Assessing Professional Tennis Players Using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA)

The authors assess the performance of professional tennis players from the perspective of the efficiency of their game using data envelopment analysis (DEA). This research can complement the information provided by the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) ranking, which is concerned with their competitive performance. The DEA provides an index of the overall performance of players by aggregating the ATP statistics regarding the different aspects of the game. The DEA benchmarking analysis also allows identifying strengths and weaknesses of the game of the players. To the ranking of players, the authors use the cross-efficiency evaluation, which assesses the players in a peer evaluation with different patterns of game.