The Tennis Trade-Off: Should I Go For the Ace or Get the First Serve In?

Photo Credit: VCG

With the 2023 US Open in full swing, it’s an appropriate time for me to serve up a tennis analysis. Watching #3 ranked Medvedev versus unseeded O’Connell in the 2nd round, my fiancé Christina and I started discussing the importance of the first serve. Medvedev had a curious serving strategy, going for a lot of aces on both his first and second serve. He ended up with 12 aces, 10 double faults, a 54% first serve percentage (first serve in), 81% of first serve points won, and 54% of second serve points won.

The performance sparked my interest: What is the optimal strategy for a men’s tennis player – should he go for the ace or should he get the first serve in?

I pulled data from over two thousand Men’s ATP matches in 2023 and looked for trends on first serve approach and results. Are the servers who fire out the most aces winning their matches consistently? Or are the servers who are getting in their first serves at the highest rate more successful?

As seen in Figure 1, the player with more aces per match does tend to win the match more often, especially if we look around the 10-aces section of the distribution. Moreover, the player with fewer aces tends to lose the match more often, especially around the 0-aces section of the distribution. Overall, the match winner averages 1.45 more aces than the match loser. The player with more aces wins the match 59% of the time, and the player with fewer aces wins the match 32% of the time.

Figure 1: Ace comparison between match winners and losers, featuring number of aces per match (x-axis) and number of matches (y-axis)

Looking at the first serve percentage, the player with the higher first serve percentage tends to win more matches, as seen in Figure 2. This is especially significant when the player succeeds in hitting his first serves at or above 75%. The player with lower first serve percentage tends to lose more matches, especially at or below 70%.

Figure 2: First serve percentage comparison between match winners and losers

So What Strategy is the Optimal Strategy?

Looking closer at the numbers in the dataset, the winner has a first serve percentage 10.3% higher than his opponent, on average. The winner serves at a higher first serve percentage than his opponent in 82% of matches and the loser serves at a higher first serve percentage in 18% of matches.

Without a doubt, it’s more important for the average men’s player to consistently get his first serve in and avoid having to deal with aggressive returns against his second serve, than it is for him to try to ace his opponent.

Data Source: ATPtour.com