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876940d afe758c 876940d afe758c 9aa3cf3 | 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 | This project analyzes Rafael Nadal’s serve performance across his entire career.
The goal is to understand whether serve statistics (1st serve %, 2nd serve %, double faults %, etc.) influence:
- Match outcome (win or loss)
- Differences between wins and losses
- Differences between surfaces (Clay, Hard, Grass)
The project includes:
- Data cleaning
- Outlier detection (boxplots + Z‑scores)
- Feature creation
- Visual analysis
- Correlation study
- Conclusions about Nadal’s serve performance
The dataset contains Nadal’s match‑by‑match performance, including:
- Date
- Tournament
- Surface
- Result
- serve statistics
- rank ... and more
Step 1 - I asked a question I wanted to focus on, which is about:
The main question- How do Nadal’s first serve percentage statistics affect his chances of winning a match
The target variable- "Result", which indicates whether Nadal won or lost the match
Step 2- Data Cleaning
I removed irrelevant columns
Converted serve statistics to numeric
Created a new Win column:
1 → match won ("Nadal d.")
0 → match lost
I replaced the missing values with the median.
To find the outliers, I chose the Z-score method, which identifies extremely unusual values. I chose to remain the outlier because it's very common in sports to have outlier and very rare performances.
Step 3 - Distribution Analysis (Histograms)
To understand Nadal’s serve performance, I plotted the distribution of three key serve statistics:
- 1st Serve Points Won (%)
- 2nd Serve Points Won (%)
- Double Fault Percentage (DF%)
Nadal’s 1st serve % is usually between 65% and 80%, with a strong concentration around the 70% mark.
The 2nd serve % is slightly lower but shows a similar bell-shaped distribution.
Double faults % is strongly skewed toward zero, meaning Nadal rarely makes many double faults.
Serve Performance vs Match Outcome (Win vs Loss)
Step 4- I compared Nadal’s serve statistics between the matches he won (1) and the matches he lost (0).
(with the same variables than step 3)
1st Serve % is clearly higher in matches he wins
Median ≈ 75% when he wins
Median ≈ 65% when he loses (This suggests that Nadal’s first-serve effectiveness is strongly linked to winning).
2nd Serve % also increases when he wins, but the difference is smaller
It helps, but has a weaker effect compared to the first serve.
Double Fault % is almost the same whether he wins or loses
Nadal makes very few double faults overall (Double faults do not significantly affect his match outcome).
step 5- surfaces
I asked the question if the playing surface influences Nadal’s serve performance?
I compared Nadal’s serve statistics across the three main surfaces he regularly plays on: Hard, Clay.
I removed the Carpet surface because the sample size was extremely small (only a few matches).
The result was very similar and showed no meaningful differences.
Based on these results, the playing surface does NOT significantly influence Nadal’s serve performance.
Step 6- Correlation
To explore how Nadal’s serve statistics relate to match outcomes, I computed a correlation matrix using the variables:
I interpret the plot with a heatmap.
- Win (1 = win, 0 = loss)
- 1st% (percentage of points won on first serve)
- 2nd% (percen
tage of points won on second serve)
Conclusion of the numbers:
- Higher 1st Serve % → Higher probability of winning.
- Higher 2nd Serve % also helps, but less strongly.
Conclusion of the question
performance to win his match; the numbers prove it.
I saw that the surface doesn't have an impact on the performance of the serves
When a player is on his first serve, he is under less stress because if he misses it, he has a second serve, so he can manage more power than a second serve.
https://cdn-uploads.huggingface.co/production/uploads/69022bd16eadade47dbabbea/hHHtBt4-VhVK8Nsnw2l6E.mp4
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