On the Advantage of Serving First in a Tennis Set: Four Years at Wimbledon

Abstract

We investigate four often-heard hypotheses relating to the service in tennis. They are as follows: in the men's singles the service dominance is greater than in the women's singles, a player is as good as his or her second service, there is a psychological advantage to serve first in a set and few breaks occur during the first few games in a match. Moreover, we show the effect of changing the rules of tennis by allowing for only one instead of two services. All items are investigated by using almost 90 000 points at Wimbledon.