We all know that dinking is an important skill. As a player progresses to higher ratings levels, dinking consumes more shots within each rally.
At the recent APP tournament in Mesa, I charted the outcomes of dinks in the first game of the Gold Medal match between Tereshenko/David and Irvine/Koop. Click on this link to watch the match.
I charted dinks for Irvine/Koop, and here is what I observed:
Andrea Koop:
- 73 Dinks.
- 2 Errors (into the net or out of bounds).
- 8 Speedups (opponent attacked off of the dink).
- Success Rate = (73-10)/73 = 86.3%
Jessie Irvine:
- 31 Dinks.
- 1 Error.
- 2 Speedups.
- Success Rate = (31-3)/31 = 90.3%.
Andrea was clearly being picked on. The data suggests she was nearly as steady as Jesse was.
When charting the data, I noticed that when the other team sped up a point off of a dink, the other team won the point 60% of the time. More on this in a second.
Had Jessie received the same number of dinks as Andrea received, Jessie would have had 2.4 errors vs. 2.0 errors for Andrea. Jessie would have had 4.7 speedups vs. 8.0 speedups for Andrea. If Jessie/Andrea only win the point 40% of the time after a speedup, I can calculate how much more effective Jessie’s dinks were than Andrea:
- (2.0 – 2.4) + (8.0 – 4.7)*0.4 = -0.4 + 3.3*0.4 = -0.4 + 1.3 = 0.9.
In other words, had all of Andrea’s dinks been hit to Jessie instead, Jessie/Andrea would have earned 0.9 additional points during the game.
Whether you are a pro or a 3.5 player at your local club, you’d gladly take one additional point in a game up to eleven, correct?
Pickleball Analytics! 