I've often wondered, and sometimes been asked, if the player/pair winning the second set has a better chance of winning the tie-break because they have the momentum, or if the player/pair winning the first rests up in the second and they come back, or if anything really can happen in a tie-break and it is a toss-up. Well it is time to do some research and find out!
For this analysis I'm going to look at matches played in 2017 in the 18 & Over leagues and just look at the percentage of time the winner of the first/second set win the tie-break.
First, just looking at all matches played, the data tells us that 49.4 percent of first set winners win the tie-break, while 50.6 percent of second set winners do. Statistically, this says it is a toss-up, although one might argue a slight bias towards the second set winners.
But what if we slice the data different ways? First, by gender:
- Male - 49.1% for first set winners, 50.9% for second set winners
- Female - 49.%% vs 50.5%
So there is the same general toss-up but perhaps slight bias for the women.
Then by level:
- 2.5 - 52.9 vs 47.1
- 3.0 - 49.6 vs 50.4
- 3.5 - 49.3 vs 50.7
- 4.0 - 49.1 vs 50.9
- 4.5 - 49.3 vs 50.7
- 5.0 - 46.9 vs 53.1
Only at the extremes of 2.5 and 5.0 do we see the data stray from the general averages, and there are far fewer matches at these levels so there is a greater chance for some outlier data the skew things. But even at these levels, there is not a dramatic advantage to either set winner, although interestingly at 2.5 the second set winner wins the match less often!
I did also look at the data by gender and level but nothing stood out, it was consistent with the above.
So it appears there is certainly not a dramatic advantage to the second set winner in a match tie-break, but perhaps an ever so slight one. Like they say, anything can happen in a tie-break!
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