Jay is now 4-1* up in the decider as the match approaches 3 hours

The Italian is ot giving up easily.

Jay to serve at *5-3 now.

OK. This is getting a bit more serious now. The Italian breaks again.

Jay leads at 5-4*

Time for one more break Jay. Vamos.

After all that, sadly not to be for Jay as the Italian wins 7-5 in the 3rd.

That has to be tough to take for Jay. But I have a question relating to the stats and how they are interpreted. I know as well as anyone the perils of trying to draw conclusions from pure stats, but as we have no livestream, they are all we have.

However, before I ask the question, I just want to say that this is in no way intended to be a criticism. After all, Jay, at 17, has just gone out and stood toe-to-toe with an experienced pro (aged 27), playing in his own country and therefore probably his preferred surface, ranked more than a thousand places above him and battled for over 3 1/2 hours, only to lose 7-5 in the third set. Gutted though I am about the result, I salute you, Jay, for such a fine effort and I hope that when the disappointment wears off, you are able to take a whole host of positives from the performance.

My question though, is this. The stats show that Jay served over 82% on 1st serve. Sounds fantastic. But in 106 points played on his own serve, the interesting stat to me is Zero Aces and Zero DFs. Now I appreciate as well that this is clay and serve is less of a factor, but as a coach, would you be looking for your player to be a bit more "ambitious" on the serve and perhaps take the drop in 1st serve %age and perhaps even a few DFs in return for some more cheap points or would you just be delighted at the high 1st serve %age ?

I have never seen Jay play so I it makes it even more difficult to comment, but I would be interested to hear what others think.

-- Edited by Bob in Spain on Tuesday 3rd of May 2016 02:07:39 PM

Bob, for what it's worth (not a whole heap of beans) but....I've seen Jay play once, on grass. And I thought his serve was one of his best shots (he's quite a tall, athletic lad and gets some real power on it).

As you say, clay may well neutralise a fair bit of that (he didn't really have much kick on it, or the second, from what I can remember, top spin isn't really his thing).

As you say, very difficult to comment on the match without seeing it - seems unfair to criticise him for no double faults but I know what you mean....

My gut takeaway (and I know it's a slight bugbear) is that it was down to not having played any/enough real adult matches. And no team tennis.

Team tennis, with a coach on the bench, against a whole range of different adult players, would have given him the skills/knowledge/tips needed to drag himself over the line - no one really should lose from 5-1 up, although it happens, of course.

You can learn by yourself but it takes time, and needs lots of matches, especially in men's tennis, where the transition is harder.

Interesting re the serve stats, and the point success rates on first and second serve are almost the same ( 1st 41/87 = 47.1% and the clearly smaller sample 2nd serve 9/19 = 47.4% ).