The men’s doubles final in Virginia Beach was a close, exciting match. Federico Staksrud and Hayden Patriquin won in five games, defeating Ben Johns and Collin Johns 11-9, 6-11, 3-11, 11-8, 11-2. How and why did they win? Let’s take a deep dive into the stats and see if we can determine what the keys were to this exciting match.

 

The key statistic in men’s doubles has always been the speedup stat. How often does a player and team speed up a ball at the kitchen line and how successful are they in doing so? I tracked the speedups in this match, along with unforced errors.

 

 

 

Staksrud: 2-3 (attempted 3, won the rally twice), 2 errors

Patriquin: 1-2, 4 errors

Ben Johns: 5-8, 3 errors

Collin Johns: 3-3, 2 errors

 

 

Staksrud: 1-4, 1 error

Patriquin: 2-5, 4 errors

Ben Johns: 5-6, 4 errors

Collin Johns: 1-1, 2 errors

 

 

Staksrud: 2-3, 3 errors

Patriquin: 0-1, 3 errors

Ben Johns: 6-7, 1 error

Collin Johns: 0-0, 0 errors

 

 

Staksrud: 5-6, 2 errors

Patriquin: 2-2, 5 errors

Ben Johns: 3-5, 4 errors

Collin Johns: 0-0, 1 error

 

 

Staksrud: 8-10, 0 errors

Patriquin: 3-3, 1 error

Ben Johns: 0-1, 4 errors

Collin Johns: 3-6, 0 errors

 

 

Staksrud: 19-26 (.731), 8 errors

Patriquin: 8-13 (.615), 17 errors

Ben Johns: 16-24 (.667), 16 errors

Collin Johns: 7-10 (.700), 5 errors

 

Staksrud/Patriquin: 27-39 (.692), 25 errors

Johns: 23-34 (.676), 21 errors

 

 

1. The speedup stat is once again king. The team with the better speedup success rate won all five games. And, the team with the better overall speedup success rate won the match. As is true well over 90% of the time, if you are look at only one stat from a game of pro men’s doubles, have it be the speedup success stat and you can predict who won the game with over 90% accuracy.

 

2. The match was won (and lost) by who was more aggressive. Staksrud/Patriquin were most aggressive (by far) in game five and that was their best game. They were least aggressive in game three and that was their worst game. Ben Johns was most aggressive in games two and three and won both; he was least aggressive (by a lot) in game five and lost badly.

 

 

3. The match turned at 9-3-2 in game four. At that point, the Johns were in control. They were up 2-1 in games and were serving at 9-3-2. At that point in game four, Staksrud and Patriquin had only tried two speedups. The Johns then lost the serve, lost a point by not correctly signaling a time out, and Staskrud/Patriquin outscored them 19-1 from that point forward. Staksrud/Patriquin did six speedups after 9-3-2, and 13 more in game five. So, after being down 9-3-2, Staksrud/Patriquin hit 19 speedups, and outscored their opponents 19-1. To state it another way, in that 19-1 run, Staksrud/Patriquin’s ratio of speedups to points scored was 19/20(95%); prior to that, it was 20/63 (32%). In other words, after being down 9-3-2 in game four, Staksrud/Patriquin TRIPLED how often they sped the ball up.

 

4. The flip side is that after 9-3-2, Ben Johns became very passive. He was fairly aggressive in the first three games and the first part of game four, but after being ahead 9-3-2, he virtually stopped speeding up the ball.

 

5. All four players were very good at speedups. Anything over a 50% success rate is acceptable, as you are winning the rally more often than not. Anything over 60% is good and 70% is excellent. Staksrud succeeding 73% of the time at high volume is spectacular. His aggressive play was the single biggest reason for the win.

 

 

6. As to errors, Ben Johns plays a lot of balls. He will naturally have a fairly high number of errors. Patriquin’s error rate was a bit too high. The commentators remarked on it, appropriately, several times. Patriquin’s errors were almost all into the net. His unforced errors were either serve returns or routine dinks. He played very well in the match, but he can improve his play easily with a little more focus on these simple shots.

 

7. Game three was an example of how the Johns want to play pickleball; it is also an example of the type of game their opponents should never play. Game three was a dinkfest, with a low level of aggression by Staksrud/Patriquin. The Johns want to “dink all day”. They wait for the opponents to make an error, either by missing a dink or leaving it up slightly so that Ben can speed it up on a ball of his choosing. The Johns’ opponents should never go along with a dinkfest. They need to speed the ball up and be aggressive at all times.

 

Congratulations to Federico and Hayden for the win. They found the right strategy at just the right time. In the future, if there is a rematch, look for Staksrud and Patriquin to be more consistently aggressive against the Johns brothers; that is the winning formula.

 

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