Sunday, April 24, 2016

What court do captains play on most often? - Interesting Tennis League Stats

While watching a USTA League match this evening, I got to wondering where captains happen to play themselves most often.  I've written in the past about where captains rate compared to the average by gender and level, so I thought it would be interesting to look at this.

Just looking at 18+ and 40+ matches from 2015 where it was a 2 singles and 3 doubles format, it breaks out as shown below.


For both men and women, captains played most often on court 1 doubles and way more often on a doubles court than singles.  What is a little interesting is that women captains appear to play on the top courts at a higher rate than men; women play court 1 or 2 doubles 39% and 29% more often than 3 doubles, while men play court 1 or 2 doubles 14% and 16% more often than 3 doubles.

From the earlier analysis on strength of captains, they were not generally stronger than average other than at the 3.0 level, so it appears captains either feel they are stronger than they are and play themselves on what is perceived to be the stronger courts, or they are more willing to take one for the team and let other players get wins on court 3.

If you are a captain, what court do you typically play on and why?

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