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The tennis world was shocked seeing defending champion Andy Murray knocked out in the quarterfinals at Wimbledon. But according to IBM analysis, his loss wasn’t surprising one bit.
Grigor Dimitrov ousted the Brit in straight sets 6-1, 7-6 (4) ,6-3 to advance to his first Grand Slam semi-final. Dimitrov hit 50 aggressive forehands against Murray’s 44.
While Murray’s 18 aggressive backhands were matched by 17 from Grigor, the Bulgarian won a net 86 aggressive shots in total during the course of the match in comparison to Murray’s 71.
IBM is using this system for the first time. The data was developed from last year’s Wimbledon, US Open as well as this year’s Australian Open.
The factors defining an aggressive shot are: speed; landing location of the ball; distance the opponent had to move to get to the shot; and the opponent’s position for the return.
The aggressiveness of a shot is judged by a team of 48 tennis experts sitting courtside during a match. The stats cannot predict the eventual winner, but can analyse why a particular match against a particular player went the way it did. It also helps to prepare for a opponent.
Wimbledon is associated with IBM for 25 years now and the analysis on aggressiveness is just a part of huge data it has collected about matches.
"What we see is a trend in all sports that data is changing the game," Bill Jinks, an IBM engineer working on the project, said.
Canadian Eugenie Bouchard, who has reached the semi-finals here, said her coach looks at the IBM data.
The system calculated 38 aggressive forehands for Bouchard against 29 for Kerber, and 23 aggressive backhands versus 15 for Kerber.
"My coach has used them," Bouchard said at a press conference after the match. "(He) doesn't go into every specific detail with me, but gives me kind of a general sense of some things going on either with me or maybe the opponent I'm about to play. "So I think he actually really appreciates them and uses them."
