Tennis opponent analysis: notes to test at the rematch
In this article
To analyse a tennis opponent, write down the situation, the serve-and-return exchange, the rally pattern that followed, and what happened. Keep your interpretation on a separate line. Before you play them again, pick one or two ideas to test, and drop any that the rematch does not bear out.
Everything in this singles scouting template follows from that. It draws on tennis performance research, on studies of sporting reflection and on what coaches and players have learned on court, but the template itself has not been tested in a controlled trial. Nothing in the research below shows that a tennis player who keeps an opponent journal wins more often.
The problem it addresses is ordinary. You remember losing to someone with “a big forehand”, yet cannot say where you lost the points:
- on your second serve
- on the short balls you fed after their deep returns
- on the down-the-line changes you never covered
An opponent journal is where you can set those explanations side by side and see which one holds.
What does tennis research support?
Two findings from the professional game carry over to club tennis as recording habits, not as tactics.
The first is that a player’s numbers depend on where they play and whom they play. In PLOS ONE (2018), Yixiong Cui of the Technical University of Madrid and colleagues in Madrid and at the University of Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro analysed performance statistics from 1,369 women’s singles matches at the four Grand Slams between 2014 and 2017. Serve and return statistics differed between tournaments:
- Australian Open and US Open: more service winners, double faults, return winners and unforced return errors
- Wimbledon: stronger serving
- Roland Garros: better chances to break serve
Almost every variable was also related to the two players’ relative quality — the gap between them, derived from their rankings. The study describes elite women through official match statistics and says nothing about club players.
For our purposes, it supports a modest habit — record the surface, the conditions and the level of the opponent, and expect a pattern to hold only when all three are similar.
The second is that the serve and the return deserve their own line. In the Journal of Sports Sciences (2016), Machar Reid of Tennis Australia’s Game Insight Group and colleagues compared tracking data from 102 male and 95 female players at the Australian Open between 2012 and 2014.
The largest differences between the two groups were in serve statistics — speed, aces, unreturned serves and the share of service points won — with further differences in where and how low returns were struck. That is a study of sex differences at one hard-court event, not a scouting method. It is nonetheless a reason to write down what the serve did and what came back, rather than “good serve”.
The International Tennis Federation’s coaching journal offers a practitioner’s version of the same ideas. In the ITF Coaching & Sport Science Review (2010), Scott Over and Peter O’Donoghue reviewed tactical analysis in tennis:
- serve direction, split by first and second serve and by deuce and advantage court
- how often a player comes forward on longer points
- how those choices shift with the opponent, the score and the tournament
One sentence from their conclusion could sit at the top of any set of notes: “Players never play against an ‘average’ opponent on an ‘average’ court surface with ‘average’ balls.” It is a coaching review rather than new experimental research, and a useful reference if you want to build a fuller charting sheet.
What should a tennis entry include?
Our recommendation is simple: whatever the result, finish each match entry with what worked, what did not work and your plan for next time. In any racket or combat sport, these are the three things we think matter most. The two prompts that come before them, context and the opponent, set the scene. All five are working prompts for club players, not a validated instrument.
- Context. Opponent, date, format, surface, indoors or out, wind and sun, the result, and the score situation for anything specific you noticed. Add handedness and whether the backhand is one- or two-handed.
- The opponent. Their first and second serves from each side, where they went and what your return produced; which of your serves they attacked, and which they blocked back. Then how the point developed after the return: cross-court exchanges and when they changed direction, what they did with a short ball, whether they came forward, and what they hit when you did. Name the forehand and backhand sides from their perspective, not yours.
- What worked. Returns, serves and patterns that won you points or gave you a neutral rally.
- What didn’t work. Where your own shot choices, execution, footwork or timing let you down. A missed passing shot on break point is not evidence that they cannot be passed.
- What to do next time. One or two concrete changes, and what you would need to see to abandon them.
Short fragments are fine if they keep the habit alive. If a detail has slipped your mind, leave the field empty — later on, a blank is worth more than a guess that only looks precise.
What could a tennis entry say after a close loss?
Both players and the match below are made up for teaching, so read it as an invented example rather than a real record or research data:
Context: Club ladder, best of three, outdoor hard court, gusty wind from the clubhouse end. Lost 4–6, 6–7. Right-hander, two-handed backhand. Written the same evening.
The opponent: On the deuce side, most of the first serves I can remember went wide to my forehand. Second serves were slow kicks to my backhand. In backhand cross-court exchanges they went down the line early — twice for winners, once wide. They came forward only behind a short ball to their forehand.
What worked: When I chipped their second serves deep through the middle, the rally started neutral. I passed once when they came forward.
What didn’t work: When I tried to attack their second serves cross-court, I made two errors in the tiebreak. Lobbed short once. Rushing second-serve returns at 30–30 and deuce. Two double faults serving into the wind. Approaching behind a slice that sat up.
Next time: Return second serves deep through the middle and let the rally begin. Serve with more margin into the wind. Revise the plan if the second serve has changed or the court is different.
“Twice for winners, once wide” is a tiny sample. Read it as a warning to watch for the early change down the line, not as the odds on the next match. Unless you kept a tally, write “several wide serves” and mark the count as unknown.
A court sketch can hold the location a sentence loses. Label each mark with the shot and its context, and keep the same viewpoint throughout; unlabelled dots do not explain a point. Points that did not fit your first impression belong on the page too.
How do the notes become a plan for the rematch?
Go over the entry before you warm up, choose the one or two observations you most want to check, and boil each down to a cue short enough to repeat between points. You can add more, but a long list makes the plan complicated before you have walked on court.
For the example above, the cues might be “deep return through the middle” and “margin into the wind”. The first few games are your chance to see if last time’s pattern is still there. Their second serve may be different now, and so may the surface, the balls, the wind and your own form. A good plan helps you spot the change rather than argue with it.
After the match, update the entry with what happened, and do not leave out the points where a tactic failed. Write while you can still replay the points in your head, ideally on the day of the match. The wider research is covered in our article on match memory, though no study there can say when the details of one particular rally will fade.
What do your notes say about what to practise?
Look across several opponents’ pages at what you wrote under “what didn’t work”. If rushed second-serve returns keep appearing, take that concrete observation to your coach or onto the practice court. Think about when it happened, not just the words you repeated — wind, fatigue and score pressure may each need a different answer.
Research on reflection offers related evidence, but only up to a point. In 2009 a Groningen team led by Tynke T. Toering compared self-regulation in 159 elite and 285 non-elite youth soccer players and reported the results in the Journal of Sports Sciences. The elite players rated themselves higher on reflection in the questionnaire. Because the study observed soccer players rather than testing written notes, it cannot show that notes improve anyone’s tennis. That wider question is the subject of our review of athletic reflection.
OpponentBook can hold a page per opponent and notes attached to pins on its tennis singles-court schematic. The journal is free, and synced notes live in your own connected storage. OpponentBook does not keep a journal copy in its account database; when you request an AI action, the necessary content passes through an OpponentBook server to the AI provider, as the privacy guide explains. Optional end-to-end encryption also hides the encrypted notes from your storage provider; photos, video and provider-visible file metadata are not covered by that encryption.
Tonight, put your last singles match through the five prompts. Be sure to cover what worked and what didn’t, flag one detail you are unsure of, and end with one or two ideas for the rematch.
