Kinematic Differences in Women's Tennis Serve Between Top- and Lower-Ranked Players

Kinematic data from the first serve of 17 Women's Tennis Association players, comparing seven top-ranked (within top 40) and ten lower-ranked (outside top 100) competitors. The dataset includes calculated joint angles and velocities, analyzed using independent-samples t-tests and Mann–Whitney U tests. The data was authored by Binxi Gao and published on figshare under a CC-BY-4.0 license.

Use Cases

• Compare serve biomechanics between elite and developing players based on joint angle and velocity metrics.
• Identify kinematic patterns associated with higher ball velocity based on the described upper arm and elbow positions.
• Model technical targets for player training based on the trunk rotation and elbow flexion characteristics of top-ranked players.

Strengths

• Directly compares two distinct performance groups (top 40 vs. outside top 100) with statistical testing.
• Includes specific kinematic metrics such as ball velocity, elbow angles, and peak angular velocities.
• Published under a permissive CC-BY-4.0 license, facilitating reuse.

Limitations

• The dataset is small (316.0 KB), indicating limited scope and sample size of 17 players.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for some analyses.

Provenance

Source

figshare

Collection Method

Videos of first serves were collected at competition venues and processed with FM3DMotion software for 3D kinematic data.

Time Range

Data collection timeframe includes players ranked as of September 2019.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-23 05:35:14; freshness should be verified.