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Tennis match play is characterised by intermittent exercise, alternating short (4–10 second) bouts of high intensity and short (10–20 second) recovery bouts, interrupted by several periods of longer duration (60–90 seconds).8 All of these recovery periods are controlled by ITF rules, which establish the maximum rest times. Since 2004, these rest times are 20 seconds between points, 90 seconds between changeovers, and 120 seconds between sets.9 Generally, the mean duration of work and rest periods during a tennis match are 5–10 seconds and 10–20 seconds respectively (a work to rest ratio of about 1:1 to 1:4) (table 11).10,11,12,13,14,15,16 Rallies in women's singles matches are significantly longer than rallies in men's singles matches. In addition, there are differences in mean rally times between low to average level and high level tennis players, which may be explained by increased match activity for high level players—that is, high level players hit the ball harder, which results in shorter rallies.
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Table 1 Notational analysis in tennis
The duration of a tennis match is often more than an hour and in some cases more than five hours,11 and effective playing time—that is, percentage of the total playing time in a match—amounts to 20–30% on clay courts and 10–15% on fast court surfaces.17 During this time, a tennis player runs an average of 3 m per shot and a total of 8–12 m in the course of a point,18 completing 300–500 high intensity efforts during a best of three sets match. The number of directional changes in an average point is four,19 and rallies during a match typically last less than eight seconds (five to seven). Players average 2.5–3 strokes per rally, depending on their game style, ball type (1, 2, or 3), surface, sex, and tactical strategy.2,6,7 About 80% of all strokes are played within 2.5 m of the player's ready position. About 10% of strokes are made with 2.5–4.5 m of movement with primarily a sliding type movement pattern, and fewer than 5% of strokes are made with more than 4.5 m of movement and a running type movement pattern.17