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10 April 2026

Return Contact Point

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

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.

Both Alcaraz and Sinner move back a lot on clay (Sinner 1.2m further behind the baseline than on hard, Alcaraz 1.3m). But Alcaraz has a bimodal distribution on clay, taking it early and deep evenly.

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