Surface comparison

Chart of the share of shots that are drop shots on hard courts and on clay for the ATP top 20 plus Jodar, Tien and Fonseca. Bublik uses them most (5.8% on hard, 8.5% on clay) and every player hits more on clay except Vacherot. Sinner wins 60% of drop-shot points on hard and 66% on clay; Alcaraz 59% and 60%.

On clay, softer hands pay

Every Top 20 player hits more drop shots on clay than hard courts except Vacherot.

May 2026

Court maps of where Sinner and Alcaraz make contact when returning first serves, split by hard court and clay and coloured by point won, lost, return winner or error. Sinner averages 1.63m behind the baseline on hard and 2.78m on clay; Alcaraz averages 1.96m on hard and 3.22m on clay, with a second, deeper cluster around 5m on clay.

Return Contact Point

A nice way to look at differences in hard and clay court strategy is return positions.

April 2026

Two court diagrams of Alcaraz's ad-side first serves on hard courts over the last 52 weeks. On all points (n=667) he goes 41% wide, 15% body and 44% T, winning 72 to 74% out wide and down the T. On break points (n=56) 71% go wide or body (48% wide, 23% body, 29% T) and he wins only 59% of the wide serves.

Alcaraz has a serve problem

Possibly a crazy thing to be writing about the current world No.1 and recent Australian Open champion. But margins are fine in tennis and his biggest rival has some hard court gifts that can make even small problems loom large.

March 2026Essay, 4 min read3 charts