was giving me more chances.”

Elsewhere, qualifier Evgeny Donskoy beat fellow Russian Mikhail Youzhny, the 2007 and 2010 finalist, 6-4, 6-4 for a clash against seven-time former champion and third seed Roger Federer.

World No. 1 Andy Murray, the 2012 finalist, takes on Malek Jaziri in the night session, with two-time runner-up Tomas Berdych contesting the last match of the day against Lukas Rosol.

David Goffin’s Abierto Mexicano Telcel campaign is off to a blistering start with the Belgian easily accounting for Stephane Robert on Monday night. The fifth seed needed just 54 minutes to post a 6-1, 6-2 result to progress to the second round.

The World No. 11 in the Emirates ATP Rankings sent down six aces and never faced a break point in the pair’s first FedEx ATP Head2Head meeting. With two finals already under his belt this season in Sofia and Rotterdam, Goffin will face either Kyle Edmund or Sam Querrey for his first Acapulco quarter-final berth.

In an all-American affair Steve Johnson upset eighth seed John Isner in little more than an hour. Johnson broke his big-serving countryman twice in the 6-4, 6-4 result to book a second-round clash with the winner of #NextGenATP players Ernesto Escobedo and Stefan Kozlov. Johnson’s win over Isner drew the pair level on 4-4 in the FedEx ATP Head2Head series.

Earlier, another #NextGenATP star Borna Coric had few difficulties seeing off local wild card Lucas Gomez. The Croatian won 91 per cent of his first-serve points to post a 6-1, 6-1 victory. Countryman and third seed Marin Cilic or Alexandr Dolgopolov will be next.