We are not breaking serve like we used to.

An Infosys ATP Beyond The Numbers analysis of players breaking serve over the past 29 years identifies that the most recent season (2019) and the most distant (1991) in the data set sit at polar opposites in overall performance on a statistics table – and not where you would expect.

The data set includes the average of the 20 best performers each season in breaking serve from when statistics were first kept in 1991 to last season. The leading 20 players in 1991 outperformed the season leaders in each of the 28 seasons that followed, breaking serve 32.18 per cent (4,309/13,392) of the time on average.

What was the worst performing season? None other than last year, when the leading 20 players broke serve just 26.19 per cent (3,769/14,315) of the time. We have a preconceived notion that our sport is always improving, always putting up superior numbers than yesteryear, but that’s not always the case. In fact, the leading six seasons are all in the 1990s and the seven worst performing years are all from 2010 onwards.

There has only been one instance where a player has broken the 40 per cent threshold for return games won in a season. That was Rafael Nadal in 2016, where he won a staggering 40.75 per cent (216/530) of his return games. Nadal has been the season leader in return games won a record nine times, with the first coming in 2005. Nadal has been the return games won leader in the past two seasons and five of the past seven seasons.

In 2016, Nadal led the tour in breaking serve from 15/0. He won 27.13 per cent (70/258) of the games where this occurred, which was more than double the tour average of 13.49 per cent (2,891/21,435). It’s just another return metric where he understandably sits at the top of the mountain. The Spaniard has been the ultimate nemesis for the server for well over a decade.

While the leading 20 players performed better breaking serve in the 1990s than in the past decade, Nadal transcends all years and generations with his ability to consistently lead the tour in breaking serve at a rate other players simply can’t compete with.

1991-2019: Average Of The Best 20 Performers Breaking Serve

Daniil Medvedev was concerned that he wasn’t landing his first serve. Sitting in the Team Zone are the Russian’s coach Gilles Cervara and Marat Safin, the captain of Team Russia, at the inaugural ATP Cup. Italian Fabio Fognini, who has landed in Perth barely 24 hours earlier, wanting to spend more time in Barcelona following the recent birth of his daughter, Farah, is landing big shots, taking the first set 6-1. Medvedev looks over early in the second set, seeking help. Safin, who hasn’t wanted to tread on the toes of a player’s regular team, is concise and direct: “Throw it up, down the middle.” Medvedev does just that, hits an ace and returns a smile. He goes on to register his first win of the competition.

Safin is old-school, not wanting too much data to differentiate his read of the game. He told ATPTour.com in Perth, “I don’t want to interfere in some things between a player and their coach, because sometimes if I say something, it might not have the right effect. I want them to believe in themselves and to do the best they can do. It’s a very delicate matter, because everybody has his own character and own approach; how they want to be approached, and I don’t want to make any damage, that’s for sure. I will try to be careful with my words.” For Cervara, named by his peers as Coach of the Year in the 2019 ATP Awards, being alongside Safin, a former No. 1 in the FedEx ATP Rankings, was an education into how a top player viewed a match unfolding. You could tell had Safin the total respect of Medvedev and Karen Khachanov.

“It was interesting being with Safin at the ATP Cup,” Cervara told ATPTour.com. “It was not the same view as I had from my coach position, as he saw it from the fact that he was a top player. In the Strategy Room or courtside, he always asked me if he could say something to Daniil, but he was always a sounding board for advice, even though how we worded our thoughts may have be different. I haven’t had mentors from coaching, but I do admire people with personality, from other sports and life in general, the way they live their lives and understand life. Marat was never pushy, but offered a welcome, different perspective and I learned an awful lot, just as I did with my own career, which was never at this level. But I understood what was happening to me on the court and I developed to help me to transfer my knowledge, my vision, to a player.”

The 39-year-old Cervara established the Elite Tennis Center in Cannes seven years ago with Jean-Rene Lisnard, and it was after a visit — and a lot of questions — from Medvedev’s parents [Sergey and Olga] in 2015 that their son relocated to the south of France for better training facilities and to stay with his sister, Elena, who already lived there. “While it wasn’t my first coaching experience, I wasn’t well known, but we developed a good connection,” admitted Cervara. “In 2015, his main coach was supposed to go to Marseille with Daniil, but he couldn’t as he was at another tournament with another player. So it was decided that I would go with Daniil to Marseille. We did a good job together and I was careful and sensitive about his personality, so he played well and felt good about his tennis. One year later, for the grass season, we went to a few tournaments and later in 2016, attended a few more. In the off-season we said ‘goodbye’, but we felt we’d worked well together and that’s how our relationship developed.”

It wasn’t until after Medvedev, then aged 21, had beaten Stan Wawrinka 6-4, 3-6, 6-4, 6-1 in the 2017 Wimbledon first round, that Cervara started to understand how he could help. Cervara, who became the Russian’s full-time coach later that year, remembers, “It was a big victory to beat a top player like Wawrinka. It meant something. I was not working with him all the time, but he was a good player, although I could see that there was nothing consistent in his preparation. That’s what we developed, when he asked me to be his full-time coach. I had a clear vision that we needed to improve this day-after-day and built a team around Daniil to help him.”

The team of physical trainer Eric Hernandez, psychologist Francisca Dauzet and sports scientist Yann Le Meur, in addition to those who analyse data from all of Medvedev’s matches, shared in Cervara’s coaching honour, as voted for by his peers in the 2019 ATP Awards. “Eric was there from the beginning, working at the centre as a physical trainer, but I knew as a coach Daniil’s physical strength was weak and we needed to do better” said Cervara. “It was the same with the mental approach with Francisca, with Daniil accepting and realising he need to do this work. Daniil was sensitive to Yann, who I’d known before, and we worked well together to be strong physically, because recovery in sports is a small part. If you’re not well trained physically, recovery doesn’t mean anything.”

They were all essential to Medvedev’s success last season, when the Russian posted an ATP Tour-best 59 match wins, 46 hard-court victories and nine final appearances, in addition to reaching a career-high No. 4. “Did Daniil’s 2019 surprise me?” asks Cervara. “I want to say in one part, yes, because when it happens like this, it’s ‘Wow, it’s amazing!’ But at the same time when you think about the work he did, then you know it wasn’t surprising. When you think about his win over [Stan] Wawrinka at Wimbledon [in 2017], Daniil was 70 in the world. It meant he could do crazy things, so no I’m not surprised about last year. He is the pilot now, driving to improve different areas.”

The 24-year-old Medvedev has started 2020 with an 8-4 record, including four straight wins at the start of the season when he helped Russia to the ATP Cup semi-finals. Cervara doesn’t believe Medvedev is “under pressure [to defend 2019 FedEx ATP Rankings points], because he tries to do his best and win every match.” He won’t be changing anything up any time soon in their pre-match preparations. “I try to get Daniil mentally sound, the best feeling he can be,” said the French coach. “Sometimes we don’t work a lot with the ball, but we do the main things he likes to do. I try and fix one or two small things between matches in our one-hour training sessions, or work on different things if Daniil is receptive to it. Sometimes you do things that turn out to be useless, and sometimes useless things that are beneficial. It’s about feeling. I want him to feel good, putting in exercises he likes to do as it’s something we have done a lot.”

Safin, who finished his playing career in 2009, reflected on the state of Medvedev’s game at the ATP Cup, saying, “The first year, when you start and you do well, it’s a little bit easier than the second year. Because in the second year everybody starts to know you, starts to learn about you, and they try to change a tactic against you. He was a newcomer last year. So, this year, I think he’s working on a few new things to improve — it’s like a telephone. You have to upgrade each year, every time. The way that Daniil is thinking it, I think he will be dangerous this year. He’s very pumped up… Daniil is getting more and more stronger in the head. He’s a big fighter. He’s very smart, which is good. He reads the game very well. It’s easier for him to adapt to other players. He plays very good in important moments, in important matches, like we saw against Rafa [Nadal] in finals of the [2019] US Open.”

So after travelling to so many tournaments together, have player and coach become friends? “It’s tough to define what sort of relationship we have,” says Cervara. “In one way we can say friends, but it’s tough to use that word from my side. We have a very good connection, it’s not about talking, it’s sometimes just a look to convey energy and emotion. Things that worry me, don’t worry him and vice versa. I work on my coaching to develop my skills, as Daniil does with his tennis. Both are different approaches to the sport, but we have a good bond and one goal. I want him to realise his potential and have the best career he can.”

Miro Hrvatin has mentored #NextGenATP Serbian Miomir Kecmanovic for more than a decade, helping the former junior star rapidly climb the FedEx ATP Rankings. The Croatian spoke to ATPTour.com about how their relationship has developed, what Kecmanovic needs to focus on, what off-season training with stars including Novak Djokovic and Roger Federer is like, and more.

What are your biggest priorities with Miomir?
I think that this year, he’s stepping closer to the baseline. He’s more into the court, he’s much more aggressive. His serve went up [a level], and I think that’s the main thing we want to keep pushing. It is trying to play deep balls and stay close to the baseline, taking time away. That’s not a one-day job, but that’s something that we will try to make better this season.

He said that practising with top players during the off-season, he learned a lot from them about taking time away, taking the ball early to push the point a little bit. How important is that to add to his game?
I think that’s the crucial thing, because everybody knows how to play forehands and backhands. But once you take time away from them, things start to be different. We were lucky this pre-season and last pre-season we had really good pre-season camps and good players. Some of the best players in the world were there.

Practising with them, they are showing you the path where you want to go, what you have to do, and what you have to work on.

How priceless is it that he spent an off-season with Dominic, this past off-season with Novak and so forth?
I think that’s the biggest thing you can get. Last year in Tenerife with Gunter Bresnik and with Dominic Thiem and all the guys over there like David Goffin and Jan-Lennard Struff, it was perfect. And this year was even more perfect.

You had Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic, Karen Khachanov… you cannot buy that practice. You cannot find it anywhere else except playing with those guys. For me and for him, I think it’s one of the best things he can get.

How did he approach that? Was he simply excited?
He’s always excited when playing with Novak of course and Roger. He still didn’t hit with Nadal, but that’s something that we are working on. He likes to compete, and then once he has one of the best players on the other side, then he’s always giving his maximum. I believe that is something that raises your level. 

Is taking it early a footwork thing, getting used to the timing? What’s the key?
I think it’s a combination, plus I think it’s the player who needs to be mentally aggressive. It’s something that I think is not only one thing. Footwork is very important, but then the timing is different if you are coming closer to the ball. All together, I think it takes time to fit into place.

But that’s the thing that they’re all doing. You don’t have time while playing with the best players in the world. If you give them a short ball, you are dead. You lost the point, that’s it. Very simple.

What’s something people should know about Miomir outside of tennis?
He likes high adrenaline, that I know. He likes to jump skydiving, he’s done that. That’s something that he enjoyed a lot. I would not jump from there, not for a million dollars. He’s doing that very easy, very simple. He likes those adrenaline things, so I think that helps him playing tennis because tennis is always under pressure. So I think for him it’s easier because he’s doing that.

You’ve known Miomir for a long, long time, more than a majority of coaches work with their players. How does that add to your working relationship with him, knowing him for so long?
I’ve known him since he was eight or nine, when we had a couple of practice sessions. Then I lived in Pula, Croatia, so he came back there for the summer every year until he went to the United States. In three or four years, we started our relationship.

As long as you know somebody, I think it’s good. If you know them longer, I think it could help. For me, sometimes, if you spend too much time together, it could go the other way. But for us at the moment, it’s still a good relationship with a lot of respect. We are working hard, so it’s good.

How different is that little Miomir you met 12, 13 years ago, compared to how he is now?
Some parts of him are the same, but of course he grew up a lot and he’s much more professional now, even though at that time he was very focussed and very determined with his goals. Some things changed, some stayed the same.

What’s the biggest thing that has changed?
The process, just growing up. When you are a small kid, you compete to win. But getting older, I think winning becomes more and more important. 

When you first saw Miomir when he was a kid, if I had told you he’d be where he is now, what would you have said?
He was really young when I first saw him. But his technique was very solid. I would say he didn’t change a lot, especially the groundstrokes. Serve, yes, but the groundstrokes were very solid, even at that time. Every player and every coach dreams to be Top 10 or No. 1. You need to put a lot of work in, a lot of effort, and get a little bit of luck.

How high is his ceiling?
We go step by step. I think there are things that we have to work on and if he improves one thing by one, I think we can make some steps forward even this year. 

He was a very highly touted junior, but not every junior makes it all the way to the top of the sport, so how nice has this smooth climb been to start his pro career?
It’s a lot of working and Misha wants that, so he’s willing to work for it. He’s fighting for it. We are fighting for it together with all the team, everybody around him, with the family and everybody. I think it’s going in a good direction, luckily.

There are some coaches who have worked with many players. Miomir is your first big experience on the ATP Tour. What has that journey been like?
I enjoy it a lot and I love tennis and I love challenges. When he’s winning, of course, everybody is happy, and I’m the most happy. But sometimes if you have a bad period, the thing is challenging us, ‘Let’s see if we could do something to make it back on track.’ I love it.

What should people know about Miomir off the tennis court?
He’s all in tennis! He is very focussed on his goals and I think one of the reasons that he’s here, it’s that he’s very focussed, very determined to achieve those goals that he has in his mind.

In the past, people didn’t often discuss World No. 1 Novak Djokovic’s serve. But the statistics show that it has long been among tennis’ best.

“You actually don’t think about his serve, which is kind of disrespectful to him in a sense, just because he does everything so well,” said John Isner, who ranks second all-time in service games won at 92 per cent. “You immediately talk about his return and of course his movement around the court, and his groundstrokes are the best in the world.”

Starting in 2011, Djokovic finished among the ATP Tour’s 10 best in service games won every season except for 2017, when he underwent right elbow surgery. The Serbian has averaged just more than five aces per match in his career according to Infosys ATP Scores & Stats, but he has still been effective.

“He spot serves it very well. He won’t necessarily hit it 130 miles per hour, but he’s definitely improved that part of his game,” Isner said. “He would even say probably six or seven years ago that his serve was a bit of a liability. But now it’s not at all, and that’s why he’s the most dominant player in the game.”

2019 Service Games Won Leaderboard

Djokovic ranks fifth in career second-serve points won (56%) and 14th in career service games won (86%). The 32-year-old has won a higher rate of service games than players known for their big serves — Goran Ivanisevic and Mark Philippoussis — as well as former World No. 1s Rafael Nadal, Jim Courier, Andre Agassi, Stefan Edberg, Ivan Lendl and more.

Djokovic’s Average Aces Per Match — Past Five Years

^{Editor’s Note: Aces from Davis Cup are not recorded in Infosys ATP Scores & Stats.}
Reilly Opelka, who was second on the ATP Tour in aces last season, believes that Djokovic has a strong serve, and knowing that his stunning baseline game is there to back it up makes breaking the Serbian a daunting task for returners.

“I think it’s moreso because of everything else in his game. He does serve very well. But he’s breaking serve [more than 30 per cent] of the time, which is ridiculous,” Opelka said. “Obviously when you give him the first strike of the ball, it’s going to be even higher. He does serve well and it’s not talked about. But it’s really the rest of his game that makes him impossible to break.”

Djokovic has outpaced his average rate of service games won (86%) this season. He has won nearly 90 per cent of his service games in 2020, up from 87 per cent in 2018 and 88 per cent in 2019. That has helped Djokovic to an 18-0 start, leading Team Serbia to ATP Cup glory, triumphing at the Australian Open and lifting the trophy in Dubai.

“I’m hitting everything I can in terms of the variety of spin, slice, flat, hitting the spots, body, wide, T. I’m trying to mix it up all the time. Obviously depends who I play against. Obviously I have different tactics depending on the opponent,” Djokovic said after defeating big-serving Milos Raonic in the Australian Open quarter-finals. “I feel that my serve this year so far in the ATP Cup and also the Australian Open has been terrific. It’s allowed me to win a lot of free points.

“When I’m serving well and getting a high percentage of first serves in, it allows me to feel more comfortable, more confident, step in and play at the higher level of tennis.”

In 2017 and 2018, when Djokovic dealt with right elbow issues, he abbreviated his service motion before abandoning that adjustment. Ever since, the Serbian has been devastatingly good on serve. What’s scary for his opponents is that he’s working hard to make the stroke even better.

“We worked a lot in the off-season on my serve. I’m feeling great. I have a great rhythm. Obviously I know that different surfaces, different times, require different adjustments,” Djokovic said. “But in terms of the way I’ve been serving now, it has been some of the best serving I’ve had in my career.”

Other players have taken notice. Djokovic’s serve isn’t often praised as much as the rest of the game. But when you realise how effective it is, the idea of facing him becomes more intimidating.

“He doesn’t have a weakness. He just doesn’t. That’s why he’s No. 1 in the world, he’s one of the greatest players of all-time. He’s only a few Grand Slams now behind the all-time record,” Isner said. “It’s pretty incredible what he’s doing.”

Jurgen Melzer retired from singles after the 2018 Erste Bank Open in Vienna, in front of his home fans. It wasn’t a case that his game let him down, but his body did, which confirmed his decision.

But Melzer wasn’t ready to completely close the door on his career. He had another option: focussing on doubles.

“I had a conversation with my wife and said, ‘Okay, I want to give it a shot [in 2019]. I want to give it a try until the French Open and if I have the feeling I can still win tournaments and win big tournaments, I’ll continue,’” Melzer recalls. “Otherwise, I’d rather be at home with my son and my wife and do something else. She was okay with that and said, ‘Okay, you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do and have no regrets.’ She used to be a swimmer, so she knows how it is to stop something you love doing.”

When Melzer retired from singles, he’d already tallied more than $10 million in career prize money and won a combined 18 tour-level titles in singles and doubles, including Grand Slam doubles trophies at 2010 Wimbledon and the 2011 US Open alongside Philipp Petzschner. He climbed as high as World No. 8 in singles and earned 13 Top 10 wins, including a thrilling five-set win — from two sets down — against third seed Novak Djokovic to reach the 2010 Roland Garros semi-finals.

“The reason I still play tennis is because I love the game. You don’t make that much money playing Challengers and playing ATP 250s in doubles, but I still love the game and I still have the feeling that I have it in me to win big tournaments like Hamburg [in 2019] and I think I would have regrets if I wouldn’t have done it,” Melzer said. “I still had the feeling I have something left. The sport has given so much over the past 20 years that why not continue? I’m happy I did it because now I’m in a position where I can play the big tournaments.”

Watch Melzer & Team Austria’s Visit To Bondi Beach:

Melzer, who is currently 38 with a son approaching his third birthday, did not fully commit at the beginning. He wanted to see how quickly he would progress last year.

“I said, ‘Okay, if I manage to be around No. 80 at the French Open and am able to play there, I’ll continue. If not, then I’m just not good enough anymore,’” Melzer said.

The Austrian won the Sofia (w/Mektic) and Marrakech (w/Skukor) titles before Roland Garros to quickly improve his FedEx ATP Doubles Ranking. Since last June, he has not left the Top 50, and he is currently playing with another veteran, Frenchman Edouard Roger-Vasselin.

“I played a lot of matches, have been away from home a lot. That makes it tough, having a family,” Melzer said. “But I knew that [last] year would be a more difficult year because you have to get back to where I think I belong and get the ranking back up. Once you can play the [ATP Masters] 1000 tournaments, maybe you can reduce the schedule a little bit.”

It’s also been an adjustment for Melzer as far as fine-tuning his training to become the best doubles player he can be. The lefty always was a threat in any doubles draw, but at the time his focus was always on singles.

“Obviously I couldn’t practise as much doubles when I was Top 10 in singles. I was with a very good partner at that time with Philipp Petzschner. It helped that we were best friends off the court. We clicked; we didn’t need to practise that much to be competitive,” Melzer said. “Right now I know if I want to stay, or if I want to get even higher in my ranking, I need to practise. I have to improve things to win tournaments week-in and week-out or being able to win tournaments.

“When I practised singles, your physical ability was great. Now when you only play doubles, you only cover half of the court. You have to do more to stay in shape because you don’t have those two-hour matches anymore.”

Last year Melzer, who underwent elbow surgery in October 2017, said he would reevaluate his status once again after 2020. But for now, he is plugging away.

One thing is certain, though: “I can say with 100 per cent certainty that I don’t miss [singles] one day. I have picked exactly the right moment to stop. I was still in okay shape, I beat Milos [Raonic] in my last tournament and then had to retire, never played my last match, but that’s okay for me,” Melzer said. “I have done [singles] for a very long time and I have made my peace with it and I know I’m not good enough anymore. This is the reality you have to face after being on Tour for 20 years. We don’t get younger and there are only a few, like Roger, who can still do it at this age.

“Maybe if I hadn’t had my last elbow surgery I would still be playing singles, but my body is what it is and I know it’s not competitive enough anymore to compete and reach the Top 100.”

This week, the Challenger circuit rolls on with a pair of events in Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan and Potchefstroom, South Africa.

The indoor hard courts of the Nur-Sultan Challenger I welcomes players and fans for a second edition. The Kazakh capital, previously named Astana, hosts the tournament at the National Tennis Center, with 13 players inside the Top 200 of the FedEx ATP Rankings.

View Draws: Nur-Sultan | Potchefstroom

#NextGenATP star Jurij Rodionov headlines the field, having taken the ATP Challenger Tour by storm in February with a 15-2 record and titles in Dallas and Morelos. One month ago, Mohamed Safwat claimed Egypt’s first title since 1996 and now the 29-year-old is the top seed at a Challenger for the first time. Defending champion Illya Marchenko returns as the 15th seed.

Also in action in Nur-Sultan – a Challenger 80 event – is second seed and 2019 runner-up Yannick Maden, former World No. 33 Robin Haase and recent Cleveland champion Mikael Torpegaard. Talented youngsters Tallon Griekspoor, Elias Ymer and Roman Safiullin are also in the field. Safiullin is coming off his first Challenger title last month in Cherbourg, France.

Meanwhile, Challenger tennis returns to South Africa for the first time since 2013, when the Soweto Open ended a four-year run on the circuit. This week, the PotchOpen in Potchefstroom, South Africa, marks the debut of the ‘Challenger 50’ series.

Located less than two hours west of Johannesburg (the country’s largest city), Potchefstroom is a well-known university town in the North West Province. The city is perhaps best known as the province’s ‘Home of Sport’, with headquarters of 17 major sports in the region. In fact, the Spanish national football team chose Potchefstroom as their base camp during their run to the 2010 World Cup title.

Cricket and rugby are the country’s most popular sports, but this week tennis takes centre stage. Benjamin Bonzi is the top seed at the PotchOpen, with former World No. 64 Dustin Brown seeded fourth. Teenagers Lorenzo Musetti and Jack Draper are also competing. Musetti won the 2019 Australian Open boys’ title, while fellow 18-year-old Draper finished runner-up at the 2018 Wimbledon junior event.

The newly-formed ‘Challenger 50’ category features a series of events in strategic weeks on the calendar. Tournaments may only apply for a Challenger 50 through the end of March and in the qualifying weeks and first weeks of the Grand Slams. Prize money is USD $35,000, with draw sizes of 32 singles, 24 qualifying and 16 doubles. The tournaments are only available to players ranked outside the Top 150.

One wild card may be awarded to a national player ranked between 50-100 and one may be awarded to a player ranked 100-150. As usual, hospitality is provided for all main draw players on the ATP Challenger Tour, with a five-night minimum for singles main draw competitors.

Following Potchefstroom, the Challenger 50 series moves to Olimpia, Brazil next week, with Todi, Italy and Orlando, Florida, USA on the calendar in late May. Troyes, France is also on the schedule during the week of 29 June.

Dominik Koepfer departed Louis Armstrong Stadium last September with his head held high. The German enjoyed a dream run through qualifying and then to the fourth round of the US Open, where only red-hot Daniil Medvedev was able to stop him, and it took the Russian until a fourth-set tie-break to do so.

When the players shook hands at net, Medvedev had high praise for the 25-year-old lefty.

“Amazing. Amazing play. Amazing play.”

When Koepfer walked off the court that evening, the fans showed how much they appreciated the battle the World No. 118 put Medvedev through.

“I thought I did a good job. I was happy with the level and obviously walking out of the stadium, people cheering, it was a great experience” Koepfer told ATPTour.com. “I’ll never forget [it].”

Not bad for someone who wasn’t fully dedicated to tennis until he was 15. During his early teens, Koepfer had a decision to make: continue playing tennis once or twice per week, or focus on skiing or golf instead. World No. 1 Novak Djokovic and #NextGenATP Italian sensation Jannik Sinner grew up skiing, too.

“Where I’m from [in Furtwangen, Germany], there’s a lot of snow, probably like five months per year. There’s always indoor tennis or skiing, so I was skiing a lot in the winter and then obviously playing tennis as well. When I turned 16, I made the final of the Under 16s German Championships. I [then] decided to play a little more tennis and put more effort into it. I went to college after that.”

That performance was only one of the reasons Koepfer chose tennis. He enjoyed the camaraderie that came with competing as part of a club team. Skiing left him alone on a mountain. That wasn’t all, though.

“I think tennis was definitely the least dangerous sport to play. Skiing is pretty dangerous, especially if you do it competitively,” Koepfer said. “There are a lot of injuries, a lot of knee injuries and with tennis I always enjoyed playing.”

Despite focussing on tennis, Koepfer did not garner much attention. His ITF junior ranking wasn’t high enough for colleges to recruit him. He earned one offer from a Division I university — which he would attend — in the United States: Tulane University. Koepfer got a couple of lower-level Division II offers, but nothing more.

“The choice was made pretty easily because I didn’t really have one,” Koepfer said.

Koepfer’s first trip to campus, located in Louisiana, was his first journey to the United States. He was 18.

“[The] first few months I didn’t think I was going to stay,” Koepfer said. “It was tough.

“My English wasn’t very good, different culture, different people, the team atmosphere, I was playing a lot of tennis. It was very tiring with school at the same time and managing your time, and then obviously having a social life in college as well. So, it was kind of a struggle at the beginning. Then I started to really enjoy it and I think it helped me get better as a player, especially, and as a person, as well.”

By his junior year, Koepfer started believing in himself. He bacame the first player in school history to earn the No. 1 college singles player. Koepfer won the 2015 ITA National Indoor Intercollegiate Championship, ironically held on the grounds of the US Open, where he’d make his magical run less than four years later.

“I always had the dream of playing professionally, but never really had the level of playing professionally,” Koepfer said. “College definitely set me up for being able to go on the pro tour and compete on this level.”

Step by step, Koepfer navigated his way through the various professional levels. There were times he struggled to get through qualifying at Futures events, but last season he started to believe he could succeed on the ATP Challenger Tour. He lifted his first trophy at that level at Ilkley to earn a Wimbledon wild card.

It’s been a whirlwind ever since, with Koepfer ascending as high as World No. 83, and he is still improving. In the juniors, Koepfer was “very emotional” on court, and negative emotions would sometimes affect his game. The Florida resident has been working with a mental coach for more than a year, and he has reaped the rewards.

“I do a lot of daily routines: waking up, meditating, writing down things before matches, after matches. I write down a lot of things and then I obviously talk to him once or twice a week on the phone for an hour or two and then texting back and forth, just putting the daily effort into it,” Koepfer said. He believes his greatest strength is his fighting spirit, and it’s been about harnessing that.

“Sometimes when I freak out, when my emotions are getting in my way, it’s not the case. But I think I’m a very good fighter and I want to give my opponent the hardest time out there.”

Koepfer dreamed as a kid of becoming one of the 100 best players in the world. Not only has he accomplished that, but begun to set his sights even higher.

“Definitely Top 50,” Koepfer said. “Definitely competing at the highest level, competing at Grand Slams and playing the best players in the world.”

Serving on clay, grass and hard. How much do the different surfaces really effect overall serve performance?

An Infosys Insights deep dive into 1.4 million points played on all three surfaces from the beginning of the 2015 season up to this current week uncovers a clear, linear relationship that shows grass helps the server the most, while clay is the toughest surface for the serve to shine. These metrics correspond to popular opinion, but they go a step further in providing real numbers to substantiate our guess work.

First Serve vs Second Win Percentage
The percentage point difference was much more pronounced behind players’ first serves over second serves. The inherent power of the first serve is helped by grass much more than clay, with a 5.2 percentage point gap between grass and clay with first serve win percentages and only a slight 1.7 percentage point difference behind second serves.

First Serve Win Percentage Leader By Surface
– Grass = Ivo Karlovic (84.0%)
– Hard = Ivo Karlovic (83.4%)
– Clay = Ivo Karlovic (81.3%)

The 41-year-old Ivo Karlovic is the career leader (1991 to the current week) of first serve points won at 82.8 per cent (31,514/38,081), and the 6’11” Croatian shows no signs of slowing down as he dominates this first serve data set from 2015 on all three surfaces.

Second Serve Win Percentage Leader By Surface
– Grass = Roger Federer (60.2%)
– Hard = Roger Federer (58.1%)
– Clay = Rafael Nadal (58.7%)

What’s interesting from the second serve data is that Rafael Nadal impressively has a higher second serve win percentage on clay than Roger Federer does on hard. As you will see from the table below in all 10 serve metrics, clay is without exception the toughest surface to serve on.

Average Win Percentages

The research is conclusive. When serving, grass is without doubt the most user-friendly surface, followed in strict order by hard and then clay. The largest disparity in the data set between grass and clay came at the start of the game when the server fell to 0/15. When serving on grass, the server still held serve 69.3 per cent of the time, but only 60.9 per cent on clay — a significant difference of 8.4 percentage points.

Knowing the key differences, or lack thereof, in this specific area of the sport makes for more informed players, coaches and fans, and helps us better understand what we are watching when sitting court-side in Miami, Madrid or London.

One year ago, Miomir Kecmanovic entered the BNP Paribas Open as the No. 130 player in the FedEx ATP Rankings and he owned only one tour-level win. He lost in the final round of qualifying, but after getting into the draw as a lucky loser, then 19, Kecmanovic advanced to his first ATP Masters 1000 quarter-final, and he hasn’t looked back since.

Fifty-two weeks on, Kecmanovic is at a career-high World No. 47, and the Serbian is working hard to climb even higher.

“The goal for this year would be Top 30. If I can finish the year there that would be awesome for me and I’ll take it step by step,” Kecmanovic said. “I don’t want to set crazy goals and then be disappointed at the end of the year. I think it’s better to go step by step and then if you achieve it, that’s perfect.”

The 2019 Next Gen ATP Finals qualifier’s eyes and ears are open. In the off-season prior to 2019, he enjoyed learning from training with Dominic Thiem in Tenerife. This past off-season, he spent time with the likes of Novak Djokovic and Roger Federer in Dubai. One thing stuck out to him: how the best players take the ball early and use that to pressure their opponents.

“It’s definitely footwork. I think that’s the biggest thing in tennis. Everybody knows how to hit it in, make shots. But if you’re not set, you’re not going to make it. I think footwork is the big thing, and also mentally, to see the ball quicker and just go for it,” Kecmanovic said. “You’re not waiting for it to come in. I guess [it is about] just being aggressive towards it.”

Kecmanovic’s coach, Miro Hrvatin, says the pair is making improving that aspect of the Serbian’s tennis a top priority.

“I think that’s the crucial thing because everybody knows how to play forehands and backhands, but once you take time away from them, things start to be different,” Hrvatin said. “We are lucky this pre-season and last pre-season we had really good pre-season camps and good players, some of the best players in the world were there. Practising with them, they are showing you the path where you want to go, what you have to do, and what you have to work on.”

There is not one specific thing that will help Kecmanovic improve in this area, according to Hrvatin. He believes it is a puzzle that, if pieced together just right, could lead to major gains.

“I think it’s a combination, plus I think it’s the player who needs to be mentally aggressive. It’s something that I think is not only one thing. Footwork is very important, but then the timing is different if you are coming closer to the ball. All together, I think it takes time to fit into place,” Hrvatin said. “But that’s the thing that they’re all doing. You don’t have time while playing with the best players in the world. If you give them a short ball, you are dead. You lost the point, that’s it. Very simple.”

Last season was a year of firsts for Kecmanovic, including his first ATP Tour win to first tour-level final (in Antalya). Following that by training with some of the best players in the world to gain these insights was priceless.

“I think that’s the biggest thing you can get. Last year in Tenerife with Gunter Bresnik and with Dominic Thiem and all the guys over there like David Goffin and Jan-Lennard Struff, it was perfect. And this year was even more perfect,” Hrvatin said. “You had Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic and Karen Khachanov, so it’s something that you cannot buy. You cannot find it anywhere else except playing with those guys. So for me and for him I think it’s one of the best things he can get.”

Kecmanovic earned a lot of confidence in 2019. Carrying that into training with all-time greats allowed him a chance to truly see how much he had improved.

“I guess you get a different feeling when you start playing with those guys. You start to see what’s their level and what do you have to do to get there,” Kecmanovic said. “I definitely felt a little bit better. After the year I had, I felt like I can play with these guys. Definitely showed me what I have to do to get to that level eventually.”

Kecmanovic has long been a hard worker, but one year on from his breakthrough at Indian Wells, he thinks he has taken strides, and not just physically.

“I guess maybe mentally, believing more because in Indian Wells everything was new for me. I was the new guy, I didn’t know anything. I’d never played on that big of a stage and now everything that happens, I think it’s just a different mindset,” Kecmanovic said. “Going into matches you believe more, you think that you can win, and you try to beat everybody. You always try to beat everybody, but now you kind of believe and you have that mindset, you know that you’re going in as maybe sometimes the favourite.

“I think for the most part of the year, I keep a straight line and it’s going and it’s working really well for me and I was able to play at the same level throughout the whole year, without any injuries. So hopefully I can keep it up.”