SAP Coaches View: Osaka Outlasts In Tokyo
Naomi Osaka reached the first WTA final of her career Saturday in Tokyo at the Toray Pan Pacific Open thanks to an improved performance in longer rallies later in her 1-6 6-3 6-2 win over Elina Svitolina.
Svitolina surrendered just one game in the opening set of the Toray PPO Tennis semifinal, breaking Osaka twice. SAP Coaches View shows that Osaka won 36% of 3-6 shot rallies, and just 33% of rallies longer than 6 shots in that first set.
In the decisive third set, Osaka did significantly better on those longer rallies. She won 52% of the medium rallies, lasting 3-6 shots.
Osaka showed even more improvement on the longest rallies, winning 71% of the points lasting longer than 6 shots. That’s a vast improvement over her 33% in the first set.
The powerful Osaka also did well on the shortest points of the match, firing seven aces. She has hit a tournament-best 25 aces this week.
The SAP Coaches View combines scoring information direct from the chair umpire with tracking data from HawkEye to allow for an in depth look at five different aspects of a match. Each tracking option can be filtered to narrow the focus to specific situations within a match, such as break points. This information is available directly to coaches in real-time during a match on their SAP tablet and also available to them online after matches.
“Rally hit to” tracking shows where each shot during a rally lands on the opponent’s side of the court. The display, which also shows rally length, differentiates between forehands and backhands. This data can be filtered by a particular score or to only show winners, unforced errors, service returns, the last shot of a rally or the third shot (first rally ball hit by the server).
These tools show that Osaka’s improvement on longer rallies was key to her advancing for a WTA final for the first time.