One of the most interesting indicators that reflects the strength of tennis players is the number of aces. A powerful service is, of course, important, but not the determining factor. Suffice it to say that the 24-time Grand Slam champion Novak Djokovic, the undisputed best tennis player of 2023, ranked only 20th in the number of aces of the season.
At the same time, there is not a single random character in the leaderboard for this indicator. And among them were Russian tennis players Daniil Medvedev and Andrey Rublev. Medvedev and Rublev, interestingly enough, turned out to be the only ones who were in the top five in two lists at once: in the ATP ranking at the end of the season and in the table by the number of cleared serves. And if in the official world ranking Medvedev, who took third place, is above Rublev, who is fifth, in terms of aces it is the other way around: Andrei is third and Daniil is fifth.
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Rublev, who played 82 games during the season (56 wins and 26 losses), scored 616 innings. On average he has just over 7.5 aces per match. And Andrei’s aerial serve percentage is 9.4%. In other words, of Rublev’s hundred serves, more than nine end in aces. If you break it down by coverage, there are no surprises here. The highest percentage of aces of the fifth racket in the world is observed on grass (10.9% compared to 10.3% on hard), and the lowest on clay (only 7.1%).
Medvedev looks a little worse in this component. During the season, Daniil, who played 84 games (66 wins and 18 losses), accumulated 547 innings. This equates to just over 6.5 aces per match on average. In percentage, he is also inferior to Rublev: 9.2%. The breakdown gives the usual picture: on grass, 11 out of every 100 Medvedev serves end in aces, on hard court the percentage is 10.1% and on clay only 6.0%.
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As for the first two places, there is an undisputed leader. Second-ranked American Taylor Fritz delivered 692 aces in 77 matches, or almost nine serves per match. However, he is also far from the Pole Hubert Hurkacz, who can rightly be called the king of aces for the 2023 season. 1031 – that is exactly the number of Hurkac’s serves that the opponents could not refuse. Hubert played 69 matches, giving him an average of 14.9 aces per match.
Among other things, it is worth highlighting the tenth place of the giant (208 cm!) John Isner. The 38-year-old American, who retired this year, played only 23 games, in which he served 480 times. Thus, he has 20.9 aces per match on average. Let us remember that it is Isner, with 14,470 aces during his career, who heads the general historical table. The second is the Croatian Ivo Karlovic, 211 centimeters (13,728 aces), the third is Roger Federer (11,478).
Well, Novak Djokovic, as already mentioned, ranked 20th in aces in 2023. He has 383 innings in 60 matches. Carlos Alcaraz is even lower. He is ranked 36th (302 aces in 77 games).
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Aces in the 2023 season (men)
PlayerCountryAsMatchesAveragePercent1Hubert HurkaczPoland10316914.916.82Taylor FritzUnited States69277912.23Andrey RublevRussia616827.59.44Alexander ZverevGermany613807.710.25Daniil MedvedevRussia547846.59.26 Stefanos Tsitsipas G reece547717.79.67Alexander BublikKazakhstan5434811.314.58Ben SheltonUnited States5055010.111.99Christopher EubanksUnited States4984112.113.310John IsnerUnited States4802320.922.9. ..20Novak DjokovicSerbia383606.48.5 …22Karen KhachanovRussia3625279…36Carlos AlcarazSpain302773.95.4
There are three Russians in the women’s top
Representatives of the fair sex, which is quite understandable, generally serve much less often. But some of them will leave many men behind. At the end of the 2023 season, three Russian women were in the top ten in terms of aces, and the best of them was the country’s first racket player, Lyudmila Samsonova, who is ranked 16th in the WTA rankings. Samsonova, who played 58 matches (34 wins and 24 losses), served 337 times, which is an average of 5.8 aces per match. Her ace percentage was 8.1% and the breakdown by surface is as follows: grass-9.2%, hard-8.3%, clay-5.6%.
One line below is Verónica Kudermetova, who has 279 aces in 56 matches (34 wins and 22 losses). This equates to an average of 5.0 tackles per game. The third representative of Russia in the top 10 was Ekaterina Alexandrova, who played 54 matches (33 wins and 21 losses). She has 265 aces, or 4.9 on average per match.
Curiously, as in the case of men, only two tennis players entered the top five in both the WTA ranking and the number of aces table. The second racket in the world, Aryna Sabalenka, was third in number of innings served (404 in 69 matches, or 5.9 on average per match). And Elena Rybakina, fourth in the world rankings, surpassed her by more than 50 aces (455 in 60 matches, or 7.6 on average per match).
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Sabalenka has $8.2 million in prize money for the season and is in second place. And among the top 15 there is only one Russian woman.
However, Rybakina, who has repeatedly said that service is one of her main weapons, lost to Caroline Garcia. The former fourth and now twentieth racket in the world, who played 64 matches, served 462 times in 2023. Although in terms of average aces per game (7.2), she still lost to Elena.
Finally, world number one Iga Swiatek ranked a modest 36th. She has only 127 aces in 79 matches, or 1.6 aces per match.
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Aces in the 2023 season (women)
PlayerCountryAsMatchesAveragePercent1Caroline GarcíaFrance462647.29.42Elena RybakinaKazakhstan455607.610.53Aryna SabalenkaBelarus404695.98.84Zheng QinwenChina363546.79.55Lyudmila SamsonovaRussia337585, 88.16Veronic a Kuder metovaRussia2795656.97Alicia ParksUnited States269347.9118Ekaterina AlexandrovaRussia265544.96.69Corey GauffUnited States260663.9610Maria SakkariGreece235633.75.3…36Iga Swietek Poland127791.62.8
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