Performance Assessment of Tennis Players: Application of DEA

Competition today has become intense not only in business but also in sports. At times the performance of a sportsman is linked to her/his ability to earn endorsements and sponsorship from the corporate world. In the present work, we consider the performance assessment of professional lawn tennis players using a non-parametric approach called Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). DEA is known to measure relative performance of a business unit or an individual called Decision Making Unit (DMU). In this study, data of forty professional men tennis players are evaluated and their individual performance is assessed using the CRS-DEA model with output orientation. The input and output parameters considered are overall matches played, the number of grand slam matches played, ‘ATP world tour masters 1000’ played, overall matches won, number of grand slam matches won, number of ATP World Tour Masters 1000 won, number of tie breaks won, number of finals won, number of matches won in the deciding set, number of matches won after winning the first set and number of matches won after losing the first set. Finally, an attempt is made to compare the results obtained using DEA with those obtained by the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP).