On the Independence and Identical Distribution of Points in Tennis

This article presents a study of the (conditional) probability of winning a point on service, based on almost 90,000 points played at Wimbledon, 1992-1995. We show that points are neither independent nor identically distributed, and we present an extended logit model that captures the dependence and non-identical distribution. Many well-known tennis hypotheses are tested; most are refuted.

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