On Saturday, the semifinal between Mark Knowles/Mahesh Bhupathi and Nenad Zimonjic/Daniel Nestor began as a moderately tough assignment. But then three of the players donned caps during the match, making it into a very difficult one. “I was using dark legs and white legs [to tell the players apart],” said the spotter.


Statisticians have an unusual brand of tennis IQ. They are fast-fingered, hyper aware observers who watch a match more closely than anyone else, including the umpire. They must recognize not just what happened, but also how: If the player had the time and court position to make a shot and missed, it’s an unforced error. If either time or position was insufficient, a miss goes down as a forced error. The difference is huge. Unforced errors are one of the most closely monitored stats in the game. They’re also the ones most often questioned publicly.

The scorekeepers don’t believe unforced errors are as subjective as analysts sometimes suggest. Experienced scorekeepers work the big matches, and those who play tennis must adjust their idea of a makeable shot to correctly gauge errors. A winner in a league match might be an easy shot for a pro to return.

IDS, a large sports technology company, runs the scorekeeping booth at most ATP and WTA events. The scorekeepers themselves are tournament volunteers who come from backgrounds unrelated to scorekeeping or statistics. However, many have years of experience keeping score at the tournament. A decent tennis IQ isn’t the only qualification for the job. “You have to be able to handle the pressure. Some people can’t,” says Maxine Hoyles-Yates, the chairwoman of the scoring committee.

Using a laptop’s mouse and keyboard should be second nature to a good scorekeeper, veteran Kendall Lemley tells us. He needs to click on fields of information without taking his eyes off the court so he doesn’t miss a single stroke. If the serve return is a forehand, Lemley knows to hit the over-arrow key twice. If the returner hits a backhand, it’s down arrow, over, over. He can do all of this without looking.

Scoring a point starts when the team member known as “the radarman” punches the “radar on” button on his special keypad, which looks like a chunky calculator. This activates the court’s radar gun to clock the serve. Once the serve lands, the radarman punches more buttons to record its direction: wide, body, or center (for down the middle), as well as winner, ace, or let, if applicable. That information appears immediately on the laptop manned by the other statistician, who quickly enters a description of the serve return by selecting from several lists of possible shots. Then, the radarman uses two keys on the keypad to record each ensuing shot in the rally as a forehand or backhand. This continues until the last shot of the rally, which is recorded by the other statistician. This shot can require a long string of qualifiers, including the type of shot hit, whether it was a winner or error, and who won or lost the point. For statisticians, keying a backhand return approach shot might be the equivalent of a high backhand smash – the hardest shot in the game – while the drop volley is like a Fernando Gonzalez touch shot – it just doesn’t exist. The computers won’t record a drop shot and a volley on the same stroke.

It’s one of the rare limitations of the scoring system. Another one may not be as technical. “We’d like an ugly button. Sometimes a shot is just ugly,” says scorekeeper Alicia Newton.


Although scorekeeping is electronic, powered by a system developed exclusively for pro tennis by IBM, some old-school statisticians also record points by hand. This was useful when the power went out on Stadium Court during one of Serena Williams’ matches earlier this month in Cincinnati. Unsure of whether or not the computer was capturing keyed-in information during the outage, the radarman called out the rally sequence while another person wrote it down.

Lemley trains for his scorekeeping job by calling televised matches at home starting a few weeks before the tournament. Instantly recognizing a shot as a winner, forced error, or unforced error needs to become reflexive, he says, because scorekeepers have other challenges to contend with, like knowing who’s who on the court. The Marion Bartolis of the world also demand special attention. If a player uses two hands on both wings, the stats keeper must remember whether the player is right-handed or left-handed to discern forehands from backhands.

Challenges are another burden. “Once we hear ‘challenge,’ we say, ‘Okay, if it’s in, this will be the call. If it’s out, this will be the call,’” says Lemley. A revision must be made quickly, because the players usually watch the challenge in position to start the next point.

Sounds easy, right? Just try it the next time you watch a match.


More photos from the 2009 Western & Southern Financial Group Masters Tennis Tournament.
Photos: Megan Fernandez, Mariya Konovalova