Will Hawkins

Sports Analysis Assignment 2

To ensure the completion of this task, I am going to be analysing a professional athlete on how well they perform in the various skills and components of a tennis player. Once I have the results for the tests I am going to analyse the results and performance to gain a further indication on what needs and improving and also how. To achieve the best possible results for maximum benefits out of the assignment, I am going to be analysing myself and comparing them to Andy Murray who is the player I have mostly modelled myself on. Also I am going to try to improve my results over time to hopefully improve my overall standard of play.

Player Profiles

The different aspects of performance I am going to be testing, analysing and feeding back on are stamina as a physiological aspect that is important for a tennis player. For a biomechanical aspect of a tennis player I am going to be analysing serving technique and the acceleration of the racket during the serve. I am also going to be using decision making as a psychological and tactical aspect that a tennis player needs to perform well.

I am going to test and analyse the different aspects in a lots of different ways depending on what I believe to be the most accurate method with the facilities available. To test stamina the best test to use would be a treadmill test with a Douglas bag to assess the concentration of the expired air. However this equipment is expensive and not easily available, so instead I am going to be using a multistage fitness test, more commonly known as the bleep test. I am going to conduct it 5 times to make sure that the results are consistent and reliable and make sure there are no outliers, when this is done I am going to calculate the average score and also the range of the scores.

Biomechanically I am going to be looking at a factor that is vital. I will be looking at the serving technique and how this affects the success rate of your serve. To test these I am going to be measuring serving percentage during repeated tests and calculate an average and a range. I am going to be using video analysis to compare my serving technique to that of Andy Murray and analyse areas that need improvement. I will be conducting a serving exercise that will need me to do 10 serves from each side, 5 times. This will allow me to create a mean, and therefore give a more accurate result when I come to making it into data.

To test and analyse decision making I am going to be using a psychological questionnaire covering the key areas of psychology and do tests for the key areas, focusing on the more tennis specific ones, concentration, handling of pressure and stress, anxiety and patience and also aggression. I am going to measure winners and unforced errors from matches and calculate a percentage.

Serving Stats

I am now going to show my results from the tests. This is to show where the strengths and weaknesses are in my serving game.

Exercise Charts are taken in shorthand so it is quick and very reliable and so that the recorder doesn’t miss anything.

                                                                        

These statistics show that my first serve in terms of tennis serving consistency; was of a good standard as normally an average game would consist of around about a 60%. I do need to work on my effectiveness of my second serve as my points won were is quite low so I may consider in adding top spin to my second serve.

Stamina

As a professional sportsman Andy Murray’s result on the bleep test averages out between stages 17 and 19 every time. His career record so far is 516 wins to 164 lost which is very high. He has also won 177 Tiebreak’s compared to 65 lost which is an exceptionally good ratio. Especially as Tiebreak’s are normally the most nerve-racking and are at the end of the set where the players are more physically drained. This number again proves that Murray’s Fitness levels are high even for his standard of play. I haven’t been able to find any statistics on the length of Murray’s matches but going by the majority of the wins I have seen his fitness gives him the edge and he tends to win the longer matches and set, however this is also down to other factors such as his phenomenal serve.

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Compared to Andy Murray; my fitness levels are quite low, but for my standard of play it is reasonably good. I win the majority of my matches but I favour shorter matches. The longest set in the match is the one I lost which is because of my fitness not quite being as good as it could be. If I could improve my fitness to a higher level my performance would stay consistent for longer and I would be able to outlast opponents as well in the longer more drawn out matches.

Compared to Murray’s 177 won tiebreak’s; mine is ...

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