Burn out or burn bright: The future of men's tennis

New data by Tennis Australia’s Game Insight Group (GIG) and Victoria University reveal that top ranking international male tennis players, including Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer, are playing more demanding schedules than any previous generation in tennis history.

Tennis legends of the 1980s and 90s, including John McEnroe and Jimmy Connors, reached their 10,000th game (on average) by age 25. Current players such as Andy Murray and Novak Djokovic are hitting that figure by the time they reached 23, according to GIG analysis of match activity since the Open Era in 1968, when tennis became recognised as a professional sport. 

With the Australian Open only days away, Dr Stephanie Kovalchik is available to share her unique insights on:

• the gruelling physical demands of the pro-circuit tour
• why some of the world’s top ten players, including Andy Murray are pulling out of Grand Slam tours
• how the risk of burn out has increased across  generations of tennis players
• what are the chances of players returning from injury regaining their top form?

Dr Stephanie Kovalchik is a Senior Data Scientist for the Game Insight Group of Tennis Australia and Research Fellow in VU Institute of Sport, Exercise and Active Living.

Dr Kovalchik’s area of expertise is tennis analytics and performance analysis. She received her PhD from UCLA, where she focused on multi-level modelling, prediction, and risk assessment. Stephanie has held appointments as a statistical researcher at the National Cancer Institute and the RAND Corporation, where she developed new statistical methods for handling complex health science data.

While working in the health sciences, Stephanie was also conducting quantitative research in tennis. In her current role at ISEAL and Tennis Australia, she is working on advancing tennis analytics. She is involved with various projects using data analysis to help understand performance in tennis and has particular interest in identifying patterns of performance, and measuring the mental side of tennis.